When watching remotely on the Firestick 4k, currently set to 3 mbps, the server reports:
The average bit rate of the stream coming in via OTA is about 10 mbps, with a max video bitrate of up to 17.6 mbps. What exactly does "Transcoder Ready" mean? I would think that with these hard set parameters, that the server would be transcoding, but it's not.
It means it has already transcoded its buffer into the cache directory and is waiting for more commands.
So, let's say the remote client connects when the show recording is at 25%, the server will start transcoding the recording as soon as the remote client requests the media, and if the server CPU is fast enough, the transcoding will catch up with live TV, and then the transcoding will be performed intermittently until the end of the recording. Is that basically how it works?
Yep you got it.
Also if you watch a recording and then stop and come back later, it will still have the transcoded version cached and wouldn't fire up the transcoder again.
Excellent.