Hello. I think this is my first post. I’ve had the Lifetime Plex Pass for a few years, but have never taken full advantage of it. I recently installed an HD OTA antenna in my attic. I am now able to pick up 51 channels! I have the Plex app installed on my Fire TV that’s connected to the same TV. The TV is not a smart TV. I am looking to set up a DVR through Plex. I was thinking of buying a Silicon Dust Extend to use with Plex. I’m trying to wrap my head around different setups and what I’d need.
I want to record and watch TV shows, as well as be able to stream live TV while at work. What are the recommended setups? Can I connect a Western Digital WD 2TB My Cloud Personal NAS to the Extend and have everything work the way I’d like it to? Does the Plex app on the AFTV factor into this, at all? Thank you in advance for any and all help.
Even with the internal h264 encoding of the Extend greatly helping, you’re going to want a powerful processor for DVR and Live TV. I’d recommend nothing less than an I3 level 4 core processor. Some NAS devices are available with powerful CPUs, but many only have ARM or slower/older pentium and celeron chips. Great for fast transfers/RAID I/O, not so good for hardcore transcoding while also timeshift DVRing.
(The above is my opinion, Your Mileage May Vary however, even the FAQ for Live TV makes note regarding NAS devices)
EDIT - and welcome to the forums at least as a first time poster
I think this really depends on several factors. In general the first response was spot on about getting something with some power behind it. That could also be as simple as a nvidia shield though. If I was doing it all from fresh right now I would probably get a he homerun Quattro for the tunner, some arm based NAS device with 4 drive slots for storage, then a nvidia shield for the server. The shield has enough horsepower to handle any needed transcoding.
@JamminR said:
Even with the internal h264 encoding of the Extend greatly helping, you’re going to want a powerful processor for DVR and Live TV. I’d recommend nothing less than an I3 level 4 core processor.
So, even with the Extend compressing the video, there will still be issues?
@mavrrick said:
I think this really depends on several factors. In general the first response was spot on about getting something with some power behind it. That could also be as simple as a nvidia shield though. If I was doing it all from fresh right now I would probably get a he homerun Quattro for the tunner, some arm based NAS device with 4 drive slots for storage, then a nvidia shield for the server. The shield has enough horsepower to handle any needed transcoding.
-How does the Shield connect to the Connect or Quattro?
-I don’t see myself recording that many shows. If I get the Shield for its transcoding prowesss, would I be able to get away with the WD My Cloud as storage?
So, I’m picturing a setup that includes the Shield (or Shield Pro) for the server, a SiliconDust Extend (or Quattro) and the WD My Cloud NAS. Would this be sufficient? Am I overlooking anything? Thanks again, for the responses.
All of the HD homerun tunners are network based. The shield and the tunner just need to be on the same home network. Your WD My Cloud NAS should be fine as long as it can keep up with performance requirements.
@eespinosa said: So, even with the Extend compressing the video, there will still be issues?
Not sure ‘issues’ is a good word, but, often yes, transcoding challenge to a weak CPU.
There will still often be transcoding or remuxing to convert a mpegts container to a (often) mp4 container for compatibility of other devices.
There’s more to video files (and Live TV) than the internal stream encoding type (h264 is just one type).
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, MP4, 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 reciever) takes ALOT of the horsepower required in changing from MPEG2 video codec to h264 out of the equation,
Live TV on a Plex Server;
is doing time shifting(DVR recording) while watching live.
may be converting the container - MPEG2-TS to (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.
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 and 2) the Plex Extend tuner’s advanced quality setting and 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.
Just some pointers.
As for the Shield setup - I’m not familiar enough with it to answer, and will leave that to others.
My understanding is that the Shield, due to it being a high powered purpose built ‘send high resolution video to any device’ piece of hardware makes it a powerful combination for Plex transcoding.
Thank you, JamminR and Mavrrick. Those are very informative responses. I decided to go with a Shield Pro. I haven’t received it yet. I don’t plan on demanding too much from it. I get the most entertainment value from Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime…so far. We’ll see how it turns out. In the meantime, I’ll be scouring the forums for more specific Nvidia Shield information. Happy holidays!!
Someone in another post had some sage advice… Always buy twice as much as you think you need. Your needs will grow over time, and as you go further down the rabbit hole, you’ll end up asking more and more of your setup. Trust me… they keep adding features that I end up using.
I think it’s better to grow into bigger pants, than to outgrow the ones you’re currently wearing.
Well… I love them… but I have nothing to compare them to. I haven’t used anything else. I bought the one back in a time when there was a clear advantage to having them over the Connect. As the DVR functionality grew and changed, it’s become a little less clear to me what the advantages are.
I believe the stream coming into Plex is smaller to begin with coming from the Extend which results in lower network traffic. That might tax the processor less on the Plex side.
I bought the second to match my experience with the first… which has for the most part been stellar. I’d say buy one unless budget really matters.
@AmazingRando24 said:
Well… I love them… but I have nothing to compare them to. I haven’t used anything else. I bought the one back in a time when there was a clear advantage to having them over the Connect. As the DVR functionality grew and changed, it’s become a little less clear to me what the advantages are.
I believe the stream coming into Plex is smaller to begin with coming from the Extend which results in lower network traffic. That might tax the processor less on the Plex side.
I bought the second to match my experience with the first… which has for the most part been stellar. I’d say buy one unless budget really matters.
**I see that the Extend is the only Silicon Dust tuner that has hardware trans-coding. That has to be an advantage, no? **
@eespinosa said:
**I see that the Extend is the only Silicon Dust tuner that has hardware trans-coding. That has to be an advantage, no? **
That was heavily advertised in the beginning as a plus. I would tend to agree… it can’t be a bad thing. One advantage I see is that it takes all incoming formats (different stations use different coding) and converts them to a single type before sending to Plex.
That was heavily advertised in the beginning as a plus. I would tend to agree… it can’t be a bad thing. One advantage I see is that it takes all incoming formats (different stations use different coding) and converts them to a single type before sending to Plex.
The Extend saves more than just bandwidth, it saves server CPU power for clients that can’t watch the live TV stream in original mpeg2 format.
Two tests -
Below are 2 images - first with my Plex server Extend tuner set to “original quality” - no h264 compression by the Extend (imagine this like the Connect/other non-hardware encoding tuners)
Image 1 = Plex Web as client on local LAN, different PC than server, watching Live HDTV station. Maximum quality.
Second image - Extend set to high quality (30fps average) - this encodes the video stream to h264, and helps limit the FPS too.
Image 2 = Plex Web as client on local lan, different PC than server, watching same Live HDTV station. Maximum quality
(To view the image larger, right click it - select ‘view image’
As you can see, allowing the Extend to transcode takes ~50% “average” less CPU power. (average column = 21% without, 9% with)
Like I stated in a previous post though, the server still has lots to do besides just h264 encode the stream, hence why it still bounces high usage even while Extend is doing it’s job.
My tests are on a 4 core CPU, no GPU hardware acceleration enabled. I imagine the averages would be higher on lower core systems, as all cores were involved in this test.
