I started noticing this in mid December, 2017. I thought I was receiving interference from my antenna but have now determined the issue seems to be with Plex. PMS is installed on a Windows 10 machine. All DVR recordings and Live TV via Plex exhibit the same behavior. The original .ts files generated from Plex DVR have same issues, regardless of playback device. Hoping someone can help me figure out what’s going on. I had been recording successfully with no issues up until the end of last year. Now all files as well as Live TV seem to be having this issue. I’m running an HDHomeRun Extend for my tuner. It’s also worth noting that using the “Channels” app via ATV4 has no problem with the stream from the HDHomeRun Extend. Something’s happening when that stream is going through PMS and then ultimately getting recorded for DVR with quality issues. Whatever the problem is, it’s affecting Plex Live TV in the same way.
The HDHomeRun Extend transcoder is currently set to “None” and the PMS DVR setting is currently set to “Highest Quality”. Changing these settings doesn’t appear to have any impact, so I’m at a loss. Here’s a screenshot of what I’m seeing. Audio is also choppy/garbled.
Do you use the commercial cut feature? If so, try without it. Some users repport issues like that with it.
I’ve been experiencing the same issue (I don’t use the commercial cut feature). I also thought that I was having RF reception issues. But when I saw this happening every few minutes on one of my best channel, I think it is caused by plex.
Based on a plex employee comment in another thread, we should receive by the end of the month a new release with several fixes for the DVR. So let’s hope this will be fixed also.
I’m not using the Plex commercial skip feature. I am using MCEBuddy with ComSkip but these issues are occurring prior to that step, so it’s between the HDHomeRun Extend and PMS. Happy to hear I’m not the only one experiencing this issue but less excited to hear there’s no solution yet.
The issue seemed to materialize out of thin air, rendering my entire DVR process useless
One thing you can check is to make sure that is not caused by packet loss on your local network. One easy way to do that is the record something with plex and grab the raw ts stream from the same hdhomerun device using curl command. If the plex recording is corrupted, than you can check if the same corruption happened on the raw capture. If the raw capture is cleaned, than it’s a plex issue. If you see the same error, it’is either RF reception issues or network issues.
The station KPBS in San Diego is probably on a different tangent than some other broadcast points of stations…for example, KFBM broadcasts out of La Jolla, which is on a different tangent than KPBS. It could be you are getting a poor signal…
Make sure your antenna is pointed in the right direction. For San Diego, it is possible you should have an antenna that allows for different directions, or two or more antennas on different vectors for a good signal. Another option would be the potential for different antennas feeding different tuners individually if reception becomes an issue.
If you are doing a long coax cable run from your antenna to your tuners, consider integrating a channel master CM-7777HD amplifier, which has built in FM and LTE filters to weed out extraneous noise. Start with the lowest level of amplification if you decide to go this route. https://www.channelmaster.com/Amplify_TV_Antenna_Preamplifier_p/cm-7777hd.htm
Appreciate the comments guys. With some more digging, I’ve confirmed a network issue. Dropping the transcoding settings to something very low in PMS (Settings > Live TV and DVR > HDHomeRun Extend > “gear icon” > Low Quality (360p)) the problem goes away. I believe the reason I’m not seeing this issue via the Channels app on my Apple TV is because both the Apple TV and HDHomeRun Extend are connected (wired) to the same Eero network hub. My PC however (the one running PMS) is connected via wireless to a different hub.
Now I need to figure out where the network issue is on my end, as everything was working just fine a few months ago.
I’m having the same issue. Simply recording HDhomerun to Plex in FreeNAS. My entire network is wired and gigabit. Don’t understand why this only happens with recording. Never have reception issues over antenna.
