Best hardware to use

[Jmackay82 62]

Whats the best hardware to use for the emby server if I want it to work to its best potential?

[RanmaCanada 584]

That is a totally loaded question. Are you talking unlimited budget, unlimited power, power limits, what? Are you staying within the regular license terms and not going to the max? 

For transcoding, any 12th gen i5 class or higher processor will be able to handle the maximum number of users under a normal license if each and every one of them is doing a 4k transcode while using quicksync. The bootleneck becomes your storage and potentially your network if you're using a separate machine as your server than your storage.

You would be better served to read a few of the threads in this particular group to get an idea of what is "best", as it all comes down to your usage scenario. Ideally if you want us hardware people to answer you, we need more information, please.

[Jmackay82 62]

Ok I have 8 tvs in total in my home, 2 in my caravan usually about 4 are on at the same time, just want hardware that will run upto 10 tvs without freezing or lagging

I use live tv from m3u and hd homerun

Series and movies from ip tv supplier on m3u also

thinking of upgrading my hardware but no idea which direction to go with the equipment 

[RanmaCanada 584]

8 hours ago, Jmackay82 said:

Ok I have 8 tvs in total in my home, 2 in my caravan usually about 4 are on at the same time, just want hardware that will run upto 10 tvs without freezing or lagging

I use live tv from m3u and hd homerun

Series and movies from ip tv supplier on m3u also

thinking of upgrading my hardware but no idea which direction to go with the equipment 

If you're using it for IPTV, please don't as it's typically illegal content, and it's also a great way to get your IPTV account banned for using multi-room. I am personally extremely angry that the Emby devs caved to the people who use it for that. If you're going to use IPTV, buy a proper box like a Formuler and use it on those boxes in that location, or install Smarters or another IPTV client on your devices and use that to access it, NOT Emby. I personally use IPTV, but I absolutely refuse to integrate it into Emby as Emby is for streaming your personal media, not a TV provider. There is also the fact that you can not control the lag from your IPTV provider and you could have issues with buffering and you would be thinking it's your server when in fact your IPTV provider is over subscribed with too many people, or too many connections from people abusing it when they don't have mult-room accounts.

If you're only doing 10-12 devices, then really any modern Intel machine that is not a celeron class can easily handle your wants. The biggest problem could be your network. Ideally you would want as many devices hardwired as possible, specially if you could potentially stream 4k content to 4 or more TV's simulateneously. There have been users who complained about buffering with wifi due to crappy signal, too much interference, bad wifi cards on TV's, etc. I personally use an i5-1235u laptop as my Emby server, and have had zero issues with over 16 concurrent connections. My network is 2.5 gigabit.

But I'm not the end all be all. Maybe someone who supports using IPTV on Emby will also chime in and give you what you want, or will just stop by and tell me I'm an idiot or worse for not supporting IPTV on Emby.

Hope this helps.