Routing/requirements of LIVE TV bandwidth

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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This may seem strange, but I am trying to simplify things for my tech-weak parents who struggle more and more as time goes on…

So, currently I have my Plex server at my place in Florida. It has over-the-air LIVE TV. They want to save money and cut the cord since I have lots of content. But, their ability to remember to switch servers to get their own local LIVE TV channels is questionable.

One interesting solution is for me to use a ODROIDC2 running a Plex server and a tuner card. I can create a VPN back to my server and mount the tuner card as a virtual USB device via usbip. They would, at least in theory, be able to see all of the channels from their local and from my local antenna in one guide and stream accordingly.

My only concern is bandwidth. So, here are the questions:

  1. What are the normal upstream requirements of OTA channels that Plex transmits?
  2. Would Plex be able to see that the client is locally where the ODROID is and skip transmitting it to Florida and back to their home state? Basically, keep the transmission within their LAN or would it transcoding the data and therefore have to transmit to my location and back to theirs?

Stinks that we can’t have Plex server running in two locations and link them together as one server. I understand this is a unique situation and so that is not worth asking for as a feature.

Thoughts welcome. Thanks.

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Let me preface this by saying if I am understanding everything correctly you want to have one server with two tuner devices, one in Florida for your local OTA and one wherever your parents live with a VPN in between the two locations.

  1. This will require a XMLTV feed to combine the two guides into a single guide for your Plex server.
  2. Since your Plex server would be doing any transcoding, the antenna feed from the tuner device in their home for their local stations would be sent to your server, transcoded if necessary, then sent back to their device for viewing.

Why not setup a “backup” server for yourself in their house under your Plex account with them added as Home Users. Configure the tuner device for their local OTA on their server. The only thing they would need to do is switch servers to view your content or you utilize the VPN you were thinking about to configure Libraries on their server to access the files on your servers drives.

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Yeah, didn’t know about the XMLTV feed issue for multiple guides. Makes usbip protocol less desirable.

Your solution was my backup solution. Seems to have become primary as I don’t want to make life annoying complex for myself to maintain in the future.

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