Tvheadend

I have a tvheadend running on an Ubuntu that have been running for some years and doing fairly well.
The hardware is starting to go i had to replace disk and restore and now the fans are starting to go so its time to replace it.

I do travel some for work so transcoding is a must, bandwidth at hotels are at best so-so.

I have a newer machine running Windows and on it activated Hyper-V, in Hyper-V a few machines are running Windows and Linux.
To spare my wallet from getting new hardware to run tvheadend I'm planning a new virtual machine.
It will only run tvheadend and I don't need to think about the tuners as they are network based hdhomerun.

The other way I could run tvheadend is on my nvidia shield tv, there is an apk talked about over at their forum and it runs just fine. But, I need transcoding, and its not included in the available apk.

So to the million dollar question, in this scenario what is the simplest way for me to get a new tvheadend up and running that support transcoding.
If debian, I see there is a new version out (stretch) but not yet supported by tvheadend. If that version would greatly benefit med I can hold off a few monts from doing anything.
I see that there are some containers for tvh but I'm totally new to container stuff and have nothing prepared to "just spin it up" and no idea how to maintain a container (backup or whatever).