Hello,
I am running a Plex Server on a Synology DS218j. I paid for the Plex Pass and setup Live TV. I am using the HDHomeRun Extend so I can take advantage of transcoding. I tried watching some TV my my home network and it was extremely slow. It would buffer every few seconds I tried changing the transcoding down to High Quality (30fps) but that did not appear to do anything either. I just spent a lot of money on Plex and the equipment to set all of this up and it is completely unusable. Can someone please assist me?
Daniel,
The DS218j has an ARMv7 CPU. ARMv7 doesn’t have a lot of CPU power and will struggle to do this.
The better choice would be one of the RealTek ARMv8 machines.
That said, there is a way to configure it so it will work.
Your goal is to have PMS think it’s doing everything DirectPlay or DirectStream (audio only)
The moment it tries to touch video, it will stutter badly (as you experience).
I’ve added the “LiveTV-DVR” forum tag to this thread. I don’t have access to either an ARMv7 or an Extend so as to walk through the sequence.
I have reached out to the live-tv guys for assistance. while waiting, my thoughts are:
Have the Extend itself do the trancoding (in DVR setup). Don’t let PMS do it
set for Highest Quality is fine since it is being done in hardware
If you have audio control, have it convert to stereo (browsers can’t do 5.1)
@ChuckPa
Thanks for the information. I changed the transcoding back to High Quality. Can you please walk me through what else I need to be changing? I assume by setting the Extend to High Quality that addresses your first point of having the Extend do the transcoding? I figured if the Extend was doing the transcoding it would not be this slow. Also, how would I update the audio control?
@chesfisherman1
I have 250mb/s download speeds. Synology is wired and the HDHomeRun is wired, both into my router. Plex server is installed on the Synology NAS. I am accessing the Live TV over wifi on my laptop which is getting like 200mb/s download speeds.
Daniel,
What we are asking is "Is your home wired ethernet Gigabit (1000 Mbps) or Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) .
What model Wifi do you have? We can look for the technical information from there.
What is important to you watching TV is:
Can the Synology and PMS receive the data from the HomeRun Extend fast enough?
Can PMS send the video out to your tablet or TV fast enough?
Both of these happen at the same time. Most home networks (the part inside your home) are fast enough. If you are using Wireless and the signal is weak or has interference, you can also see the buffering you experience
@ChuckPa I am almost positive it is Gigabit, but if there is a way to confirm, please let me know.
I will also note, I installed a Plex server on my Windows 10 laptop to test out as well and while that was still slow, it was much faster than the Synology, so makes me think it is just related to the hardware? My Synology should be running dual core 1.3GHZ CPU and 512MB of ram.
As far as wireless, I have tired on the 2.4GHZ and 5.0GHZ networks and I am trying it in the same room as the router so should not be much interference.
That is definitely inconvenient. Just spent a ton of money on a NAS, Plex, HDHomeRun and an antenna and they are all virtually useless…pretty frustrating.
Do research before going out and spending a lot of money, let a NAS do want they are good for loading data on, I have a 170.00 nuc running Linux a quatro hdhomerun (no extend) and a WD NAS I can play any movie I have, record and watch tv with no buffering. First I got a good outside antenna, then hdhomerun made sure that would work good getting all my channels, then added plex on nuc to the mix, and loaded movies and recording to WD NAS. Just my two cents. I see all the time of plex being blamed because people do not do enough of their on research and just think that plex is the root of all problems. If you do not want to but the time and research in it, pay the cable company the fortune they want, but don’t blame Plex.
ya what sucks is I did a lot of research. Even talked to Synology and they assured me the NAS I bought would work with Plex and streaming TV. I still use the NAS for storing movies and music, so getting good use out of it for sure. It was just all part of my cord cutting process was to get everything I needed out of a single NAS.
If you’ve spoken with Synology and they recommended this model / said it would do what you want
then
I recommend you push for a full refund so you can get what’s right because they talked you into an aging NAS which does not have what you need for Plex because this model will not do what’s needed.
You mention you are viewing Live TV on your laptop, how? I am assuming using Plex Web interface. Have you downloaded and tried the Plex Media Player software? It can Direct Play or Direct Stream everything I have thrown at it so your HDHR Extend set to Highest Quality should be able to play without buffering all the time.
I just downloaded the Media Player. Working a bit better. Comes in crystal HD. But every 10 seconds it will start buffering for about 3-5 seconds. This is using High Quality transcoding.
I will be back home tomorrow and I will give it a shot for you. Just to note, I am away from home right now. Tried streaming live tv. Could not even get a single channel to load. Just a nice error that says The server is not powerful enough to convert the video. I thought the Extend is supposed to be doing the converting??
Daniel,
The extend is converting the input to Plex.
The part you’re seeing there is Plex converting again to send to you.
If you have a couple settings incorrect, you’ll see that error. The error is confusion.
Limits are:
What your player is allowing (playback settings at the player)
The Plex upload limit (Settings - Server - Network)
