I have both plex and the channels app. The Channels app takes about 2 seconds to switch channels in network, but plex takes about 10 seconds.
I’m running this on an HD homerun.
Just my thoughts…(and they may be wrong, but I am assuming this is how it works)
Under your first (2 second) situation, Channels (on AppleTV) talks directly to the HD HomeRun, gets the stream and displays it.
Your “Plex” situation has AppleTV’s Plex app tell Plex to tune the HD HomeRun to a channel, Plex begins to buffer it (and/or transcode it for AppleTV) then begins sending the stream to AppleTV. This is required to allow Plex to know which tuners are in use for what… and for Plex to Time-shift what you are watching…allowing you to skip back and forward. HD HomeRun has no buffer you can play with, Plex does that for you.
The channels app does allow pausing skipping forward or back.
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From my past experience with streaming video streams for iOS and other devices, the bottleneck here is (as described basically by janngobble) the ffmpeg in-between on the plex server. It buffers a bit of the stream coming from the dvr device and hands it on towards the appletv player. That one also buffers a bit.
This could only be speeded up if plex server would not buffer livetv streams but just pass them on towards the client.
But, this also required that the source is already in the right format (tvOS compatible stream container).
I run tvh as a backend with the proxy app, so I use tvhclient to watch livetv on my apple tv. That is “much” faster but still no comparison to a normal set top box, where the tuners are directly integrated or that can play a tv stream (h2644/5 in a .ts container).
Long story short - this is will from my point of view never get to a UX like a pure tv solution. It doesn’t have to from my point of view. I use plex live tv in iOS devices when I am on the road, to watch a specific show.
The Plex Apple TV client is quite slow for a number of functions but Live Tv is VERY slow compared to my Android tv client. Like you said it’s a good 10+ seconds to tune into a channel. Seems excessive when if you’re transcoding a non DVR file things start much faster.
If they could shave a few more seconds off it might be useable even if it’s not as instant as a proper set top box.
I thought it was an Apple playback format issue but on iOS Live tv channel changing is MUCH faster than on tvOS.
