Server Version#: Version 1.32.7.7621
Player Version#: Version 4.119.1
Tuner Make/Model: Hauppage Quad
Guide/Lineup name: Any
Using XMLTV?: Yes
Channel number/Name: Any
I am reinstalling our PMS and noticed that before I reattached our settings from our custom directory the Live TV streams took 1 second to load.
After loading our settings, our Live TV streams take 10-12 seconds to load.
This has always been the case, but now I see that it can be done faster, so I am wondering what could be causing this significant delay in our settings.
Thank you for any insight/suggestions you can provide.
If it’s transcoding (which is most likely is unless you checked the MPEG2 box in the quality settings of the Roku), that’s pretty normal. Especially if using an Nvidia GPU.
Thank you for the confirmation @kd6icz it is appreciated. Is there another GPU/setup/configuration that reduces this time? I am particularly interested in how it was so fast when I was setting up the server before re-establishing previous configurations. It was a second at most and very fast.
That’s a complicated question lol. So if you want speed you want to avoid transcoding. The Roku can play MPEG2. With my 2022 Roku Ultra, it plays 720p channels with no problems. But for whatever reason doesn’t like 1080i channels. It will play them flawlessly for a minute or two but then just kill the Plex app altogether.
I use the Nvidia Shield tube on most of my TV’s. One has a Pro. They’re not perfect but overall the best thats available.
As far as the best PMS setup, I’ve built probably 40 different servers over my years of using Plex. My go to is Nvidia GPU for transcoding. Both for video quality and reliability. But…. In recent months with my setup newer versions of PMS aren’t seeing my GPU. So I’m stuck on a release from June until someone addresses this. I’ve gotten nobody to respond here from Plex about the issue.
I recently tried Intel QSV and wasn’t able to get it to work at all. No matter what version of PMS I use. I do have QSV working on my remote DVR which is an Intel 11th gen NUC.
Thank you for the valuable information @kd6icz it is greatly appreciated.
I am wondering if I turn off transcoding for my DVR if that will make it faster? That sounds the opposite of what it’s supposed to do, but for some reason, I got super fast loading at one point and I want it back.
(I just tried this and it didn’t seem to make a difference)
FWIW the super fast playback occurred on the web player and not Roku.
I agree with that @kd6icz but in my case I was using a web player and the streams were popping in under a second or so. After the configuration of my PMS it jumped back up to 10-12 seconds. So it would seem PMS is capable of starting streams in 1 second, but it is unclear how
Again…. You’ll have to do some troubleshooting. You’ll have to observe if transcoding is taking place. If it is? Is it using your CPU (software), GPU (Nvidia)? iGPU (Intel QSV)?
The network based HDHomeRuns take about 5 seconds on to tune a channel, a PCIe card could be faster but it will always be dependent on your whole environment which has 100’s of variables.
Yeah I poked around with this in the current configuration and could not seem to change load time. I have disabled transcoding as much as possible and it still takes about the same regardless.
As for when transcoding does occur, it does use NVidia GPU but it’s only like 8-10% of it. It doesn’t seem to be using all of it.
Give more details on what you mean by this
So I was reinstalling PMS on a new Windows 10 install, and had not made the RegEdit to point to our existing custom directory. Live TV was available at this point and I was able to play streams. They loaded in 1 second or less, very fast. I thought it was due to the reinstall, but after getting the regedits in place it regressed to the 10-12 seconds.
