How to get Live TV to stop every 15 seconds to buffer?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

I cannot get live TV through Plex without constant interruptions to the live tv stream for buffering. HDHomeRun is the source for the stream. Watching the same stream directly through HDHomeRun (running on the same Mac as Plex) streams perfectly.

There are a few older threads on this topic and there doesn’t seem to be any response from the Plex team nor workable solutions. Any updates to this ?

Server Version#: 1.14.1.5488
Player Version#:

2

I’ll give you a quick recap.

Live TV is MPEG2, browsers and Plex are h.264 so your server has to transcode.
HDHomerun app has MPEG2 codec so can direct play.
Plex Live TV is first written to disk (timeshifting or recording) and then transcoded and relayed out to client causing 7-10 second delay. If your server can’t keep up, then it buffers.
MPEG2 is pretty high bit rate so the 2000 cpu passmark per stream is more like 3000.

What CPU do you have? Internal or external disk?

3

Thanks for the detailed answer ! Too bad that Plex is transcoding to H.264 even though I’m streaming locally. My Plex server is running on pretty old hardware (2009 Mac mini with internal SSD), but everything is working great up to this point (until I tried Plex live TV).

It would be great if there is an option in Plex to turn off any transcoding for live TV streams.

4

For the most part Plex Server doesn’t choose to transcode, it is the client that tells Plex what to deliver. On Windows I installed Plex Media Player and the MPEG2 codecs to direct stream which uses little cpu (audio 5.1 to stereo). Using the browser off the server causes video and audio to transcode.

Is it a case of Apple is preventing you from updating the OS and running the Plex Media Player?

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That sounds promising. So is there a setting on the client side that I can change to ask Plex not to transcode the stream ? I’m running the latest version of PMP on my Mac mini (don’t have access to the Mac right now to check the specific version but it’s regularly updated).

I’m not trying to watch the live TV on the Plex web interface but through PMP running on Mac mini (connected to the TV). The Plex server is running on the same Mac mini.

Thanks !

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