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.
