Hardware for Live TV

Live TV & DVR
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I tried this setup about 2 years ago and had a lot of buffering issues. I couldn’t pin point where the bottleneck was and YouTube TV was $35 so just went with that and returned the stuff back to amazon. YouTube TV now approaching $65, I am thinking of giving this another shot. I have been using Plex without Live TV for over 5 years with the latest hardware I would call mid level custom build with Intel Core i5-9600K, 16 GB ram and 5TB space - since it’s a custom build, most elements are easily upgradable.

When I did this 2 years ago I got the HDHomeRun 2 tuner with transcoding support but later discovered that Plex doesn’t support HD transcoding/encoding? and must do its own - possibly my bottleneck was the plex machine or network - not sure. In any case I have updated the plex machine since - the two questions I have -

  1. Is there such a thing as a tuner doing its own encoding without stressing Plex machine now or is it still the same? I do see the list of tuners published, I guess my question is if there is any advantage of one vs the other in the Plex world (other than simply more simultaneous streams).

  2. Any good external/attic antenna that will catch the most channels in good quality? I google search for this shows many sites of “top 10 antenna” and each one has a different one listed as their top pick. There are ones from $15 to $300 on amazon and I am unsure if there are advantages of an expensive model. I am willing to spend the money if it makes it easier for the long run.

Assume I am okay with the channels that an antenna with catch at my location.

Any help appreciated.

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Hello and welcome to the rabbit hole! I’ll try to be a guide with my setup and I’m sure others will hop on in.

Is there such a thing as a tuner doing its own encoding without stressing Plex machine now or is it still the same?

Well I have an HDHomerun Extend that will transcode (not encode) but not sure if that’s what your looking for. Meaning without using a machine running Plex, it can serve you the OTA TV without any issues (other than only being able to watch 2 separate channels at a time or recording one and watching another). Still requires the HDHomerun app to view TV.

Any good external/attic antenna that will catch the most channels in good quality?

This I believe is up to debate. I have this antenna I got for cheap on Cyber Monday 2 years ago at Amazon that claims to be 150 mile range (I live in the mountains of PA and I don’t care what the “range it claims” is, no antenna is going to give you that much range.) I mounted it in my attic and after checking the direction to pick up the most signals rotated it a bit and I have Live OTA TV from 16 channels (all the major stations in HD) No need for Plex or the HDHomerun I could just plug it into the back of the TV!

The only thing you need (a) Plex or the (b) HDHomerun for is a) DVR capability and b) using your home network to stream it to devices*. I use it for both.

*This can be a bigger rabbit hole of what you need and why you would want it than just your 2 questions. I am willing to help with what I can. You can always DM me if you want to go deeper into how I set mine up.

BTW I have a HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF Business High Performance Desktop Computer PC (Intel Quad Core i7 4770 3.4G,12G RAM DDR3 (Refurbished) and no issues running 2 HDHomeruns with a total of 6 streams available for live tv/recording.

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Thanks for responding.

My goal here was to invest in a tuner, if possible, outside of the Plex server so it doesn’t have to do CPU intensive tasks. I guess no tuners that will do both transcode and encode so the Plex server CPU doesn’t have to do it? Is HDHomeRun Extend the only one that will do transcode and not any of the higher model ones like quatro?

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most OTA tv streams are MPEG2, which is generally less compatible with more ‘modern’ streaming devices/smart tvs.

I think some broadcasts are h264, but not many, probably locale dependent.

HDHR to plex saves the tuner streams (either mpeg2 or 264) as .TS files.

if your clients can direct play MPEG2, then no transcoding needs to be done, however given the above, a lot of clients will need to have the server transcode from mpeg2 to x264.

Your stated server specs should be able to handle this with no problem.

Plex can also be configured to convert to x264 as a post-process, the same with commercial removal.

This means after a recording finishes, it will take some time (depending on server power, and length of recording) for it to show up in your plex library.

If you are watching live tv (instead of dvr recordings), then plex may have course have to do the conversion real time, instead of after recording.

Either way, your current server should be plenty capable.

There is the HDHR extend, which will convert tv streams to x264 internally (before it hits plex) however i believe that is only available USED, HDHR no longer sells them new.

I have a HDHR quattro, I’m happy with it, my server has sufficient power to handle the transcodes.

As far as antenna, I have this

which works fine for me, its hung in my attic.

The main thing you need to consider when choosing an antenna is whether or not you want

  • a long-range-directional antenna (ie if you are remote and need to point to the
    nearest big city)
  • an omni-directional antenna (ie you live in a big city and there are multiple stations in all directions)
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What @TeknoJunky is true about the Extend. I have bought both my HDHR Extend and Connect Quatro refurbished from SiliconDust (figured they make them, I can trust they can refurbish them) and have had no issues.

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Thanks for the feedback @Forkboy and @TeknoJunky, this has been very informative. I think this gives me enough information to order some stuff and start to play around. May be second time a charm? :slight_smile:

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good luck and have fun with it!

And while neither plex, or the plex dvr/live tv is perfect, it does work fairly well and I’d expect it to be fairly trouble free.

1 Like
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Anytime hope it works for you. Ditto to…

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For what it’s worth, my CPU is quite a bit older and less powerful than yours. I built my computer back in 2016 and it’s got an Intel Core i5 6500, you can see a comparison here: Intel® Product Specification Comparison. I haven’t had issues with buffering, so I think it should easily work with yours too.

Try enable hardware acceleration for transcoding. That’ll use either your graphics card (if you have an AMD or Nvidia card), or Intel’s “Quick Sync Video” to transcode, rather than doing it in software. In the Plex settings, go to “transcoder”, then enable the “Use hardware acceleration when available” checkbox. On the dashboard page, when you play something, if it says “transcode (hw)” that means it’s using hardware transcoding:

image

Quality can be lower when using hardware transcoding instead of software, but it’s usually not noticeable.

Are you sure? My LG C9 supports MPEG2 natively (no transcoding needed) and Plex correctly direct plays live TV streams from my HDHomerun Connect. I imagine most TVs that have an antenna input can decode MPEG2 natively, as they’d have to decode MPEG2 for OTA broadcasts (if you plug the antenna directly into the TV)?

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tv decoding mpeg2 via built in tv tuner hardware, is not the same as decoding mpeg2 via software/app.

tv’s may be more likely to include mpeg2 support, but things like some roku and firetv devices do not, which forces pms to transcode mpeg2 to x264.

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I think Plex is pretty close to perfect for me :slight_smile: (or at least it is wife acceptable). She can open the app, browse and stream without me constantly acting as tech support. My goal with Plex TV is to simply get there so it simply “works” for the basic 10 channels with buffering, not recording, takes too long to start, etc sort of issues. If I am not home for a week and she can watch TV without complaining, thats where I want to be :). YouTube TV was pretty seamless that way but for $65/month now “cutting the cord” has a new meaning.

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I have ordered HDHomeRun quatro and this antenna. Everything comes on Tuesday. We will see how it goes :slight_smile:

Also, last time I was using that $15 flat antenna, an older mac and other legacy stuff so the bottleneck could have come from anywhere that I wasn’t motivated enough to troubleshoot. This time I am hopeful!

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I guess it depends on if the MPEG2 decoding is built into the tuner or if it’s a separate chip that can be accessed from software.

Makes sense, given those devices are designed to be (relatively) cheap devices that focus mainly on streaming.

In any case, an Intel i5 or higher should have no trouble transcoding, particularly if you enable hardware acceleration.

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