Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Opinions on DVR/PVR backend?

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 12:50 PM, Grant Edwards
<grant.b.edwards@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> I'm guessing that Android client support is going to be better with
> Plex than with the others.
>

I know nothing of TVheadend.  MythTV on Android has always been kludgy
at best, though I haven't touched it in two years.

Plex on Android is a thing of beauty, especially with offline sync.
Progress is synced to the server and across all clients, and you can
give it a quality level and it will keep #n unwatched episodes synced
to the Android device, which get auto-updated anytime you're on wifi.
I've used it on trips where the hotel wifi is terrible and it works
great.  Maybe it takes all night while I'm asleep to sync new episodes
with heaven knows how many retries, but it still syncs, and then they
play just fine the next day or on the flight home.

For managing shows the web interface is still better than
Android/Roku.  Often I'll set up the sync rules from the web - and
then the android device will just magically do what it should
(eventually).  If I'm in a hurry I can fire up the android app and
tell it to sync right away, and it picks up the new rules.  The server
picks up the rules immediately and will have the shows transcoded
already, so it is just a matter of file transfer.

That's the other thing - the Plex server/clients do a good job
negotiating codecs, with the server doing all the transcoding.  You
can pre-transcode files if you want to in order to reduce server load,
such as if you have many Rokus you use at the same time.  When
transcoding you do get a bit more latency, especially if you want to
seek around a lot (no issue at all if you just hit play and watch the
show) - you end up with bufferbloat on both the server and the client
when you transcode.  Still, it all just works, and it is no worse than
Netflix/etc.  You can also configure quality rules for LAN vs WAN
streaming, both on the clients and the server.


-- 
Rich