Running Plex 1.18 on a Synology DS920+
Have an Antenna hooked into HD Homerun Extend
Viewing Plex on Roku Express
Plex Transcoder Settings:
Quality: Make My CPU Hurt / Background Transcoding: Very Slow
I’ve been playing around with the settings and can’t seem to figure out how Plex and HD Homerun work best together in terms of delivering the best quality picture.
When Plex Live TV & DVR Settings are set to ORIGINAL and HD Homerun Extend set to HEAVY with DLNA Native unchecked, the picture loses quality and pixels get crushed. However, when Live TV & DVR is set to HIGHEST QUALITY with same HD Homerun settings, the picture is ok, but not 100% clear.
Shouldn’t ORIGINAL produce a higher quality image than HIGHEST QUALITY?
I’ve also tried both Plex settings with HD Homerun Extend transcoder set to NONE and NATIVE DLNA unchecked. Same result - poor picture quality with ORIGINAL and ok picture quality with HIGHEST QUALITY.
Any idea of the best combination for picture quality?
You did not provide any information on what Plex app/device you are using to view, nor what is happening when you are viewing via the app as far as what the Server is receiving versus what it is doing to the received video before sending to the device you are viewing from.
Plex will always send the transcode setting that you have configured for the HDHR device in the Plex DVR Device Settings. Here is a snip of the request sent to the HDHR Extend from a line in my log after setting the Extend to Original Quality in Plex. As you can see from the line of code Plex is sending the transcode setting of none to the Extend when it is requesting the stream from the Extend. Plex always sends the transcode setting you have configured for the device in your Plex settings.
http://10.0.1.24:5004/auto/v10.1?transcode=none
I am including a screenshot below of my Extends reconfigured to Original in Plex and the Dashboard information showing Plex is receiving the original mpeg2video from the HDHR Extend. As you can see Plex is then transcoding the mpeg2video to H264 before sending it to the Plex App.
I leave my Extends set to Highest Quality in Plex.
I also configure my Extends transcode as heavy in the HDHR settings which equates to Highest Quality in Plex. I do this in case I am using a different app to stream from the Extend.
The advantage of having the HDHR Extend transcode is the video stream received by Plex has already been transcoded from mpeg2video to H264. Here is another screenshot showing the same device streaming the same show but the HDHR Extend is transcoding the video to H264 and Plex is then deinterlacing the video.
There is a Blog post Making HDHR Work My Way by another Plex user discussing the HDHR Extend and the various settings in case you want to review. This was one of the posts I found when I got my first Extend.
Thanks for your help. I primarily use a Roku for my TV set or a Windows 10 computer for Plex.
I did some further research and noticed that the bitrate coming in from each channel through my antenna is quite variable according to the data on my HDHR EXTEND. Certain digital subchannels tend to have a lower bitrate (some only 1.5 mbps) than their parent HD channels (10-12 mbps).
I’m a bit confused about why you have all three boxes checked for your DLNA Formats. From my understanding, the box that is unchecked is what you are forcing Plex to select. So if all three are checked, what exactly are you telling Plex to do?
From HDHR Extend Website:
By default the HDHomeRun EXTEND advertises each channel in three formats over DNLA. You can force a client to pick a specific format by disabling the other formats by checking the formats you want to disable.
The three transcoding options are as followed:
mobile (up to 720p30)
heavy (up to 1080i60 / 720p60)
native (no transcode)
I would ensure you check the settings in the Roku Plex app to ensure everything looks good there. If you can get things to Direct Play that will be the best experience. I don’t watch anything live myself, despise commercials so everything I watch has finished recording. The only exception is when testing things out like the screenshots above.
I honestly don’t recall ever changing any of those checkbox settings in the HDHR Extend. The checkboxes have nothing to do with Plex, Plex uses the transcode setting you have selected in the Plex DVR Extend setting selection.
If you are going to using a PC to view content in Plex I would encourage the use of the Plex for Windows app instead of a web browser. The app should give you a better experience since it will have support for more codecs than a web browser.
The bitrate will fluctuate depending on the channels. The sub-channels, at least in my area, are generally SD instead of HD. But who knows how that will be changing as ATSC3 gets rolled out across the US.
Thanks for the clarification. Majority of my media is direct play. It’s only the live TV that comes in as MPEG-2, but HDHR EXTEND handles that with the “heavy” transcoding.
Roku Express is a pain with HDHR app, because it cannot read AC3 audio, so Plex Live TV & DVR is my go-to application.
I think the SD digital subchannels must come in with crushed pixels because Plex and HDHR do a great job recording HD channels.
