Is anyone else from Australia using older HDHomerun Dual HDHR3-DT Tuners wth Live TV?
I’m in Sydney, I have 3 X HDHR3’s hooked up, and I’ve got this weird issue where I can watch all other channels on all other networks, but NONE of the SBS ones work. SBS HD, SHS Viceland HD, SBS (SD), SBS Viceland (SD), Food Network and NITV all fail when selected.
I have a nVidia Shield TV as my main platform nowadays, where the Plex Server also runs now, but I also have a Roku 3 with Plex Player on it (with Live TV) and I get the same result on it, although different error message.
On the Shield TV, error message is “An error occurred while attemting to play this video. Please try restarting both the Plex Media Server and this app.”
On Roku 3, error message is “Playback was terminated by the server. Conversion failed. The transcoder crashed or failed to start up.”
The curious thing is that on the Shield TV, SBS works FINE on other apps that use the tuners, including the Live Channels app and the actual HDHome run app as well. Its ONLY Plex where they don’t work. I’ve tried the obvious things like deleting the tuners and re-adding and rescanning etc, but no cure.
I also separately have a Mac Mini running EyeTV software and all the SBS channels work fine on it as well (and always have). It also previously had the Plex Media Server on it so I ran that up again and connected to THAT server from the Shield TV Plex app. Again the SBS channels fail to "play’ when selected and fail with same error message as Shield server.
There is obviously something about the SBS TV mux/channel bouquet out of the HDHomerun HDHR3 tuners that Plex Server (on shield Tv and macOS) doesn’t like, but everything else is happy with.
I’ll try and have a look at it over the next few days, but I’m in Melbourne and don’t have any issues with SBS, as I’ve regularly been recording and watching content from there.
Yes I regularly watch and record content on SBS as well, just not using Plex so far!
As I said above, everything else using the HDHomeruns works fine with SBS, Live Channels and the HDHomerun app on the same Shield TV Pro as my main Plex Server. Also EyeTV on 3 different Macs around the house, including the Mac Mini which has my old Plex Server, which I fired up again and updated to latest version to discover also can’t see SBS Channels. Plex on a Roku 3 also fails to play SBS on either the Shield or Mac Mini PMS.
It’s really got me stumped!
Thanks for taking a look, much appreciated.
Happy to pull logs or test anything you want me to.
SBS does seem to have something different in their Multiplex that causes some odd issues. On my recordings of SBS they play okay but occasionally pause on playback for a second or two. I think it has something to do with the Statistical multiplexing within the transport stream sometimes causing some issues.
Other recordings are just fine and playback okay.
I do think it is something a bit funny inside the transport stream, as to how we get it fixed, that’s another problem.
I think pretty much all the Aust networks use stat muxing nowadays to try and cram as many channels as possible into their 7 MHz of precious bandwidth so I don’t think it is that per se … although SBS is especially busy as they do 2 X HD channels in H264 + 4 X SD channels in MPEG2 plus multiple radio channels … don’t know if that has anything to do with it. Just so weird that ONLY Plex on both Shield and Roku give me nothing for ALL SBS Channels but all other software on both those boxes plus EyeTV on any of 4 Macs in the house show all SBS Channels fine, accessing the same HDHomerun tuners! If I program a recording off SBS via Plex DVR it fails.
I wonder if there is something “different” about the Sydney SBS muxing and/or TX that is effecting this given their playout is all IP based (via an external contractor at Macquarie Park) until very late in the chain. Sydney Gore Hill transmitters may be only ones fed slightly differently to rest of country? Just a wild theory. Anyway, as you say @Stephen3001, not much chance of getting anyone at SBS interested in “fixing” it, especially as all other software I currently have to test it with on multiple devices works! I think it needs to be a Plex fix if indeed others are duplicating my issue.
Their Playout Muxing is all in the one place, I would think that all the setups are the same across Australia.
It may be that their Stat Muxing is fairly aggressive due to the two HD’s sitting in there. This may cause some instantaneous bitrate problems for Plex (too high, too low, large delta in bitrate), especially during recording. It may cause buffering problems. Just a theory though…
That would make sense to me @Stephen3001 if I could receive any SBS Channels at all, and they then played up, but they ALWAYS fail, whether viewing or recording, as in I never see any kind of SBS picture out of Plex, even for a few seconds. Meanwhile EyeTV on all the Macs, and Live Channels on the Shield TV and Roku, never miss a beat accessing the same bunch of tuners …
@Stephen3001, thanks, any info that can help get this resolved much appreciated.
Just so I’m clear about the variables, are you in Sydney / receive signal from Gore Hill TX and do you have HDHR3 tuners?
@StephenH , I don’t use the HDHR3 tuners, I use the HDHomerun CONNECT. Different tuner I know, but the same company. Hopefully some similarities in performance.
I am watching the NSW SBS stream, just not from Gore Hill.
At least I can look at the TS and see if there is anything strange happening.
Thanks, @Stephen3001, anything you feel like doing to assist in narrowing this down will be greatly appreciated!
Don’t know that much about the Connect AUS models, but I think it has DLNA whereas my older ones don’t so Plex may use it in different fashion to mine?.
Just to clarify, there are separate SBS Sydney and SBS NSW streams (different break content usually commercials) for SBS (HD & SD) and SBS Viceland (HD & SD) and Food Network (SD only), so hence they would be muxed separately. Sydney feeds only go out to Gore Hill plus other Sydney translators, NSW feeds to “rest of the state” transmitters - so your answer doesn’t tell me definitely whether you are on Syd or NSW feed
