Buffering With Live TV Playback - Only Through Plex

General Discussions Plex Features
1

Hi everyone,

I recently setup a Network Tuner (SiliconDust HDHomeRun EXTEND) and use my WD Cloud EX4100 (Plex Pass Version 1.11.3.4793) for all of my streaming needs. Whenever I am watching live TV through Plex, (Xbox One, PC) I am constantly getting Buffering every few minutes or so. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it’s still annoying. Everything is hardwired through my ASUS RT-AC5300. I thought it may be something network related, until I tested the HDHomeRun official app (Xbox One, PC). It runs absolutely flawless for hours at a time with not a single buffering moment. Obviously, this is specific to Plex.

Is this a known issue? Is it being actively worked on? I did see a few threads with similair issues, but they all talked about it happening through their Roku and not other devices.

Any advice or updated information would be great.

Thanks!

2

Your ‘official’ apps are doing all the conversion/transcode/hard work on the client end.
Plex does the hard work on the server end.

You can view your server CPU transcode progress by viewing this KB article. You’ll likely find your NAS CPU is falling behind.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201575036-why-is-my-video-stream-buffering/

There’s more to video files (and Live TV) than the internal video stream encoding type that the Extend does.
h264 encoding is a tiny part of a larger video file equation.
It’s a way to encode a stream inside a container such as Mpeg-TS (most North American broadcasts use) , or MP4, or MKV.
h264 is part of the guts. Plex still has to work with the whole “body” of the file type.
Though the Extend (or other hardware based TV receiver) takes MUCH of the horsepower required in changing from MPEG2 video codec to h264 out of the equation,
Live TV on a Plex Server still;

  • is doing time shifting(DVR recording) while watching live.
  • may be converting the container - MPEG2-TS to a compatible container for your device (MP4/MKV?) (many devices don’t do mpeg2-ts over IP, even if HDHR Extend encodes video inside it to h264)
  • may be converting the Transport Stream (TS) to compatible HLS, or if your device supports it, DASH.
  • may be transcoding live ~20mbps+ TS stream bitrate down to lower mbps depending on client Plex setting.
  • may be converting 60fps streams to compatible 30fps (depending on 1) network broadcast source, 3) Plex client capability.
  • may be/is converting the audio stream to stereo if your device isn’t connected by HDMI to a 5.1 Dolby (AC3) receiver.