HDHomeRun Extend - Wrong Aspect Ratio when Transcoding

Live TV & DVR
1

I’ve got my HD Home Run Extend working finally, and when it is direct playing (to my android phone for instance) everything seems fine. On my computer the transcode quality is craptastic, but hey, it’s playing. My biggest issue is that on some channels (I suspect only those who broadcast in 1080i) Plex is presenting the channel in the wrong aspect ratio.

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Any suggestions to fix the aspect ratio? This wasn’t an issue using the HDHomeRun Dual which didn’t transcode on the tuner.

2

Sorry, I assumed it was obvious but the screen shot might be small enough to not make it obvious, it’s playing back in 4:3 even though source material is 16:9.

3

The HD Home Run Extend is set to “Heavy” as the default transcode profile, plex is set to “High Quality 30fps” which I guess means the “Mobile” profile on HDHR:

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4

Phone view:

5

Streaming the same stream via VLC (http://192.168.1.180:5004/auto/v11.1?transcode=mobile) gives a proper aspect ratio, so it’s not the HDHR unless there is some meta data layer that tells it the aspect ratio/size that is being reported wrong that VLC ignores.

6

Seems to still be an issue on the latest plex and the latest HDHR firmware. I’m just going to use Heavy for now.

7

I believe “Heavy” is the Plex recommended setting on the HDHR side.

8

Just FYI, there is a decent blog post by a Plex member that describes his Extend setup with Plex: https://ultramookie.com/2016/2016-12-20-making-hdhr-work-my-way.html.

Heavy on the Extend setting would be Highest Quality in Plex.

Whatever Plex setting you have chosen for the Extend will be used with Live TV and DVR so you can actually leave the Extend setting set to Native. Unless of course you are using other applications outside of Plex and they are not passing a transcode profile to use to the Extend. In those cases you would want the Extend set to whatever the application might need.

I also recently sent Silicon Dust a support request asking about the Extend and whether another profile would be possible to transcode 1080i to 1080p. response was basically the video processor in the Extend does not have a good deinterlacing option.

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9

I guess I didn’t make it clear:

  • I understand that “Highest Quality” from the drop down in plex which equates to “Heavy” in HDHR Connect terminology is the BEST QUALITY h.264 option and likely what MOST PEOPLE USE
  • I want to use “High Quality (30fps)” which will require less transcoding on my Plex’s part for some devices and equates to the “Mobile” quality in HDHR Connect terminology
  • When using that setting in Plex it has a bug decoding the stream where the aspect ratio is wrong
10

I believe this is still broken. I only get correct aspect ratio when I set transcoder quality to “Original format” in Plex device settings for HDHomeRun Extend. If I set to “Highest quality”, the feed looks horizontally squished inwards.

11

It’s still broken I’ve the same issue hopefully someone @Plex fixes it

12

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