Live TV channel switching speed

[dougie175 0]

Sorry if this topic comes up a lot I have had a good scan through and search but nothing seemed relevant.

 

I have been a long time Plex user and after moving to a new home with a lack of tv aerial ports where I needed them decided to move all of my live tv viewing through a HDhomerun however the live tv experience through plex has been awful so much so I have sold all of my Roku 4k sticks in favour of Amazon Fire 4k sticks and the channels app.

 

The channels app has finally given me the fast channel switching and reliability required to keep my wife and little girl happy, to be fair its not like they were being overly critical of the plex live tv it just doesn't work well enough.

 

Anyway back on topic my question is before I go shelling out for another lifetime pass on a media server does live tv on the fire sticks through Emby work as well as channels or the native hdhomerun app, switching channels in less than a second with no drop outs or issues, it feels like using the native tv tuner or is the experience more like the plex setup with several seconds between channel changes?

 

Thanks for any experience and advice

[arche 174]

Depending on the amount of channels you have, the firestick should load pretty quickly. I have about 700 channels and does not do well for me on speed switching or initial loading of the guide.

 

Honestly, I'm doing the opposite as you, with Emby, I find the Roku sticks work much better than the Firesticks as I am switching them out for Roku's one at a time. I'm alos using a HDHomerun Prime tuner. The Firestick seems to stick alot more on the live tv guide than the roku. I've had my issues with Firestick (probably not what you want to hear) and I've given up on them pretty much and having most of my friends and family moving to Roku. I will keep some around for testing, but other than that, for live tv on Emby I find Roku better.

 

Not sure if this helps, but this is just my experience. 

 

FYI, I do not have the 4k Firestick's, but have the 4k Roku's.

Edited April 15, 2019 by arche

[dougie175 0]

Depending on the amount of channels you have, the firestick should load pretty quickly. I have about 700 channels and does not do well for me on speed switching or initial loading of the guide.

 

Honestly, I'm doing the opposite as you, with Emby, I find the Roku sticks work much better than the Firesticks as I am switching them out for Roku's one at a time. I'm alos using a HDHomerun Prime tuner. The Firestick seems to stick alot more on the live tv guide than the roku. I've had my issues with Firestick (probably not what you want to hear) and I've given up on them pretty much and having most of my friends and family moving to Roku. I will keep some around for testing, but other than that, for live tv on Emby I find Roku better.

 

Not sure if this helps, but this is just my experience. 

 

FYI, I do not have the 4k Firestick's, but have the 4k Roku's.

 

700 channels! In the UK on freeview we get a lot less channels so not quite so much worry, I have 20 currently marked as favourites and half of them I never watch. So no the guide should be able to load pretty quickly.

 

There was nothing wrong with the Roku 4K's to be honest I have been a long term Roku user, I think my live tv issues were more to do with plex, but the fact that hdhomerun don't support Roku's mean there was no other option for me at the time as I wasn't really aware of Emby, this lead me to look at other options and alongside supporting all of the 4 UK tv catchup app the Firestick was a perfect match, just a shame about the amazon advertising, I did play with custom launchers but decided it was safer long run just to get used to the amazon launcher.

 

FYI also the Firestick 4K is a completely different beast to use on both plex and channels to the standard firestick. The extra processing power really shines through!

 

I assume you've never tried the channels app with the firesticks? I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has used both channels and emby on the 4k firestick to see how they compare  

[denz 426]

Live tv on roku is slow unfortunately but better than plex but on that device it is due to roku limitation rather than emby. I assume UK also uses DVB-T format so the fast channel changing speed that I have experienced is with emby on Android TV. I am currently looking at purchasing a basic android tv box. 

[dougie175 0]

Live tv on roku is slow unfortunately but better than plex but on that device it is due to roku limitation rather than emby. I assume UK also uses DVB-T format so the fast channel changing speed that I have experienced is with emby on Android TV. I am currently looking at purchasing a basic android tv box. 

 

Channel switching, guide info and everything run just like a normal TV on the Firestick 4K via the "channels" app, I was hoping similar would be achieved through Emby, that way I could combine 2 apps into 1.

 

I can't comment on other devices other than the Nvidia Shield which had the google Live Channels app built in which worked quite well, not quite as well as "channels" the only reason I don't run shield's is because they dont support 2 of the main UK catchup app's and I didn't personally see the difference in speed to justify the cost difference between a shield and a 4k Firestick for the apps I used

[dougie175 0]

Just out of interest is there a way to try live tv free with Emby on the FireTV? I can play my local media and such for the next 14 days which I am impressed with the speed to load and such but the real reason that would make me switch from Plex would be live tv working as well as the HDhomerun or channels apps. I am guessing live tv is not an option without signing up for a month?

 

Thanks

@@ebr

[hayrund 14]

Probably not the answer you are looking for, but if you have an Apple TV, I can vouch that the 4K model switches channels quite fast. It seems to tune in less than 3 seconds, if that on average.

 

I’m still hoping the Android TV catches up eventually.

[dougie175 0]

Probably not the answer you are looking for, but if you have an Apple TV, I can vouch that the 4K model switches channels quite fast. It seems to tune in less than 3 seconds, if that on average.

 

I’m still hoping the Android TV catches up eventually.

It was honest answers like this that I was hoping for. Even 3 second changing is too slow for me to be honest.

 

Using channels on android switching is less than a second. I was hoping to replicate this with emby but appreciate this isn't going to happen yet.

 

I would guess apple TV will be the first device to achieve this as plex are close on the apple TV with a new player I believe. It's a shame apple TVs are so expensive compared to roku and FTV.

[denz 426]

I am also getting about 3 seconds it is slow but that is best that can be achieved since HDHomeRun app on Android Tv can’t do faster.

 

Mrmc on apple tv can do faster it is one second for sd channels and 2 seconds for hd. That is faster than what emby can do but mrmc is usable because it deinterlaces whereas emby does not so it is not usable at the moment for direct streaming.

[Carlo 4330]

Keep in mind there is a drastic difference in what these different "apps" are doing.  Some are just directly opening the end resource while others are going through a server which can handle deinterlacing, transcoding, reducing bandwidth requirements, sharing the same stream with multiple clients or recordings, etc..

 

That extra set of layers does affect speed and always will to some extent.

 

There are definitely some things that could be improved however that would definitely help speeds.  For example on Android TV it WON'T direct play TS files so it has to direct stream/remux the stream which adds to the latency.  Plex has worked around this obstacle a long time ago and maybe Emby will catch up on this at some point which would shave a second or three of channel change times (depends on server speed).

[monotok 7]

I know this is an old thread but just wanted to say on a Nvidia Shield it is pretty slow (3 seconds but can be 6). I only test it occasionally.

The fastest and most reliable thing I use is Kodi with TVheadend running on a server using an hdhomerun as the tuner. I then play all movies through Kodi using the emby plugin.

Channel switching is 1 second or less, Kodi will tune the next channel at the same time if you have multiple tuners and its available so channel hopping is fast.

[ebr 14910]

14 hours ago, monotok said:

on a Nvidia Shield it is pretty slow (3 seconds but can be 6). I only test it occasionally.

Hi.  Have you tried turning on the option in settings to direct play Live TV?

[rliepins 9]

On 8/19/2020 at 7:01 AM, ebr said:

Hi.  Have you tried turning on the option in settings to direct play Live TV?

Apologies for the (probably) obvious questiion, but how does one turn on the direct play option for Live TV?  When looking at the properties for a tuner, all I find are settings for hardware transcoding and favorites.

[Luke 37060]

1 hour ago, rliepins said:

Apologies for the (probably) obvious questiion, but how does one turn on the direct play option for Live TV?  When looking at the properties for a tuner, all I find are settings for hardware transcoding and favorites.

It's an option specific to our android tv app.