Hi all! I’ve got my old school HD Home Run configured as a DVR on my Synology Disk Station 718+. The configuration seems good, I can get channels to open and play (with some buffering). I can see that my NAS is converting from mpg2 to H264, and the audio as well:
Client Version 3.26.2
Now, without hardware acceleration the video is relatively smooth, with occasional buffers. The NAS CPU (quad core celeron) is at about 60-75% if it’s 1080i content. With hardware encoding that drops to 20-40% but results in more frequent buffers. This is all plex web on a wired local gigabit network.
I get audio direct on android devices, but much the same results with 1080i content.
So my questions are:
Should I adjust any settings (buffer ahead?) for the hardware encoding setup? Obviously I would prefer to have less CPU usage when possible but so far software seems more reliable for whatever reason.
If I replaced my HD Home Run with a HD Home Run Extend that would largely avoid transcoding (assuming the devices are able to play your typical content types… I use mostly web/android/chromecast which so far play everything I’ve tried direct) and result in less overhead? I believe so but I wanted to make sure I understood that it has full support so I’m not dropping $175 to get the same results.
I don’t seem to have jitters/issues with hardware transcoding on other media, for example a 1080p Blu Ray being streamed to my phone, if that helps.
When streaming live TV (not recorded) the stream seems to fall off “now playing” in my status window after a few minutes, I assume this is not intentional?
Any thoughts or suggestions? I’m in the implementation phase so I can play freely without upsetting the family.
I’m just guessing here so don’t shoot the messenger if I am wrong,…
I have a Synology DS1815+ which uses an Intel Atom C2538 SoC so it isn’t the same thing.
The Synology DS718+ uses an Intel Celeron J3455 quad core processor with Intel HD Graphics 500. That should be a good deal more robust then my l Atom C2538 SoC.
If using hardware acceleration under:
Settings > Transcoder
isnt good enough performance wise then what other option do you have?
I thought perhaps “it just can’t transcode that” as well, but I thought since non hardware assisted was better than HW perhaps there was something else wrong. The CPU usage seems to indicate some headroom:
(1080i Transcode going on, as well as audio and video playback to two other screens)
And nothing else slows down during transcoding so it seemed odd.
That said, I don’t know that PMS officially endorses HW accel on NAS devices, even when equipped with a CPU that supports it so I may be chasing a problem I can’t solve outside of investing in the Home Run Extend, which I am willing to do if it will solve my problems.
Okay I’m pretty convinced this isn’t the hardware unable to keep up now.
For S&G’s I left the TV playing, and set my favorite test case Finding Dory to transcode from source 1080p to 720p 2mbps at the same time on a different machine: (I combined two screen shots to show both transcoding):
The TV Played normally except when occasionally dropping out to what looks like buffer, while the movie played without hiccup and the CPU usage is as such:
So it’s either the mpg2 transcoding portion or my HD Home Run is having a problem? I opened the same channel on the HD Home Run app and let it play for 10-15 minutes and it didn’t hiccup but that of course only suggests the mpeg2 stream is coming through ok.
I hate to bump such an old topic, but I was wondering if this was ever figured out or resolved?
I’m about to pull the trigger on a 718+ (I already have a HD HomeRun Connect Duo) that I am hoping to use for Live TV. Reports on DVR seem fine but I can’t seem to find anyone mentioning if it works well with Live TV. Thanks!
