Is there a way to decrease the time to change channels (e.g. changing hardware?)

Live TV & DVR
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1

Server Version#: 1.19.1.2645-ccb6eb67e
Player Version#: AppleTV 2.16(1)
Tuner Make/Model: HDHomeRun Dual
Guide/Lineup name: Don’t know (how do I find the answer) . OTA?
Using XMLTV?: Don’t know (how do I find the answer)
Channel number/Name: All

Let’s start with a little bit of context:

I always used MythTV for LiveTV/DVR. I tried Plex LiveTV a while ago and gave up on it because it took too much time to change channels (around 20s each time, MythTV is around 2-3s). I kept it only from media files because IMHO it’s way better than MyThTV for that.
Something I didn’t understand at that moment was that Plex server had to transcode the stream from the HDHomeRun to my AppleTV to make it work.
I thought that my dual (old) 8-core XEON with 32 GB of RAM would be able to transcode easily. I was wrong. To be fair, Plex was inside a VM with only 4 cores and 16 GB of RAM dedicated to it. Anyway each time, transcoding was involved, (v)CPUs suffered.
Few days ago I got a i3-3240 (ivy bridge and Intel QuickSync) computer and decided to give it a shot last week-end. I installed ubuntu 18.04 and latest version of the server.
I connected the AppleTV to it and … surprise … it takes around 5-7 seconds to change (sometimes the wheel appears forever but changing channel again fixes it). It is acceptable for me but always place to improvement. Anyway Congrats to Plex team. Wonderful job.
I told myself: “Nice the Intel HD 2500 HW acceleration does a really good job”. According to the dashboard, no transcoding was involved. It said “Direct stream”. From what I understood, I thought that AppleTV could not read the MPEG-2 stream from HDHomeRun without being transcoded. I was wrong (again).

So my questions are:
Is the 5-7 seconds is the minimum time needed by the server to prepare the buffer before sending the stream to the client?
Is it possible to decrease this time with a more powerful CPU? iGPU cannot be changed, I’m blocked with Intel HD 2500 or HD 4000 because of the IvyBridge platform. Anyway, would it make a difference with a more recent CPU (and obviously iGPU)?
I’d like to add another HDHomeRun. Should I consider the HDHomeRun extend? Would it help to start the stream faster on the client?

2

Plex added Mpeg2 to the Apple TV Player.

5-7 seconds is normal due to the way Plex sets up the stream. Everytime Plex tries to reduce the time below 5 seconds we end up with tuning failures.
Faster/Newer CPU would only help if you get beyond 2 tuners. Newer ix-7xxx+ gives better transcoding results.
Since Apple TV is now playing mpeg2, not much need for the HDHR Extend.

3

Since I’d like to keep my watt/power consumption as low as possible, i7 is a no-go.
Thank you for the explanation.

4

That was i3,5,7-8/8/9/10 series , plenty of i3, i5 under 65 watt.

5

Ohhh. I should keep myself updated :wink:
Other problem. I don’t want to spend lots of $$ for it.

6

Looking at the Plex Media Server log every time I change channel it seems to run through a whole series of actions which start with ‘DVR:NewSchedule…’. At the end of this process it includes a variation of the following line ‘DVR:NewSchedule: We computed 97504 alternative realities in 3692 ms.’. It appears that this process is actioned every time I change a channel and I assume is linked to the overall speed of the channel change (the total time at the moment is around 7 seconds). Am I understanding this correctly? If so, why is this occurring for every channel change and can it be disabled?

7

I don’t know whether the hardware specs can improve all the actions done by PMS before sending the stream to the client.

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