Hello all,
Just now learning about Plex. I installed it on my Imac (new, very fast machine) I have installed the Plex app on both of my Roku boxes (one new Ultra, one Roku 3) It successfully found my music library and I am streaming two different songs on each Roku.
If I add a tuner such as the SiliconDust HDHR5-4US HDHomeRun CONNECT Quatro 4-Tuner Live, will this be able to access the tuner from each Roku box? Does the tuner running through Plex allow for live TV, plus recording scheduling? Given it’s a four tuner box, can each tuner be accessed by different Roku boxes? I’ve been trying to figure out what I need to do since most streaming services (Directv now, Youtube TV, Playstation Vue and so on) don’t carry all of our local channels so I am trying to find a solution for recording local channels, that can be viewed on different TV’s. My mother lives in a cottage behind our house and she’s on my DTV account. Her house is hardwired to our house via ethernet and her internet is shared from our house so I am hoping she can also be served from the Plex/Silicondust solution. We have very fast Spectrum internet (300mbps) I am fairly tech saavy but finding a solution to do this has been daunting. Thanks in advance for reading this and any info you can help me with. Cheers, John Winn in the Austin TX area.
If I hadn’t just renewed my contract with Xfinity, I would drop them in a heatbeat.
I just installed a Hauppauge WinTV-quadHD tuner card into my server and I get almost all the same channels I watch (over the air) that I get with basic cable.
A lot depends with your local reception. I bought one of the most highly recommended digital TV antennas and could only pick up a couple of channels. Then I built a homebrew antenna and now get almost 70 broadcast channels. I have rooms in my house that don’t have a cable outlet, and in those rooms we watch live and recorded TV from the Plex server.
“Out of the Box” Plex records at extremely large file sizes (very high quality), but you can fiddle with the settings and get smaller size files. It also has a surprising good program channel guide, so it works just like Comcast or DirectTVs DVR screen.
I would also suggest setting up a dedicated Plex server instead of using your Imac if you plan on running your system 24/7 (which you will want to do if it’s your family main source of TV). I bought a used PC with a i5-3470 processor for around $150 and have been expanding it with things like extra memory, an 8TB RAID harddrive system, and a tuner card. The good thing about a PC based dedicated system is that if something goes bad, you can just replace the part that goes bad - something that is harder (and more expensive) to do on an Imac.
Your mother should be able to watch everything on your Plex server. Since her house is hardwired from your home, I would suggest putting in an ethernet switch in her house and then giving her a hardwired client (like a FireTV box) for each of her TVs.
Thanks Dashland for the ideas. I do have a Dell desktop with an I3 processor that currently runs a home automation program (Homeseer) and a Playon media server so I will likely use that. I could use the card you used, I wonder if there would be a benefit over the stand alone which is about 60 dollars more.
Most important thing, does this all allow you to watch live streams from the tuners, to the outlying Roku boxes? I can’t tell if you can only watch recordings. My concern is my mom loves to watch NBC and we like ABC so can we watch the live streams (say, during the 6.00PM news?)
Our antenna reception is pretty good. We are about 30 miles from Austin, TX in the styx so I had to buy one of those fancy shmacy rooftop antennas that has a rotator and signal amp on it. Works pretty well, in fact the antenna reception is better than the DTV signal. We get a lot of heavy rain, so I created an activity with our Logitech remotes to switch to antenna during storms.
Cheers,
John
It looks like the tuner box has an onboard encoder which can reduce the strain on the PC’s CPU during recording.
I’ve never used the Roku box, but the latest app for Roku supports watching live TV however you can’t set the DVR from the Roku app.
My old media server used an i3 processor and it sometimes bogged down when heavily used. Check the Passmark CPU benchmark for your’s and make sure it’s over 2000. Like I mentioned earlier, I bought a used (A refurbished Dell) for $150 and its CPU has a benchmark of over 6000 - Works like a charm.
Awesome. Thanks for your help!
