I’m running the latest version of Plex Media Server (1.10.1.4602) on a DiskStation 218+, connected to an HDHomeRun Extend with the transcoder quality set to Highest Quality. I assumed the HDHomeRun Extend’s built in hardware transcoder would mean my DiskStation would not need to perform any software transcoding. However, when I stream live broadcasts on my Apple TV I can see Plex is using about 90% of the CPU and Plex says it’s transcoding H264 to H264. Why is that necessary if the files are already transcoded?
To my knowledge, Plex will transcode (for any source, Live TV or media file) if there is an incongruence between the source type and what the client can handle. Based on this, my assumption is that there’s something in the stream that the client doesn’t like so the server sends something it does.
That being said, I’m not sure anyone has ever gotten Live TV to direct stream on any device. The purpose of pretranscoding from the Extend is to reduce the stream coming into Plex, and potentially reduce the processing power necessary to work with it. The end result is lower network traffic.
It seemed in the beginning stages of the DVR offering that there was more of a reason to purchase the Extend over the others. I’m not so sure that is the case today.
FYI, I use two Extends. They work well for me… but I don’t think they peg my processor that hard.
As a side note, try setting “Heavy” as the transcoder setting on the HDHomeRun side. I’m pretty sure what you set in Plex overrides this though…
OTA broadcasts are MPEG2 and will always be transcoded
To my knowledge, Plex will transcode (for any source, Live TV or media file) if there is an incongruence between the source type and what the client can handle.
This sounds right. I did some further testing and found live TV does direct stream to my Fire TV Stick, so the problem I’m experiencing appears specific to the Plex App for Apple TV.
