Roku+Plex = Leaving SageTV? Anyone regret it?

[IVB]

Well, I wonder if anyone who's left SageTV is still going to visit the forums.

I just converted all my DVDs & BRs into MKV files, so they're now playable via my Roku through Plex. At this point literally the only show we watch via SageTV is Downton Abbey, which may have just ended. (wife watches it, I have no desire to watch annoying rich people who move dreadfully slow).

Looks like the HD200's are still getting a decent amount. I have 2, plus 1 working HD100 and 1 capacitor issue. I have an HD300 which may have stopped working, not sure.

Anyone who's left SageTV have any regrets? I suppose I could sell all but one HD200 as a hedge.

[brainbone]

My wife still watches things recorded via SageTV, albeit in Plex. The only annoyance is having to go into SageTV, via the web interface or what-have-you, to schedule recordings, etc. Once I figure a way around that, SageTV will only be used for its back-end.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by IVB

Well, I wonder if anyone who's left SageTV is still going to visit the forums.

I just converted all my DVDs & BRs into MKV files, so they're now playable via my Roku through Plex. At this point literally the only show we watch via SageTV is Downton Abbey, which may have just ended. (wife watches it, I have no desire to watch annoying rich people who move dreadfully slow).

Looks like the HD200's are still getting a decent amount. I have 2, plus 1 working HD100 and 1 capacitor issue. I have an HD300 which may have stopped working, not sure.

Anyone who's left SageTV have any regrets? I suppose I could sell all but one HD200 as a hedge.

Not to rain on your parade, but be careful with the MKV container. Roku is notorious for having issues playing it back. especially when you are playing it back with high bitrates such as in bluray rips.

Plex does a GREAT job at transcode on the fly of these guys, but still has some hang up every now and again.

If i were you going forward, convert any new media using the ATV3 preset in handbrake. works perfectly for me.

[Thron]

I tried, but had nothing but problems with Plex / Roku playback. It was slow to start and don't even think about going back 10 or 20 seconds. Plus there was about 5 shows my wife watches that were not on Netflix or Hulu.

Im back on Sage and life is happy until I get nervous and try something else again. I know one of these days my HD300 will die and I will be in a mad scramble to get a replacement.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Not to rain on your parade, but be careful with the MKV container. Roku is notorious for having issues playing it back. especially when you are playing it back with high bitrates such as in bluray rips.

Plex does a GREAT job at transcode on the fly of these guys, but still has some hang up every now and again.

If i were you going forward, convert any new media using the ATV3 preset in handbrake. works perfectly for me.

Oh, good to know. Didn't notice anything last night but i'll keep an eye out for it.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by IVB

Oh, good to know. Didn't notice anything last night but i'll keep an eye out for it.

yeah it just depends on how much is going on on your lan/wlan I have found. one file that will ALWAYS die for me and actually hang any of my 3 rokus is The Dark Knight.mkv Roku hates that file.

[wayner]

I would think that whether Roku/Plex is a good replacement for Sage depends on how you use Sage. In my situation one of the main uses of Sage is to record sports and I really need SkipFwd and SkipFwd2 to work. Sports generally don't translate well into other environments due to the lack of external metadata from sources like tvdb.

How does skipping work on Roku/Plex.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Not to rain on your parade, but be careful with the MKV container. Roku is notorious for having issues playing it back. especially when you are playing it back with high bitrates such as in bluray rips.

Plex does a GREAT job at transcode on the fly of these guys, but still has some hang up every now and again.

+1

I've been playing with Plex for a while, and recently got a Roku, and I agree completely about its flaky playback. I had some files that would crash my Roku (it would hang for ~10 seconds, then reboot) when I set my bitrate to something higher than the default (I think it was 8Mb/s) in Plex. I opened at ticket with Roku, trying to figure out why it had rebooted (the Roku was new & I was worried it might be defective). After 3 weeks of runaround, I never did figure out how to get any log of why it had crashed. I guess I just got spoiled by companies with great customer service, like Sage & Silicon Dust.

Anyway, Plex + Roku is just too flaky for me. Even for ripped media, I far prefer SageTV + BMT.

Drew

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by drewg

+1

I've been playing with Plex for a while, and recently got a Roku, and I agree completely about its flaky playback. I had some files that would crash my Roku (it would hang for ~10 seconds, then reboot) when I set my bitrate to something higher than the default (I think it was 8Mb/s) in Plex. I opened at ticket with Roku, trying to figure out why it had rebooted (the Roku was new & I was worried it might be defective). After 3 weeks of runaround, I never did figure out how to get any log of why it had crashed. I guess I just got spoiled by companies with great customer service, like Sage & Silicon Dust.

Anyway, Plex + Roku is just too flaky for me. Even for ripped media, I far prefer SageTV + BMT.

Drew

I disagree - Plex + Roku isn't flaky, Roku playback of MKV via the network is flaky, nothing more.

If you change the containers to mp4 and follow the roky enkoding guidlines, or at least have the video in a format that plex can transcode and not crash the roku (i.e. NOTHING MKV). its a rock solid solution (at least for me).

sux that you are having issues though Drew.

http://roku.yt1300.com/1080p.html

http://c1807832.r32.cf0.rackcdn.com/...rGuide_v41.pdf
section 3 page 11

While it says mkv is supported you will notice it is not supported in streaming mode. it will however play them fine from USB. It greatly depends on the PEAK bitrate though. Some of the MKV's that i have get bitrates above the recommended, and thats where i run into issue.

Not a plex issue at all, its simply a flaw (in my opinion) of the roku :-/

I have heard rumors that the new rokus coming out soon should full MKV playback over the network at MUCH high bitrates than currently supported for other file types.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by PiX64

I disagree - Plex + Roku isn't flaky, Roku playback of MKV via the network is flaky, nothing more.

The interactions between the plex & the roku are all so obfuscated that it is hard to tell. The hang/reboot issue went away when I enabled "direct playback" of the MKV, and was only present when plex was transcoding (as determined by watching the CPU load on the server) it with a high bitrate. So I really do blame plex for its client throwing something at my (wired, top of the line) Roku that it could not handle. Eg,

Plex bitrate
low: OK
high: roku crashes & reboot
direct: OK

Then again, my Roku might just be defective, but it seems impossible to know. If I had the time, I'd try to hack into it, but I just don't..

The "MKV works from a USB stick" is infuriating. The stupid Roku is running linux, so it should just be able to NFS or CIFS mount my video share like XBMC, WDTV Live, HD300 standalone, etc, all can. I should not even need plex. Argh.

Drew

[wrems]

Pix, any difference with MKV playback direct from server vs unraid? Not that it should matter just wondering if you tried.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by drewg

The interactions between the plex & the roku are all so obfuscated that it is hard to tell. The hang/reboot issue went away when I enabled "direct playback" of the MKV, and was only present when plex was transcoding (as determined by watching the CPU load on the server) it with a high bitrate. So I really do blame plex for its client throwing something at my (wired, top of the line) Roku that it could not handle. Eg,

Plex bitrate
low: OK
high: roku crashes & reboot
direct: OK

Then again, my Roku might just be defective, but it seems impossible to know. If I had the time, I'd try to hack into it, but I just don't..

The "MKV works from a USB stick" is infuriating. The stupid Roku is running linux, so it should just be able to NFS or CIFS mount my video share like XBMC, WDTV Live, HD300 standalone, etc, all can. I should not even need plex. Argh.

Drew

It's not a defective roku, it's a limitation of it.

The plex dev team disabled direct play of mkv because it is so flaky on the roku. U forcing direct play is the ONLy way to get roku to try and play a native mkv. If u let it auto detect, then it will always transcode the mkv into another container like mp4/m4a.

There are quite extensive threads on this topic over on the plex forum.

Don't blame plex for rokus crappy "streaming support"

I'll try and find this links to the discussions for u, but can't right now as I'm on a mobile device.

Also, I know the plex dev team has a direct line of communication with roku now and they are regularly getting issues/potential fixes over to them for release in their firmware updates.

Sorry you're having so much trouble with it... That sux :-/

Edit....Here is one for starters
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/...tplay-to-roku/

And another:
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/...269-mkv-crash/

And last one:
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/...atting-issues/


There are more, but I think u get the idea.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by wrems

Pix, any difference with MKV playback direct from server vs unraid? Not that it should matter just wondering if you tried.

Yeah it has nothing to do with where its stored just the audio/video codecs used in the mkv creation process. It's so finicky infact that it likes h.264 with VC-1 video but not h.264 with VC-2 video or something stupid like that.

It's annoying that roku would make such a great little, inexpensive device and release it with a limitation like this :-/

Hopefully they fix it Ina firmware update or the roku 3

[IVB]

Interesting, lots of good info here. I guess I'll hold on to the 2 HD200s, potentially ditch the HD100s and see if the HD300 even works.

BTW, skipping on the Roku is the one thing I absolutely despise (compared with Sage).

But dang, I did like the streaming of a DVD over 4G today. Well, I only watched a few mins as a what-if. Perfect example of the lack of new stuff we'll get due to the Google-ization of Sage.

FWIW, my server is one over-architected box. I rebuilt it 5 months ago, intentionally went psycho. Quadcore 3.2GHz, 16GB RAM. It yawns at what I throw at it (CQC, DropBox, Google Drive, Plex, Picasa, SageTV, a few more).

[drewg]

Originally Posted by IVB

BTW, skipping on the Roku is the one thing I absolutely despise (compared with Sage).

It is actually funny.. That's the thing I *like* about my Roku. The skipping in the Amazon VOD is great compared to my LG TV, LG BD player or Xbox. I'm actually pretty happy with the Roku as long as I use it for what I bought it for: Amazon.

Pix64: Thanks for the pointers on how to give feedback to plex. Given that I've still got as many HDx00 as TVs, I don't really need plex to work on Roku, and I"m a bit short on time, so I think I'll just let it go. The only thing I need plex for is to stream to my android tablet, which works much better than the roku.. The only reason I'm at all happy with plex is due to you SageTV BMT Plex scanner

Drew

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by drewg

It is actually funny.. That's the thing I *like* about my Roku. The skipping in the Amazon VOD is great compared to my LG TV, LG BD player or Xbox. I'm actually pretty happy with the Roku as long as I use it for what I bought it for: Amazon.

Pix64: Thanks for the pointers on how to give feedback to plex. Given that I've still got as many HDx00 as TVs, I don't really need plex to work on Roku, and I"m a bit short on time, so I think I'll just let it go. The only thing I need plex for is to stream to my android tablet, which works much better than the roku.. The only reason I'm at all happy with plex is due to you SageTV BMT Plex scanner

Drew

nice!

heaad over to stuckless thread on the new phoenix streaming utility he has put together... itmight be exactly what you want directly from sage...no need for plex at all.

id try it out but i have 0 android devices in my house... also interesting to me is if this would work with ALL android devices... so a Pivos XIOS for examle that is runing icecream sandwich and has a built in webbrowser....

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by drewg

It is actually funny.. That's the thing I *like* about my Roku. The skipping in the Amazon VOD is great compared to my LG TV, LG BD player or Xbox. I'm actually pretty happy with the Roku as long as I use it for what I bought it for: Amazon.
8< snip>8
Drew

Note: he said "compared with Sage". Skip, Skip back, FF/RW are SO much better in Sage than on the Roku.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my Roku. I bought mine pretty much because of Amazon and all the free videos I get with my Amazon Prime membership. Also, the skip is a lot better in Amazon than in most of the other Roku apps. However it is nothing compared with the transport capabilities Sage does for me every day.

[nyplayer]

Just got my Roku 2 SX must say it plays very nice with Plex. So using SageTV to record Pix64 Plex Sage scanners and I am one happy camper... but no way would I leave Sage it is the best PVR out there.

[PiX64]

Just thought I would let you all know since you may or may not be PlexPass members: there is currently a plexpass server release which fixes the transcoding issues found with MKV files. There is also a HUGE update to the Roku channel. If you are running the roku test channel, then you will see the updates. PlexPass is required as of right now for the beta release of the server.

I haven't tried it out as of yet, but from what I read it is pretty solid.

Ill test it out and report back.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by PiX64

There is also a HUGE update to the Roku channel.

Perhaps due to the release of Roku3 and it's new browser? (saw an article on that today in the WSJ)