Heres my setup
late 2015 macbook pro i7 quad core 8gb ram
complete gigabit network(araknis)
roku ultra, 4, and 3
I can NOT get more than 2min of live tv without getting that message. How “powerful” does my system need to be to watch live tv? Settings suggestions please
Though you mention gigabit net, your server and all your Roku’s are connected directly to that gigabit network, right?
Not using Wifi, or ethernet over power adapter?
Are the stations you’re watching clearly obtained using the HDHomerun app for more than 2 minutes - there could be weak signal.
If yes, might help you if you determine whether its CPU bound vs network bound first (or combo there-of)
See article - https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201575036-Why-is-my-video-stream-buffering-
everything is hard wired, no wifi. the server is straight to the router. It has 4 LAN ports. the signals are VERY strong. ill check the transcoding speeds when I get home though. Cant imagine with that hardware on the server there would be an issue on that side. I do wish there was a way with the HDHomerun to tell it only 720P though. Not NEED 1080.
@dieselkiller - client settings can tell the HDHR what to send if it’s an Extend. If it’s not an HDHR Extend, it’s a dumb feed - it puts out whatever it gets from OTA.
what model numbers exactly are the roku’s? My LT cant handle live tv but it can handle non-live tv from plex at a low bitrate. I have to set it to 2-3 megabit. My Express 2017 models (4 of them) can handle live tv at original quality just fine. I think the 600mhz roku’s cant handle h264 from plex, even on local lan. Same quality video from Netflix and amazon is just fine but I wonder if those aren’t h264. Even worse when remote to the plex server.
@jmfolcik - You might be right. I’ve never done any long term “Live” TV on my “test” LAN connected Roku2XS connected to the same monitor my PC is. I just started up a live stream on it, with the Roku set to 1080p, Plex on Roku set to Original quality, and picked an HD “720p” show - it buffered every 2-3 minutes. Plexpy (1.4, not Tautulli) reports container was a transcode (mpegts to mp4 of course), Video was a direct stream h264 (I have an HDHR Extend) to h264 (1280x720p), and audio ac3 to stereo. It was bouncing .9 to 1.3 on the transcode speed. This is on a Haswell I5 4 core (no multi-thread) with hardware encoding enabled.
I was just recently playing around with it too, I didn’t get the older Roku to handle live tv any better switching between software and hardware transcoding, and changing the h264 max down to 4.0 from 4.1 (recommended)
I think its just too weak for the video and audio format plex uses.
For whatever reason the non-live tv seems to be more stable on these, probably because it has a half decent buffering mechanism in the app when you aren’t doing live tv. The live-tv definitely could do better with more of a pre-buffer before playing. When you pause live-tv it doesn’t even continue buffering, it pauses the buffering too, kinda lame.
