Streaming live TV over network, recommended server spec

SpArKyCFC

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Hi,

I currently have a media server with modest spec as below

AMD A10-7850K 3.7Ghz Quad Core APU, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, DVDRW, Radeon R7 Graphics, TBS 6205 Quad Terrestrial HD PCIe TV Tuner Card DVB-T2

This media server runs ubuntu, and has dvblink installed.

It streams live TV to multiple OpenElec (Kodi) boxes throughout the house via the network.

I find that, whilst testing, the box is capable of streaming live HD TV to 4 boxes at a time, as well as recording 4 or 5 streams too. However in the real world occasionally i get 'discontinuity' which result in fragmented picture and audio skipping every minute or so. This doesn't happen all the time, and will just happen every few days. If i kill all other streams then the 1 i'm watching will then be fine. The logs never suggest anything useful and the CPU usage charts always look consistent at around 45%. This always seems to be HD streams, i've never noticed it on SD.

I've killed all auto updates and tried to ensure the server isn't doing anything else in the background.

I am seriously considering just going overkill and upgrading the server to something along the lines of an i7 7700k 4.2GHz with associated motherboard/ram etc. etc. not particularly cheap.

My question is, is this likely to solve my issue? is the jump in processor significant enough to put the issue to bed basically. Is the processor even doing any heavy work here? Or could it be some sort of bandwidth issue with the PCIe slot, or even the network? Or even just DVBlink not coping? Am i just asking too much to have a perfect picture all the time, after all even freeview boxes bought in the shops skip occasionally.

Thanks for any help.
 
I don't know, but I would think it's the network. Perhaps you are just expecting too much.
 
Tricky to say, you could try other software like TVheadend and see if that delivers a smoother experience but it's a lot of work to set up to just test a theory.
 
i7 would be crazy overkill. Have you tried disabling virus checkers and firewalls, to see if that makes a difference?
 
i7 would be crazy overkill. Have you tried disabling virus checkers and firewalls, to see if that makes a difference?

yes, done a lot of research the last few days and even 'professional' pre-built tv server solutions have low spec processors, worse than the one I'm using.

dvblink support are suggesting it's related to signal strength, the quad card has a single input which is then split between the 4 tuners, they suggested amplifying & filtering (4G) the signal before it goes into the tuner which I have now done. I've not experienced the issue since, but it's early days.
 

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