The OTA picture quality is only bad when serving from PLEX to my TV

Live TV & DVR
,
1

I have a video quality problem. The picture is very blocky as the bit rate isn’t good enough in certain high detail frames. But this only happens when playing live TV via Plex.

When the picture looks excellent:
TV Antenna -> Samsung 4K TV as direct signal input
TV Antenna -> HDHomeRun Duo -> 1Gb switch -> Samsung 4K TV
TV Antenna -> HDHomeRun Duo -> Netgear R7000 Router -> Intel NUC with Intel i3 running Plex Server and Plex Player on Web browser

When the picture looks bad:

TV Antenna -> HDHomeRun Duo -> Netgear R7000 Router -> Intel NUC with Intel i3 running Plex Server on Windows 10 Home -> Netgear R7000 Router -> Roku Ultra Running Plex App -> (HMDI) Samsung 4K TV

The Plex server reports that it is streaming to the Roku Ultra as MPEG2VIDEO 720p hw. All ethernet connections are wired so there is no wireless involved.

I just upgraded my Roku to the Ultra and that didn’t help. What should I do next?

2

After summarizing the problem I thought about it and changed the Roku display setting to 720p to match the incoming stream. It had been on HD 4K @ 30 Hz. Now the picture is watchable. It is still a 720p image stretched to my 55 in TV but it is much better.
As I watch closely, when the camera pans, the edges in the image look like it is an interlaced video stream. Football isn’t on until Saturday and that will be the ultimate test when the camera shows the crowd.

Any thoughts are still appreciated.

3

Not transcoding

Assuming you’re using the HDHomeRun App on Samsung = Also Not transcoding

Pretty sure not transcoding as PC is capable of MPEG2 natively

Pretty sure this is transcoding, as most New devices and TV’s no longer support MPEG2 (My Sony TV, and my Amazon Firestick 4K has the same issue)

HW at the end = Hardware Transcoding, Are you using an AMD Card, an NVIDIA Card, or the Intel QSV on your processor for the transcode? Do you know?

AMD Is terrible at x264 transcoding. NVENC is better but still not ideal. QSV from what I understand is better. Maybe also try disabling Hardware transcoding altogether to see if the resulting picture is any better?

That’s all I got. I hope you figure it out, hopefully I’ve helped you narrow things down a bit :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Don’t do that.

What are your Roku Settings int the Plex APP?

Video
Local Quality Original
Remote Quality Original
Direct Play Auto
Allow Direct Stream  Enabled
H264 Maximum Level Maximum 
Allow MPEG2 enabled

Subtitles(CC) should be off.

1 Like
5

I changed the Roku settings to the way you have it and I put the Roku display setting back to Auto.

It looks great now. Thank you very much.

6

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.