I previously tried to set up Plex Live TV on my legacy Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz (E6400) system, but realized it did not pass the Passmark test. So I bought a Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz (Q6600) chip off eBay (and Linux Mint recognizes the chip as a Core 2 Quad). When I tested the new chip (which has an average Passmark score of near 3000), I noticed that Plex continued to choke on the transcoding. As an alternate I downloaded a TV-streaming app called Me TV, and its CPU usage for a 1080p stream dropped from 70% (with the E6400) to 20% (with the Q6600). This makes me think that the problem is with the Plex software, unless Me TV does not transcode to H.264. Has anyone else experienced this?
My E8400 core 2 duo at 3ghz couldn’t handle more than 1 tv show at a time streaming because that would take at least 60% cpu at 1080, although even dropping them to 720s wouldn’t allow more than 1 at a time. I spent $120 on craigslist and got a optiplex desktop with i5-3470 quad core chip and 8gigs of ram and it uses 20-25% cpu with 2 users streaming with hardware acceleration enabled and operational.
Without knowing the details of the media (XML) there is no way of knowing what’s really happening.
Regarding the C2D / C2Q, being candid, you don’t have much processor to work with. Most of the NAS processors have more computing power. I have a 4 year old i7-3740qm, with a passmark of 8342, and I can (carefully) handle 3 transcodes.
The media is broadcast signal, which I guess is MPEG2. In order to view on my Roku devices, the broadcast signal has to be transcoded to H.264. With all other feeds (I’m going to guess that they are probably native H.264), streaming is fine. I might have to test this with a local (downloaded) video that is not native H.264.
Most cable providers use MPEG2VIDEO as the codec. Some, like Comcast, stream H.264. This varies per provider. Network distribution is MPEG2VIDEO.
Roku wants H.264
Actually, it’s antenna signal (ATSC). Either the signal is only MPEG-2 or, if H.264 is also sent via antenna, my Hauppage WinTV dualHD dongle is only capable of capturing MPEG-2. Do you know of any tuners that are capable of capturing H.264 that is the case?
Look at the SiliconDust products.
- They cover a good variety of use cases with their products
- It was the first tuner supported for PMS
- (if it matters) I have the HDHomeRun Prime which is solid but also a cable-card based unit
From SiliconDust’s page, it appears that only the Extend is capable of transcoding on the fly. I guess it might not be possible to capture native H.264 antenna signal (if it even exists) at this time.
