The addition of “yet another device” to my house to facilitate functionality is unappealing. Every time I turn around, I’m adding another device to the home network. The complexity is out of control, and I am now purposefully trying to reign it in. In addition, every device is far too focused in what it can do, leaving no flexibility to “do more” with it later. No more “additional” devices, and I am going to try and do more with the systems and devices I already have. In short, no NUC.
I’ve purchased a HP Envy 700 chassis that comes with everything but a hard drive. Since I already have a fully-functional linux system, I can swap the drives and be up and running on the new hardware in about 20-30 minutes tops. Old machine goes back into the pile of extras that I might have use for down the road again. The Envy 700 chassis is a known entity for me as I have two already. So, I know what to expect of it. If it turns out that it isn’t up to the task either, I’ll take a look into something like you listed, @ChuckPa.
I just searched the info you provided, and it’s a laptop. ???
You want to reign in complexity, yet you’re adding “another device” but DO NOT want a NAS solution which would consolidate a number of capabilities into ONE device.
Respectfully, please figure out what you want first. When you’ve decided, have a clear goal in mind, and can share the finite requirements with us, we will be happy to help.
Since you have been vague with which HP Envy you were looking at, I took a stab in the dark and found these specs from HP that sounds like what you just purchased
Based on your previous posts, I am deducing that you will be running a Linux distro. With PMS on Linux, there is only support for HW decoding of video codecs using Intel QSV via VAAPI. Adding a GPU to this Envy will not solve your issue, nor does the AMD A10-6700 APU have enough general compute power to software decode the HEVC 4K HDR10 content.
I thought I did just that with this statement: “Does anyone have any recommendations for a specific desktop tower that would give me the hardware specs I need along with the ability to put three hard drives into it easily?”
To be very blunt, you have no idea what my home network looks like. I have far more compute power than I know what to do with on my primary network. This is a secondary location, and space, heat, power, and other factors all have to be considered as does the need to do as much as I can with a singular device. I specifically asked for a PC Tower with some good specs and the ability to fit three hard drives. We’ve been everywhere in this thread except there.
Yes, linux. I believe that this thread originally had the “server-linux” tag on it when I posted, and I did also comment that it was a linux system somewhere in this thread.
I did pointedly call out that the HP Envy 700 was the chassis, but I know there are a bunch of different submodels. I don’t know how much their specs vary. I believe that you did find the specific CPU that this one has, though.
When I commented about the GPU, I wasn’t thinking about adding it, only commenting that it was already installed. I know that the CPU performance of the machine I just bought isn’t “light years” ahead of this older one, but I do know that there is an appreciable improvement. I honestly won’t know what it will be fully capable of until I get it and try it. I appreciate the notes about HW decoding and transcode capabilities.
I don’t know that this content is actually HEVC, I do know that it is NOT HDR.
If you want definitive answers, then we need the definitive technical details. Such as what is the makeup of the content that you are unable to transcode. Providing the full technical specs of this newer Envy you purchased will also allow us to tell you if it will work.
