I am trying to figure out where the buffering is coming from on LIVE TV. It seems to be more on 1080 than 720. Movies 1080 or even higher do not buffer on transcoding.
Server - 1.19.4.2935. Everything except the client is hardwired using cat6. Using HDHomeRun Quatro. This is the only stream that is running. Server CPU: Intel i5 9600k, Windows 10, hardware encoding enabled (disabling does not make a difference either).
Client - Plex Web 4.31.1. Wifi AC 5.0 Ghz.
Any ideas?
EDIT: By buffering I mean every 30 seconds to a minute.. not once that it usually does when starting.
Plexweb can’t Direct Play AC3 audio
You can ‘try’ to force multi-channel audio support in Plexweb Player settings.
Plexweb is de-interlacing the video
without which - it’ll look like holy crap.
Using Plex for Windows would fix the audio problem, but 1080i is going to have to transcode to de-interlace live tv. There’s no way around it.
Suggest watching live TV on your TV with the supplied tuner wherein the TV will de-interlace on the fly - that’s what it’s designed to do - and no, Plex can’t do it better.
If you need to watch Live TV via Plex - you’re gonna need more horsepower and it’s still going to buffer - to some extent - transcoding takes time.
hmm there has to be something else going on because there are “periods of time” when same channel, same plexweb, same location runs smooth like butter. I also have this same problem on Samsung 2018 TV but it is also using the app. None of the server resources are even at 50% so I am unsure what more horsepower it needs.
I’m not sure, but it seems Plex is miscalculating MPEG-2 bandwidth.
Most of it should be between 8 and 10Mbps - not Gbps.
It’s hefty, but not that hefty.
Not all transmissions are MPEG-2 maybe.
Not sure about your Live TV, but mine is ALL MPEG-2, ALL Interlaced, and ALL a PITA for Plex to handle Live. I simply don’t do it. <—because it buffers, studders, etc.
Depending on your tuner you may be able to have it ‘transcode’ so it’ll deliver a 264 stream that will Direct Play, but I have no idea how that’s going to work for Live TV.
Live TV is tough for Plex - way too easy for your TV.
You can try to use Plex For Windows or Plex Media Player and stop them from de-interlacing to see if the TV will, like mine will, De-Interlace anything that comes in Interlaced on any port. That’s quite rare, but you could try it.
The point is you have to get Plex to Direct Play 1080i and the Audio. Plexweb absolutely will NOT Direct Play MPEG-2 or AC3.
If you can make that happen, you’ll find out pretty quickly if the TV will De-interlace. Your eyeballs will explode if it won’t…lol
Upon more testing, the recorded shows from Live TV seem to be fine so the connection from antenna to HDHomeRun to the Plex server seems to be perfect.
After that either my WiFi is slow or Plex Server is having issues transcoding. Since I can see that none of my Server resources get past 50% and presumptively this works for other users, I can only assume that something is not right with my setup.
@JuiceWSA I tried a Roku on WiFi which has the option under Video to support MGEG2 for LiveVideo and that plays fine. Thank you for that suggestion. But unfortunately not all players like Samsung TV have that option.
So, back to more testing - I am going to hardware the Samsung TV to the router avoiding WiFi and see what happens. I couple of other things I want to try.
If you didn’t hurl when the Roku was Direct Playing that MPEG-2 stream that either means your TV will de-interlace it for you - or that particular stream wasn’t interlaced.
