Rob.Screene
Prominent Member
I thought I would share my whole house networked Freeview HD recorder experience, to replace a now dead Windows Media Center with two Freesat HD tuners.
So far, I can't believe how well this new wave of hardware tuners and software works, even with 4K and HDR.
My goal is a whole house HD subscription-free PVR replacement for Sky HD. I guess a bit like Sky Q.
HDHomeRun
I bought a £150 HDHomeRun CONNECT QUATRO: HDHR5-4DT(UK)
This is a small box that simply has a Freeview HD aerial and power go in and a cat Network cable come out. It can record 4 things at once. It also seems a really strong tuner and can go upstairs near the loft to keep the high quality double-shielded sat coax run short, as it does not need to go anywhere near a TV. I get no Freeview breakups unlike what we occasionally do see downstairs on our 2017 Sony 4K TV tuner.
There is a free HDHomeRun iOS app that can play back TV. This can do live pause, but requires a subscription for DVR features and I suspect doesn't work well for set and forget recording. It is also prone to crashing on my iPhone and iPad.
Plex with Plex Pass Live DVR
I also setup a Windows PC running the free Plex Media Server software on it, with a few large hard disks in it for storage.
The HDHomeRun is listed as supported within Plex's new Live DVR feature.
This requires a Plex Pass subscription, which is about £4 pcm or a one-off lifetime £95. This includes a 2-week EPG that covers Freeview HD and was relatively easy to configure including entering my first 3 characters of my postcode.
Playback from Plex
I installed the free Plex client Android app on our 2017 Sony TV.
I installed the free Plex client tvOS app on an Apple TV 4K.
I installed the free Plex client iOS app on an iPad and an iPhone.
All the clients let you see the Recording Schedule and Program Guide, which provides season pass type recording, I've had it recording pretty much non-stop all day long for a week, sometimes using up the 4 tuners.
I can be accessed by any wi-fi or networked player at home, and the pc web desktop app can log in remotely via the internet (although I have not opened the twin firewalls I run, so I don't think it will stream very well over the internet, but I use it only so see and set program guide recordings).
It organises recordings in to Shows and Seasons and downloads show covers automatically very well.
Apple TV 4K - Free Plex app v.s. Infuse app
One issue I noted was that Freeview HD recordings (like yesterday's Grand Prix on Channel 4 HD) would either break up and drop out every few seconds and the de-interlacing looked wrong. I initially thought it was recording break-ups, but no, from what I read the Plex client doesn't yet support the decoding power available on the Apple TV 4K.
There is an option to Play the Original or Automatically Convert (transcode) which solved the break-ups but still looked a little wrong and also hit 100% CPU on the Intel i7 media server. I noted an option on Plex server to use Hardware Transcoding, which dropped cpu to about 40% or less when playing HD, but it still didn't look right for 1080i played on the Apple TV at 4K 4K/50 fps on a JVC projector. I don't like the idea of transcoding as there is usually going to be a loss of quality if it has to re-encode a recording to play it back.
I then tried a free tvOS and iOS app called Infuse.
This has an option to connected to the Plex Server and works as a much better Apple TV client, as somehow Plex can play to that using Direct Play, so not transcoding anything and using about 1% CPU, plus using the Apple TV 4K to do the deinterlacing that looked good for 1080i material.
Since the several Freesat HD recordings I have use 2-channel audio, the free version of Infuse is sufficient for smooth playback on to the Apple TV 4K.
Infuse can also play 4K HDR material and Dolby/DTS sountracks, but requires a £44 one-off PRO license once the weeks trial has ended.
4K blu-ray HDR streaming
To my surprise, I had also backed up a few of my 4K blu-rays in to MKV files and added those to a Plex Movie library and Infuse (PRO) played those using Direct Play too.
They played at 4K HDR, 24fps, turned the projector automatically on to HDR mode and with Dolby 7.1 sound (the Atmos soundtrack although included was not available). They looked indistinguishable to playing the original disks, I tried Dunkirk, Passengers and Planet Earth 2.
With chapter skip buttons working.
This was way better than my tests using my Panasonic UB700 and Sony X800 4K blu-ray players could do off of a USB drive. The Panasonic is has silent sound until I select the non-atmos lossy secondary soundtrack, the Sony is silent and won't allow soundtrack selection off USB WKV files and neither support chapter skip.
I should probably note that the Apple TV 4K and the Plex Media PC are connected via a Gigabit (1000mbps) wired network. I think I had also edited a file behind the Plex Server tsOS.xml text file to add H265 directplay support for the Apple TV (ref: Streaming 4K (2160p) MKV/H.265 from Synology Plex server to ATV 4K Plex client)
Apple have said Atmos support is on the Apple TV 4K roadmap, but it is not here yet for Netflix, Amazon, Plex or Infuse. If it arrives then great, but for now using 7.1 and letting the Dolby surround Atmos upmixer do the work is worth the convenience of having all this media on tap.
Rob.
So far, I can't believe how well this new wave of hardware tuners and software works, even with 4K and HDR.
My goal is a whole house HD subscription-free PVR replacement for Sky HD. I guess a bit like Sky Q.
HDHomeRun
I bought a £150 HDHomeRun CONNECT QUATRO: HDHR5-4DT(UK)
This is a small box that simply has a Freeview HD aerial and power go in and a cat Network cable come out. It can record 4 things at once. It also seems a really strong tuner and can go upstairs near the loft to keep the high quality double-shielded sat coax run short, as it does not need to go anywhere near a TV. I get no Freeview breakups unlike what we occasionally do see downstairs on our 2017 Sony 4K TV tuner.
There is a free HDHomeRun iOS app that can play back TV. This can do live pause, but requires a subscription for DVR features and I suspect doesn't work well for set and forget recording. It is also prone to crashing on my iPhone and iPad.
Plex with Plex Pass Live DVR
I also setup a Windows PC running the free Plex Media Server software on it, with a few large hard disks in it for storage.
The HDHomeRun is listed as supported within Plex's new Live DVR feature.
This requires a Plex Pass subscription, which is about £4 pcm or a one-off lifetime £95. This includes a 2-week EPG that covers Freeview HD and was relatively easy to configure including entering my first 3 characters of my postcode.
Playback from Plex
I installed the free Plex client Android app on our 2017 Sony TV.
I installed the free Plex client tvOS app on an Apple TV 4K.
I installed the free Plex client iOS app on an iPad and an iPhone.
All the clients let you see the Recording Schedule and Program Guide, which provides season pass type recording, I've had it recording pretty much non-stop all day long for a week, sometimes using up the 4 tuners.
I can be accessed by any wi-fi or networked player at home, and the pc web desktop app can log in remotely via the internet (although I have not opened the twin firewalls I run, so I don't think it will stream very well over the internet, but I use it only so see and set program guide recordings).
It organises recordings in to Shows and Seasons and downloads show covers automatically very well.
Apple TV 4K - Free Plex app v.s. Infuse app
One issue I noted was that Freeview HD recordings (like yesterday's Grand Prix on Channel 4 HD) would either break up and drop out every few seconds and the de-interlacing looked wrong. I initially thought it was recording break-ups, but no, from what I read the Plex client doesn't yet support the decoding power available on the Apple TV 4K.
There is an option to Play the Original or Automatically Convert (transcode) which solved the break-ups but still looked a little wrong and also hit 100% CPU on the Intel i7 media server. I noted an option on Plex server to use Hardware Transcoding, which dropped cpu to about 40% or less when playing HD, but it still didn't look right for 1080i played on the Apple TV at 4K 4K/50 fps on a JVC projector. I don't like the idea of transcoding as there is usually going to be a loss of quality if it has to re-encode a recording to play it back.
I then tried a free tvOS and iOS app called Infuse.
This has an option to connected to the Plex Server and works as a much better Apple TV client, as somehow Plex can play to that using Direct Play, so not transcoding anything and using about 1% CPU, plus using the Apple TV 4K to do the deinterlacing that looked good for 1080i material.
Since the several Freesat HD recordings I have use 2-channel audio, the free version of Infuse is sufficient for smooth playback on to the Apple TV 4K.
Infuse can also play 4K HDR material and Dolby/DTS sountracks, but requires a £44 one-off PRO license once the weeks trial has ended.
4K blu-ray HDR streaming
To my surprise, I had also backed up a few of my 4K blu-rays in to MKV files and added those to a Plex Movie library and Infuse (PRO) played those using Direct Play too.
They played at 4K HDR, 24fps, turned the projector automatically on to HDR mode and with Dolby 7.1 sound (the Atmos soundtrack although included was not available). They looked indistinguishable to playing the original disks, I tried Dunkirk, Passengers and Planet Earth 2.
With chapter skip buttons working.
This was way better than my tests using my Panasonic UB700 and Sony X800 4K blu-ray players could do off of a USB drive. The Panasonic is has silent sound until I select the non-atmos lossy secondary soundtrack, the Sony is silent and won't allow soundtrack selection off USB WKV files and neither support chapter skip.
I should probably note that the Apple TV 4K and the Plex Media PC are connected via a Gigabit (1000mbps) wired network. I think I had also edited a file behind the Plex Server tsOS.xml text file to add H265 directplay support for the Apple TV (ref: Streaming 4K (2160p) MKV/H.265 from Synology Plex server to ATV 4K Plex client)
Apple have said Atmos support is on the Apple TV 4K roadmap, but it is not here yet for Netflix, Amazon, Plex or Infuse. If it arrives then great, but for now using 7.1 and letting the Dolby surround Atmos upmixer do the work is worth the convenience of having all this media on tap.
Rob.
Last edited:
