Plex playback of Hauppauge HD-PVR files from SageTV

[wayner]

Does anyone have any experience in playing back SageTV created .ts files from a Hauppauge HD-PVR in Plex? I am just dabbling in Plex right now but it looks like if I try to play back these files in Plex and I try to navigate throught he files by skipping forward or FF'ing then I have problems. I either lose sync or the file indexing seems to get confused and I skip to the end.

Am I unique in this or do others have similar experiences?

I haven't played a ton with Plex but this issues seem to be less evident in MP4 files. I haven't had a chance to play with MPEG-2 OTA files to know if the problem is evident with those files as well.

My Plex playback clients are PHT on Windows and Rasplex.

[trallyus]

I had problems with those type files too and ended up having to convert them to something smaller since the ones I had were too huge for my network to keep up with and I never even tried to FF or rewind them due to how big they were

Sage TV has an option to convert stuff it recorded so you may want to convert those .TS files in to something your network can keep up with and keep the old recordings if you like the higher quality recordings you can possibly have to play those back on the pc and use the converted recordings for streaming

[wayner]

Files that I am going to keep around I convert to MP4 using a SJQ process, but that doesn't help for more real-time types of recordings like sports where I tend to do lots of skips.

[Slugger]

I've never had problems, but I also record everything in 720p. If you're recording in 1080i then that might be the reason. I also have a rather beefy system transcoding this stuff when viewing thru Plex.

[wayner]

My stuff is in 1080i, but I don't think Plex generally transcodes this type of files.

[trallyus]

Originally Posted by wayner

My stuff is in 1080i, but I don't think Plex generally transcodes this type of files.

Go to your pc that is using plex and double click the plex media server icon and this will bring up your web home page of your plex movies and tv shows and click the settings option on the top right of that page by the icon of the head. The settings symbol is like 2 wrenches.

Once the settings page is open make sure your on the web part of the settings page and click the show advanced button there , and then click player and bump up the local quality to 20 megs if it needs it but mark down your old settings in case you may need to change any of the settings back and when done click save.

I myself have Direct Stream and Direct Play checked on that same page as well as some other settings I changed to get the best picture on my tv's but doing too much tweaking here and not knowing what your doing can affect your streaming if you try streaming stuff from outside the house and your network can't handle it.

[reggie14]

The newer versions of Plex have a new transcoder which seems to struggle with Sage recordings. I haven't tried any HD-PVR recordings, but mpeg2-ts files from HDHR tuners can really struggle on some devices. Oddly, it seems to fine with some devices (like Plex/Web clients), but performance on Android devices is terrible. I can transcode blu-ray rips in good quality, but any attempt to transcode 720p or 1080i mpeg2-ts files results in really low-quality video with terrible A/V sync problems.

This is a new occurrence for me. It only started happening when I upgraded to the newest version of Plex. I had been running a moderately old (a few months) version of Plex.

[trallyus]

Originally Posted by reggie14

The newer versions of Plex have a new transcoder which seems to struggle with Sage recordings. I haven't tried any HD-PVR recordings, but mpeg2-ts files from HDHR tuners can really struggle on some devices. Oddly, it seems to fine with some devices (like Plex/Web clients), but performance on Android devices is terrible. I can transcode blu-ray rips in good quality, but any attempt to transcode 720p or 1080i mpeg2-ts files results in really low-quality video with terrible A/V sync problems.

This is a new occurrence for me. It only started happening when I upgraded to the newest version of Plex. I had been running a moderately old (a few months) version of Plex.

I play 720p files all the time directly from my nas on to my Hisense Vision TV which is android based using both the plexpass plex app and Serenity for Android but I do have direct stream and directplay turned on and have it set on my android apps as well.

It's a different story playing back on my dads samsung tv with the plex samsung app as I could not get directstreaming to work with it so I dialed down the stream in that app.

You may have to adjust your settings on your plex media server and your android apps to get the best results. Also don't forget that if the android device can not play the file natively then directstreaming it will be useless in most cases and you will probably have to transcode the file to get it workings.

If you have not tried Serenity For Android , google the makers website and try it before buying it and see if it works for you as the creator wrote it due to having problems with plex playback and its a prettty good android program