Server Version#: 1.17.0.1709
Player Version#: 4.8.1
I’ve been coming up against an issue with 2 separate HDHomerun EXTEND units recently, which I suspect is an issue with the tuner and not Plex, but it affects my DVR recordings made through Plex.
TL;DR: my HDHomerun EXTEND is resetting when it tries to transcode natively for at least one specific channel, so I would like the option to transcode OTA streams using my Plex server for DVR recordings instead of the EXTEND’s native transcoding. Is that possible? Right now, I only see the option to adjust the EXTEND’s transcode profile in my Plex Live TV settings (i.e. TRANSCODE QUALITY).
Background:
Basically, there is a local PBS channel that I record from quite frequently for my kids. The signal is pretty good (Signal Strength 95-100%, Signal Quality ~75%, Symbol Quality 100%), so I used to be able to get good captures of these shows on this channel.
Starting a few months ago, I started noticing some weird issues with my recordings from this channel. The kids show would start for a few seconds but would then jump forward a minute or two, continue for a few more seconds before jumping ahead another minute, etc. In the end, instead of a 30 minute recording of a kids show, the recording I end up with is 30 minutes of short clips from this channel recorded over the course of about 2 hours (usually 3 or 4 different shows are represented). My basic settings were as follows:
-EXTEND default transcode profile: NONE
-Plex Live TV device settings\Transcoder Quality: HIGHEST QUALITY
Note: using these settings, the EXTEND appears to use its HEAVY transcode profile.
I did some local testing, and most of the major broadcast channels work without issue when my EXTEND is using the HEAVY transcode profile. For one specific PBS channel (WHUT 32.1 in the DC area), however, my EXTEND chokes within a few seconds and resets. The EXTEND system log indicates that REASON RESET = APPLICATION WATCHDOG. This appears to be the cause of my botched DVR recordings, which all appear to be from this channel (though there may be others that I don’t regularly record from).
To work around this, I changed my Plex server Live TV device settings to request “Original Quality” instead of “Highest Quality” (the EXTEND is still set to DEFAULT TRANSCODE PROFILE = NONE). After making this change, the EXTEND displays the transcode profile as NONE when streaming to Plex, which I believe means that it is not transcoding at all. Using these settings, I have no issues with the EXTEND resetting every few seconds when watching this channel.
The problem with this workaround is DVR recording file size, which are now larger. Ideally, I would use the EXTEND to transcode, but both of the EXTEND units I have here exhibit the same problem with the same channel. Both were original plastic case w/ fan units that have now been upgraded to the metal/heat sink case by SD. I suspect this is an EXTEND firmware issue, honestly, as I never had this problem with this channel before a couple of months ago.
That said, since I can’t use the EXTEND’s native transcoding without causing my streams to die, is there a way to record streams that have been transcoded by my Plex server instead? I have plenty of disk space now, but I’d rather not burn through it unnecessarily by DVRing at full quality.
). Then you can see if it is 1080p, 1080i, 720p, etc.