So I just purchased a new HDHomeRun Connect Duo, setup was very easy, Plex saw the Tuner and after a few clicks I was told I have 35 channels…great! However, when I go to watch any live TV the video is so choppy/stuttering that it’s unwatchable. I have an inside antenna, Mohu Leaf I believe is the brand, which worked fine when connected directly to my Television. I even swapped ethernet cables to make sure that wasn’t the issue but had the same result with both. The HDHomeRun and PMS connect to the same switch. Any thoughts? Would it be better if I purchased the HDHomeRun Extend so it could do the transcoding? BTW, my PMS is running on a MAC that only has a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 8gigs of RAM. This has been more than sufficient for my 1,000+ movies and a few hundred TV episodes, running multiple streams at the same time.
@kkern - Though you’ve never stated what you’re watching on, many devices can’t handle the 15+ Mbps native streams found inside a broadcast Mpeg2TS container, therefore, it’s quite possible it’s your CPU of your server not able to transcode the stream for your device’s use smoothly, and possibly your device cpu too, not keeping up. (Example, my Roku 2xs is more likely than my Roku 3 to have choppy live tv)
Though the Extend helps for the video stream inside the container, there’s still much more to a broadcast container than just the internal video stream. My own quick testing did show Extend can help software transcoding by 40% less CPU, but is still CPU intensive and may not be a fix-all.
You should really determine if it’s your network at client end, or CPU at server end by checking this guide.
Check logs after trying TV.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201575036-why-is-my-video-stream-buffering/
@JamminR Thanks for the reply. It doesn’t matter what I watch it on I get the same results. I tried directly on the PMS (Mac with 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 8gigs of RAM), Xbox Client, Windows PC and a different Mac client both with Core I7 16Gigs of memory. I highly doubt it’s my network as it’s all GigE and I’ve never had an issue streaming anything before…I’m leaning towards it being the CPU on my PMS…I’ll check the guide you posted and see if that provides some clarification…maybe this is a good excuse to step up to the Extend 
Thanks again for the quick reply!!
Well, the Extend is likely less expensive than getting a new MB, CPU and RAM, but, again, Live TV and timeshifting still take quite a bit of horsepower even with the Extend. The Extend can only help 1/5th overall (container, video, audio, framerate + drive timeshifting). Don’t get me wrong, Extend helps, but I think many expect it to cure every low CPU evil.
I’m reasonably sure it would help you out more than some that try to do Live TV on a NAS Atom / ARM processors.
