Raspberry Pi 3b+ Xbox One USB Tuner source not available

Live TV & DVR
1

Server Version#: 4.100.1
Player Version#:
Tuner Make/Model: Xbox One USB
Guide/Lineup name: Freeview, Crystal Palace area SS17
Using XMLTV?: No
Channel number/Name: All

Hi, New to Plex, long time Emby user, but now trying out Plex and really loving it so far.

The only issue I have at the moment is that when I try and play a live tv channel I get the error ‘Source not available’ I have attached what I hope are the correct logs.

Would anyone have any idea what the issue maybe? I’m wondering if the pi3 may be a little underpowered as a live TV server.

I have transcoding switched off and for movies, it seems to be working ok for a direct stream, can even stream 4k to a firetv stick!

Thanks for looking
Plex Transcoder Statistics.log (4.9 KB)
Plex Tuner Service.log (19.0 KB)

2

Further to my first post, I have noticed that if I use the Windows client it’s working fine, so I assume that is a direct stream and the client is able to open mpeg2 fine.

I get the issue on the web client, as I guess the pi3b+ is a little underpowered to transcode into a format the web browser will understand. Does that sound about right?

Would anyone know if I upgrade to a p4 it would handle transcoding.

Thanks

3

Welcome to Plex, glad you’re liking it so far.

It does. While the Pi does have hardware transcoding available, Plex cannot make use of it currently. And, unfortunately, the SoC on the Pi is likely not up to the task of transcoding MPEG2 to H.264 in software in real-time.

As you’ve found, the dedicated clients are more capable of playing a wider range of codecs which will allow the server to direct stream/play more often. There are desktop and HTPC clients for Mac and Linux (Flatpak and Snap) in addition to Windows.

It’s been a while since I’ve tested on a Pi 4, but I suspect not, at least not consistently. I may be able to set up a test later to see. If so, I’ll report back here with my results.

4

I tested with a Pi4 4 GB running Ubuntu 23.04 Desktop. In summary, it could handle:

  • 1 480i OTA MPEG2 stream transcoded to 480P H.264 (around 150% CPU usage).
  • 1 720P OTA MPEG2 stream transcoded to 720P H.264 (around 325% CPU usage).
  • 1 1080i OTA MPEG2 stream transcoded to 1080P H.264, with occasional buffering (around 360% CPU usage).

These are the commonly-broadcast formats in the US. We get H.265 on ATSC 3.0 channels, but Plex doesn’t support the required AC-4 audio codec right now, so I can’t test those channels.

I tested with both Safari and Firefox, on macOS and Linux (sorry, I don’t use Chrome).

5

oh wow. Thanks for testing :+1: