Live TV/DVR experience is appalling

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#: 1.14.1.5488
Player Version#: Latest Plex app for Apple TV

I’m running the latest PMS on a ReadyNAS 314.

Yesterday, after Live TV/DVR became a more attractive option than another coax run, I bought a HDHR Connect Duo to pair with Plex.

Other than the initial device pairing, everything about the experience has been appalling. When viewed via PMP (Mac), video is choppy — if it even starts playing at all. And on a more powerful AppleTV, after buffering for several minutes, not even 480i OTA source video plays smoothly. 1080i won’t even play; it’s just in constant buffer.

This is a raw MPEG2 stream with no transcoding, so if bandwidth and storage aren’t an issue, it should play fine on even the most underpowered devices, right?

I previously had an old EyeTV Hybrid hooked up to an equally old Core2Duo iMac. The guide loaded quickly. Live streams played instantly and never clipped or stalled.

After years of pretty solid experiences with Plex, this is a real let-down. I feel like Live TV/DVR has been completely oversold.

Am I doing it wrong? Anyone got any advice?

1 Like
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From what I remember from my reading around the forum, raw MPEG2 streams have a very high bitrate… So it could still be bandwidth problem depending on your settings on the server and client… Unless the client your using can handle MPEG2 in a TS container you will have problems with transcoding…

IMHO, If I had a NAS device of some kind as my PLEX server, I think I would have gone with a HDHomerun Extend with the built in transcoding capabilities…

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AppleTV definitely will not do mpeg2 without transcoding by the server (currently).

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You could keep the NAS for storage and pick up a NUC to be a PMS.

At the bottom of this page link is a link to a spreadsheet that list NAS capabilities.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201373803-nas-compatibility-list/

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I’m aware that my NAS is underpowered for most high-end transcoding, but this shouldn’t be very demanding. Unless I’m missing something, the NAS-based PMS is simply acting as a pass-through to the player.

To see how it performed with other solutions, I downloaded a third-rate OTA/HDHR viewing app on the AppleTV and it streamed beautifully. Unfortunately, the interface is godawful.

With regard to your NUC suggestion, it is possible to use the NUC as the CPU for the heavy lifting and direct the PMS libraries to the media stored on my NAS?

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You’re missing the thing I’m telling you:

AppleTV cannot play mpeg2 video natively. It. Can. Not.

So the server must transcode on the fly to a compatible format, and transcoding mpeg2 on the fly is CPU intensive.

Right, that app is using a custom player and not the native player of the AppleTV.

The other thing you’re missing? The bit where I said, “currently”.

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Yes, the NUC would run PMS for Live TV/DVR but all the libraries would be on the NAS. The only hurdle would be if you didn’t want two PMS’s with seperate watch history’s you would have to choose whether move the database or start fresh.

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I use a similar setup to the NUC + NAS. Be sure to find one that supports QuickSync for HW conversion, or build a computer with an NVidia card for HW conversion. Makes a huge difference!

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