# Tried PLEX DVR the past few days



## CIR-Engineering (Sep 24, 2017)

So I realized that I already had everything I need to run PLEX DVR last week; a powerful NAS with PLEX Server, PLEX Pass, an NVidia Shield on every TV, all on a wired network. The only thing I was missing was a tuner so I picked up an HDHOMERUN Quattro to try it all out...

In a word TERRIBLE. PLEX’s interface is just garbage to start with. For example, to delete a DVR recording you have to first enable deletion by clients from the server. Then in the PLEX app on your clients it takes at least six clicks and multiple menus before you uncover the delete button. Then on top of that the program’s icon doesn’t get removed until you refresh or reopen the DVR menu so it looks like the program was not actually deleted.

The sorting and ordering of programs is bad too, and there is no summary or title for each recording until you actually select and go into the show you are going to watch.

Icons for many shows make no sense. The interface looks like something from ten years ago.

Then there is the touted commercial removal. Well it’s great when it works which is about 20% of the time or less.

There is no way to quickly fast forward or rewind.

And then there is the clincher... you cannot watch recordings in progress. I mean WTF. Evidently it’s been a bug on and off for more than two years...

So the TiVos will be staying in my house for the foreseeable future unless I decide to try Emby and like it.

craigr

Edited for fat fingers in original post from my iPhone.


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## k2ue (May 9, 2002)

Try Channels DVR, it allows a mix of OTA, cablecard, and TVE streaming, so it is quite flexible, and solves the commercial deletion better by marking the commercials, so when auto-skip is inaccurate you can manually FR or FF to over-ride. Their web app puts all of recording management in one place, and deleting while viewing works well. I use a mix of Shield and Fire TV clients, and it supports remote viewing so we don't need a duplicate system at out summer house where there is no good OTA. And especially on the Shield the picture quality is better on 4K TV's than any TiVo box we've owned. So we have locals OTA on the same tuner you have, Spectrum local news on a CC HDHomeRun, and other cable fare (like news and sports) on TVE.

I prefer Emby over Plex, but it has no commercial removal at all, so you need to set that up as a separate operation. Once we found Channels DVR it was the better solution.


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

The Plex DVR in our household was quickly rejected for similar reasons. My Household has no issue navigating the Plex libraries to find something to watch, but the DVR just didn't make the grade. 

I also went the went the Channels DVR route recently and it has been accepted by the household. Your HDHomerun Quattro will work with Channels DVR should you decide to give it a try.


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## dadrepus (Jan 4, 2012)

I'll admit that the dvr is a work in progress but I do like the live tv feature. I can be at my computer and put the news on Plex in a corner of the screen while I work. Very cool, even when I am out of town I can connect to Plex and watch all the local stations, or just listen.


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## Wayoverpar1 (May 19, 2017)

My wife tends to be a tuner hog so I use my 2 tuner HDHomerun to record a few programs that I like. I agree that the Plex DVR is a work in progress, but a great addition to Tivo when extra tuners are needed. I also keep my series recordings on Plex.


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## CIR-Engineering (Sep 24, 2017)

dadrepus said:


> I'll admit that the dvr is a work in progress but I do like the live tv feature. I can be at my computer and put the news on Plex in a corner of the screen while I work. Very cool, even when I am out of town I can connect to Plex and watch all the local stations, or just listen.





Wayoverpar1 said:


> My wife tends to be a tuner hog so I use my 2 tuner HDHomerun to record a few programs that I like. I agree that the Plex DVR is a work in progress, but a great addition to Tivo when extra tuners are needed. I also keep my series recordings on Plex.


The best thing I have found about the PLEX DVR is the way it stores shows with good naming on my NAS so they can automatically scraped by Kodi. I'm thinking I may use it to record all the kids shows so the bulk of that can stay off the TiVo hard drives (also parity protected).

Best,
craigr


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## CIR-Engineering (Sep 24, 2017)

k2ue said:


> Try Channels DVR, it allows a mix of OTA, cablecard, and TVE streaming, so it is quite flexible, and solves the commercial deletion better by marking the commercials, so when auto-skip is inaccurate you can manually FR or FF to over-ride. Their web app puts all of recording management in one place, and deleting while viewing works well. I use a mix of Shield and Fire TV clients, and it supports remote viewing so we don't need a duplicate system at out summer house where there is no good OTA. And especially on the Shield the picture quality is better on 4K TV's than any TiVo box we've owned. So we have locals OTA on the same tuner you have, Spectrum local news on a CC HDHomeRun, and other cable fare (like news and sports) on TVE.
> 
> I prefer Emby over Plex, but it has no commercial removal at all, so you need to set that up as a separate operation. Once we found Channels DVR it was the better solution.





reneg said:


> The Plex DVR in our household was quickly rejected for similar reasons. My Household has no issue navigating the Plex libraries to find something to watch, but the DVR just didn't make the grade.
> 
> I also went the went the Channels DVR route recently and it has been accepted by the household. Your HDHomerun Quattro will work with Channels DVR should you decide to give it a try.


Thanks guys! I'll definitely give Channels a shot after I look into it.

One thing I demand is that there is no transcoding. That's what drew me to the PLEX option with the Shield TV's. My theater screen is 128" wide and video quality once transcoded looks terrible when blown up to that size.

Best 
craigr


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## dadrepus (Jan 4, 2012)

Wayoverpar1 said:


> My wife tends to be a tuner hog so I use my 2 tuner HDHomerun to record a few programs that I like. I agree that the Plex DVR is a work in progress, but a great addition to Tivo when extra tuners are needed. I also keep my series recordings on Plex.


I also keep my shows from Tivo that I want to archive, on Plex. Since I'm on Te3 and no auto skip, I use kttmg to grab the shows, cut the commercials, and plop them into Plex. My wife is much happier she doesn't have to FF. I have never thought these 2 products to be in competition for my time or money. It would be much more work to take one of my bluerays or dvds and encode them and then send them to Tivo so they can be shown across the house to all my Tivos, let alone watch while I'm out of town. Both products are compatible.


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## tommiet (Oct 28, 2005)

OK...Did I miss something? "Channels DVR" is $8.00 a month for a system that is probably a step down from TiVo. Why pay them 8 bucks a month when you get can TiVo for a little more? Plus you will need to buy hardware to get it to work and run it on a computer 24x7. OUCH!

I'm not a big TiVo fan... but its the ONLY 4 (or 6) tuner DVR available in my area.

What did I miss?????


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

tommiet said:


> OK...Did I miss something? "Channels DVR" is $8.00 a month for a system that is probably a step down from TiVo. Why pay them 8 bucks a month when you get can TiVo for a little more? Plus you will need to buy hardware to get it to work and run it on a computer 24x7. OUCH!
> 
> I'm not a big TiVo fan... but its the ONLY 4 (or 6) tuner DVR available in my area.
> 
> What did I miss?????


You didn't miss a thing. Yes, Channels DVR is 8 bucks a month or 80 per year. I still use Tivos with lifetime service to record OTA stations that are archived to Plex. For cable channels, I use Fubo TV and HDHomerun for OTA stations. That combo gives the household most of what they got when we had with Tivo + Xfinity. I'm saving lots of money getting rid of Xfinity compared to the cost of Fubo + Channels DVR. For me, I'd had enough of getting gouged by Xfinity, and looked for an alternative that was less expensive and was acceptable to my household.


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## tommiet (Oct 28, 2005)

reneg said:


> You didn't miss a thing. Yes, Channels DVR is 8 bucks a month or 80 per year. I still use Tivos with lifetime service to record OTA stations that are archived to Plex. For cable channels, I use Fubo TV and HDHomerun for OTA stations. That combo gives the household most of what they got when we had with Tivo + Xfinity. I'm saving lots of money getting rid of Xfinity compared to the cost of Fubo + Channels DVR. For me, I'd had enough of getting gouged by Xfinity, and looked for an alternative that was less expensive and was acceptable to my household.


Now that helps! Thanks for the explanation.


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## spiderpumpkin (Dec 1, 2017)

The $8 a month I pay for Channels DVR is well with it just for the Gracenote guide data. 

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk


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## CIR-Engineering (Sep 24, 2017)

tommiet said:


> OK...Did I miss something? "Channels DVR" is $8.00 a month for a system that is probably a step down from TiVo. Why pay them 8 bucks a month when you get can TiVo for a little more? Plus you will need to buy hardware to get it to work and run it on a computer 24x7. OUCH!
> 
> I'm not a big TiVo fan... but its the ONLY 4 (or 6) tuner DVR available in my area.
> 
> What did I miss?????


The only thing you may have missed in my original post is that I already have ALL of the hardware required and a PLEX Pass Lifetime subscription. The only component I had to purchase was a used HDHOMERUN Quatro ($100) to test PLEX DVR. I figured it was worth the test and some people rave about PLEX DVR so I decided it might be worth it.



CIR-Engineering said:


> So I realized that I already had everything I need to run PLEX DVR last week; a powerful NAS with PLEX Server, PLEX Pass, an NVidia Shield on every TV, all on a wired network. The only thing I was missing was a tuner so I picked up an HDHOMERUN Quattro to try it all out...


Looking into Channels DVR and finding that there is no lifetime subscription option has miffed me a bit. I really wanted free or very cheap. You get a free trial month with Channels though so I will probably try it. I've also found some other options for the DVR software. If I really wind up liking Channels there is an $80 per year option too.

I figured I could sell my BOLT, BOLT VOX, and two TiVo Mini VOX units (all have lifetime) and get some good money out of them. TiVo has been making decisions lately that I really hate like the pre-roll adds and adds in the Hydra interface (I have stayed on TE3 because of this). I think TiVo is doomed, but after my experience with PLEX DVR I do think TiVo still has time left.

Another thing is that the OTA tuners in the TiVo BOLT's are not that great. Honestly they work well enough for me, but I am less than 7 miles from the towers and have an excellent OTA antenna that I built myself. Even with this, during a given program there will usually be at least a moment or two with pixelation and a momentary audio drop. I know OTA will never be perfect, but I have never seen this when watching on any other OTA tuner, just the TiVo BOLT's. My old TiVo Primere and TiVo HD units never had this problem either. So far all recordings from the HDHOMERUN have been perfect as well.

I will most likely wind up waiting some months and then trying PLEX DVR again. They are working hard on it and I've been tracking the improvements. I bet that within a year the PLEX DVR will be family friendly and may be able to replace the TiVo's.

I'd love to try an EDGE OTA, but it's cost prohibitive to me for what I consider antiquated hardware right from the start. Also, if we do get ATSC 3.0 in Chicago than it's a lot of money spent for a unit that is not capable. The HDHOMERUN units are cheap and stackable. Two HDHOMERUN Quatros and I have 8 OTA tuners just like with the BOLT's and the cost will be around $200 for them both.

Lots to consider,
craigr


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## tivolocity (Aug 12, 2002)

I've used both. Plex is a great media center, but a terrible DVR (at the time). I continually had transcoding issues, among other things. Plus, the UI is very cluttered, with recorded shows ending up too deep in the navigation. Channels is a much better DVR solution. It just works. I was initially irritated by the price too. I used Channels for about a year with Apple TVs as the client. It was a great solution. A combination of circumstances forced me back to TiVo. If/when TiVo goes down in flames, I would gladly go back to Channels if circumstances permit. I may give Channels another try just to see how well the TV Everywhere ( Channels - TV Everywhere ) feature works with Xfinity.


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## CIR-Engineering (Sep 24, 2017)

Well Plex just updated the server software again today and you can now at least watch a recording in progress.

Progress!

If they at had a list view for recordings and a show episode title or description I would probably consider Plex more seriously.

I think they will continue to improve.

craigr


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## just4tivo (Dec 9, 2015)

CIR-Engineering said:


> So the TiVos will be staying in my house for the foreseeable future unless I decide to try Emby and like it.


That's the thing with TiVo and how TiVo made it's mark... EZ learning curve and comfy UI, well until Hydra.

Cable was easy then we went to Dish Network and the wife wasn't happy. Then down the road we switched to DirecTV and I got lots of hard looks.

When AT&T bought DTV and they jacked their prices we moved to Roamio OTAs.

That transition was smooth and my wife wanted to know why we didn't get TiVo years ago.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Hydra is plenty comfy and a modern interface.


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## just4tivo (Dec 9, 2015)

tenthplanet said:


> Hydra is plenty comfy and a modern interface.


Opinions vary...


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

just4tivo said:


> Opinions vary...


Well of course, if we all agreed on things the Tivo Coffeehouse would be dead in a week


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## dadrepus (Jan 4, 2012)

I didn't mind the hydra interface but we rolled back as soon as the pre-rolled ads were announced. Didn't even wait for it to happen. I've never tried to watch Plex while recording as my server was a Mac mini and didn't have enough oomph. Might try it now (different server) and if it is watchable then we might switch to that. With the Tivo, if my wife seriously wants to watch something while recording we have to FF through the commercials. Does Plex cut commercials out while recording or after it finishes? I assume after, but it would be nifty if it was during.


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## adam1991 (Nov 7, 2016)

CIR-Engineering said:


> Lots to consider


I had to poke in here.

Although it's on my radar, I'm not a Tivo user. Long time ReplayTV user, then switched to Windows Media Center. I have to tell you, those were/are premium user experiences.

I know WMC will go away for me someday, so probably once a month I head to Weaknees and price out an OTA Roamio, or even something newer. (I'm OTA only.)

WMC recently exhibited a weird burp (first show of the night stops recording at 5:33, with no errors and the history shows all is OK). So I'm likely looking at a reload, maybe. sigh. (Hope it's not the tuner.)

Similar to you, I've had everything available to turn on Plex DVR for quite some time, including the HDHR tuner. So a couple of weeks ago I gave it a try.

And, other than your comment about "no good way to FF or rewind"--it works great on Fire TV with 30 skip/10 back--you are spot on with your observations. And when I installed it, commercial skip wasn't working. Turns out they broke it back in February or so and it was still not fixed. Really? Really?

Based on some recommendations from the WMC forum, I then tried Emby. It requires their Premier subscription; why not, I threw five bucks at it. That lasted about a day. While I'm sure it had some good things going for it (Gracenote), it also had some bad things going for it. No thanks. My WMC works fine, including auto commercial skip.

Channels had been on my radar for some time, so I then decided to give it a go. I gave it two days, and same thing--no thanks.

It seems every one of these things is at the same overall level of suckiness. How can that be?? Tivo and ReplayTV and WMC have been around for a long time; can the UX knowledge of those pieces be lost to the mists of history already??? Clearly so.

As well, I had been paying attention to Tablo for quite some time. I've known for a couple of years just based on feature sets and watching the user forum that it's nothing but a train wreck.

Anyway, after dumping Channels (at least their first month of DVR is free), I went back to Plex--and found out that they finally fixed commercial skip. OK, let's put it back on.

Out of all of them, for MY purposes, Plex sucks the least. Please, though--that's not saying much. The bar is pretty low.

Plex doesn't skip commercials; it cuts them. My God, how stupid. Channels skips them, but doesn't have a good way to turn skip off for any given show while you're watching the show. Or was that Emby. They all blend together.

I did go back to Weaknees and threw a bunch of stuff in my cart just to look again. I should probably check out Ebay as well. Anyway.

My WMC is still working, and it's summer with nothing on I care about, so there's that. I have plenty of time to play with Plex. But the more I get into it, the more spot on your comments get. Seriously.

That all being said, I'm recording a LOT less now than I used to. Most of what I watch is on Hulu the next day, ad-free. All I need a DVR for is CBS, plus odd things like The Blacklist. (And even that shows up on Netflix after the season is over...). So maybe, just maybe, Plex will be "good enough" for the limited need I truly have for a DVR.

We'll see.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

Take a look at Amazon's Recast. Prime Day is coming.


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## adam1991 (Nov 7, 2016)

Oh--and I don't do any business with Amazon. Went cold turkey 18 months ago. Zero regrets, and zero need for them in my life.

My wife is another matter. I can't get her to give up her precious Prime...

(A few times over the last 18 months when I bought from Ebay, the seller simply bought it from Amazon and shipped it to me as a "gift". I promptly fired back and demanded a return, and explained why--including that such arbitrage directly violates Ebay's terms--and each time was refunded immediately with no hassles, including the listings that specifically said "no returns". That has died down all the way lately.)


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

Have your wife get you a Recast. Prime Day is coming.


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## ElT60 (May 27, 2020)

wizwor said:


> Take a look at Amazon's Recast. Prime Day is coming.


 Prime Day; not for a decent while. It will be later this year, but not the same date as usual. Amazon is reportedly moving it back to Fall ( probably September. ) [ and if major events happen to pop up, it could slide again. ]

That said. Recast was on a flash sale yesterday for a substantive amount off ( just happened to be looking on some comparisons for someone else. ) . Perhaps Amazon shadowing Tivo's discounts for the end of that sale.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

My guess is that Prime Day will come before September. Back to School Sale on steroids.


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## adam1991 (Nov 7, 2016)

Prime Day. YAY, cheap Chinese junk! GET MOAR JUNK!

Thank you, no.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

adam1991 said:


> Prime Day. YAY, cheap Chinese junk! GET MOAR JUNK!
> 
> Thank you, no.


You may want to take a look under the hood of your WMC.


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## adam1991 (Nov 7, 2016)

wizwor said:


> You may want to take a look under the hood of your WMC.


Yes, the rig I built 9 years ago and which is still working, which I haven't replaced.

The rig for which I sourced every component from a local small business--not a big box store or a behemoth, faceless, online presence. It's fascinating how the world works. You can't change everything, but you can do your part. Added up, it makes a difference.

Hey, iPhone users--take a look in your hands, and then take a look at the masks on your face right now, and the faces of everyone around you--that is, everyone who isn't hunkered down like a hermit.

Did you know that back in October, Samsung shuttered its last Chinese manufacturing operation? They now have nothing in China.

Anyway, back to my choice to dump Amazon 18 months ago:

Dirty dealing in the $175 billion Amazon Marketplace - The Verge

Amazon to eBay Arbitrage: Everything You Need to Know

The Ruthless Reality of Amazon's One-Day Shipping

Inside Amazon's Warehouse - The Morning Call

7 reasons why I refuse to buy anything on Amazon

Inside Documents Show How Amazon Chose Speed Over Safety in Building Its Delivery Network


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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

CIR-Engineering said:


> I figured I could sell my BOLT, BOLT VOX, and two TiVo Mini VOX units (all have lifetime) and get some good money out of them. TiVo has been making decisions lately that I really hate like the pre-roll adds and adds in the Hydra interface (I have stayed on TE3 because of this). I think TiVo is doomed, but after my experience with PLEX DVR I do think TiVo still has time left.


A bit off subject but I see you are in the Chicago area and use OTA? So you know what happened with the flooding of the Willis Tower, how many channels were out. WGBO was not affected (the 66-x channels). They even created a new subchannel, 66-6, and let "The CW" use it while power was being restored. My question is this, before the flooding and even during, WGBO was one of my strongest signal OTA channels. But now AFTER power restored to the tower and everything supposedly back to normal WGBO is pretty much unusable, for me at least, very weak signal, tiling or nothing a good amount of the time. Have you noticed anything like that with WGBO (if you watch it)? Since they were up during the power outage they must be broadcasting from somewhere else. I do see you are close to the towers (but maybe not to wherever WGBO broadcasts from), am curious it came in well for you before and after the outage, it got bad for me AFTER power was restored to Willis. Maybe they screwed something up when they added the 66-6 subchannel for the CW.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

For me, Plex has always been a disappointment. Like most free-ish, gray market apps, it seems to always be a little broken. Despite this, I keep trying to love it -- hoping each release will reward my patience. I own three HDHomerun network tuners and a Lifetime Plex Pass. Having some time on my hands with all this social distancing and self isolation, I have been refreshing some or my technology. Really, more like rationalizing. Most like simplifying. Except where I complicated things. I boxed up most of my DVRs. I have two Roamio/OTAs in service. I replaced a couple with Minis. I have a couple of televisions and all of my Echo Shows running off a Recast. All of my televisions have a FireTV Stick attached.

So far, things are pretty good. HDHomeRuns were easily discovered and configured by Plex. Live TV is OK. I could live with it. The various clients are giving me fits (as expected). 

As far as I can tell, the TiVo Plex app will not access Live TV via the Plex Server. This is not as stupid as it sounds. One of the reasons for looking at Plex again is that I am interested in installing an antenna dedicated to one broadcaster in Portland Maine. Plex will let me integrate my antenna farm into a single EPG. Kind of a dry run for ATSC 3.0.

The Roku app on my TCL Roku TV had to be removed and reinstalled.

The Plex app on my Fire TV sticks works, but I can't figure out how to disable captions. 

The tuners sit on a switch in my bedroom which is connected to my kitchen via premise wiring where an AC router streams to the wireless devices. So far, no pain associated with that.


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## convergent (Jan 4, 2007)

spiderpumpkin said:


> The $8 a month I pay for Channels DVR is well with it just for the Gracenote guide data.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk


The Channels developers are very active and provide great support. I don't mind paying for that, and very good guide data. Its also a single fee for the account, no matter how many devices and servers you choose to run. You basically get unlimited tuners and can through multiple HDHRs and multiple TVE sources at it. It would be nice if there was a lifetime option, but think about... lifetime is not good for long term support and probably helped with Tivo's troubles.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I just started using the Plex DVR on Christmas eve. That is when I got an HDHomeRun FLex 4K. I liked it so I got an HDHomeRun Prime on New Year's Eve. The Plex DVR of course isn't as good as TiVo, But since I don't watch broadcast content like I used to it will work for me.

I took another step today, moving away from using my TiVos. I had moved my CC from a Bolt (on FiOS) to the HDHomeRun Prime on New Year's Eve. But today I took the step of pairing the cable Card. So my plan is to move away from my Bolts and ROamios for FiOS and OTA content and use Plex DVR instead. So far plex has been working well recording my content. I already had two Plex machines in use. One for UHD content and one for HD content (from TiVos) and music. So I am using the HD/Music plex server for teh Plex DVR. Since I had already been using that with kmttg to transfer my TiVo recordings.

I have been using Plex regularly on my Shield TVs for a long time now. So it's just a matter of me selecting my recordings from my HDHomeRuns. Since I setup folders specifically for my recordings from the HDHomeRun devices. And I had separate folders for all my TiVo recordings.

I am using a 1TB NVMe drive(970 Evo Plus) for all the recordings and then I can transfer them later, to their permanent location. To the 18TB of storage, from one of the three platter Hard drives, in the system.


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## KungFuCow (May 6, 2004)

k2ue said:


> Try Channels DVR, it allows a mix of OTA, cablecard, and TVE streaming, so it is quite flexible, and solves the commercial deletion better by marking the commercials, so when auto-skip is inaccurate you can manually FR or FF to over-ride. Their web app puts all of recording management in one place, and deleting while viewing works well. I use a mix of Shield and Fire TV clients, and it supports remote viewing so we don't need a duplicate system at out summer house where there is no good OTA. And especially on the Shield the picture quality is better on 4K TV's than any TiVo box we've owned. So we have locals OTA on the same tuner you have, Spectrum local news on a CC HDHomeRun, and other cable fare (like news and sports) on TVE.
> 
> I prefer Emby over Plex, but it has no commercial removal at all, so you need to set that up as a separate operation. Once we found Channels DVR it was the better solution.


Im late to this party but another recommendation for Channels. I think for what youre doing, it will be a good fit.

Plex is my least favorite home video application. Emby is my go to and has been for years. Channels is pretty good, tho especially if youre recording stuff from a tuner.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I got a second HDHomeRun Prime from ebay yesterday. For only $54 shipped(much cheaper than the $150 I paid for a new one on Amazon). The Plex DVR seems to be working well with all ten tuners I have now. 3 from two Primes and 4 from the Flex 4K. I had ten concurrent recordings going last night with zero issues.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

aaronwt said:


> I got a second HDHomeRun Prime from ebay yesterday. For only $54 shipped(much cheaper than the $150 I paid for a new one on Amazon). The Plex DVR seems to be working well with all ten tuners I have now. 3 from two Primes and 4 from the Flex 4K. I had ten concurrent recordings going last night with zero issues.


Just curious: did you actually find 10 different things simultaneously airing on TV that were even worth watching or were you just stress-testing your set-up to see if you could record 10 different channels at the same time?


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

He watches a LOT of TV.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

NashGuy said:


> Just curious: did you actually find 10 different things simultaneously airing on TV that were even worth watching or were you just stress-testing your set-up to see if you could record 10 different channels at the same time?


I was just testing it. I only had four of my scheduled shows actually recording at the time.

Most of what I record, I won't watch. But I want a large variety of things to choose from when I do sit down to watch broadcast TV. And the largest percentage of what I record is news programs. So that is why I use a 1TB NVMe drive(Samsung 970 EVO plus) for my news folder as well as for the Plex install location. The other recordings with sports, movies, and regular TV shows go on to platter hard drives.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

k2ue said:


> Try Channels DVR, it allows a mix of *OTA*, cablecard, and TVE streaming


Got anywhere that talks about their OTA support? I've only seen superficial in-passing mentions of OTA support with nothing concrete. Don't have a cable provider and don't want one, but do want to record local news OTA.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

DocNo said:


> Got anywhere that talks about their OTA support? I've only seen superficial in-passing mentions of OTA support with nothing concrete. Don't have a cable provider and don't want one, but do want to record local news OTA.


Just plug in an HD HomeRun tuner. I have two. They worked OK with Plex but I primarily use them with Channels DVR now. Both found the tuners immediately on my network, and seamlessly downloaded relevant guide data. Plex setup instructions are [here]. There's not much to talk about because it just works.

And as far as I know Plex doesn't support high-maintenance sources like internet streaming of live TV. Channels DVR does, and most forum posts are about all the tinkering that goes into setting those up. OTA is nothing like that. It's almost just plug-and-play, though you may have to click around once or twice to block weak stations and favorite others; simple stuff like that.

HD HomeRun Flex 4K https://www.amazon.com/SiliconDust-HDHomeRun-Flex-ATSC-NextGen/dp/B092GCN9NL/

HD HomeRun Flex Quatro Amazon.com: SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex Quatro 4 x ATSC Tuners - HDFX-4US : Electronics

HD HomeRun Flex Duo https://www.amazon.com/SiliconDust-HDHomeRun-Flex-ATSC-Tuners/dp/B092KM482V/


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

DocNo said:


> Got anywhere that talks about their OTA support? I've only seen superficial in-passing mentions of OTA support with nothing concrete. Don't have a cable provider and don't want one, but do want to record local news OTA.


I've been using the Plex DVR since the beginning of the year. With a 4 tuner Flex 4K and two 3 tuner Primes. One prime has a cable card on FiOS. And the other uses clear QAM so the channels show up the same as my Flex 4K on OTA. The Plex DVR has worked great using the ten tuners, in the three HDHomeRun boxes. I have not even missed using my TiVos these past three months.

My recordings from OTA and cable have been great. And I'm recording twenty to thirty hours of programming every day. Between both cable and OTA.

I did change things up with my drives for Plex DVR. I have a 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe drive that is used for my Plex install location. And I also use it for my news recordings. Then I use two internal platter drives and one external USB 3.0 drive for all my other recordings. I was initially going to move things from the NVMe drive. But with everything I was recording that would fill up to quick. With the way it is now, I don't need to mess with anything. It has been completely automatic. Well, except for my UHD Olympic recordings which I manually set.

Plex DVR has been working extremely well for me. It has easily exceeded my expectations.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

aaronwt said:


> Plex DVR has been working extremely well for me. It has easily exceeded my expectations.


I recently bit the bullet and bought a lifetime Plex Pass and began using it as my OTA DVR in conjunction with my little 2-tuner HDHomeRun Connect. I was probably influenced a bit by your recent recommendations. I had tried out Plex DVR a bit in years past, with mixed results. They've definitely improved it since.

Overall, I like it but I have had some teething issues, including a couple of missed recordings. At least one of those seems to be because the Plex Media Server on my Mac had crashed the previous night and I didn't notice it wasn't running the next day. So I used Automator to essentially create a script to kill and restart PMS every morning after I have my Mac scheduled to wake up. Also finding that lots of recordings seem to start a few seconds after the show has begun (which was never an issue with the MythTV DVR system I used to use), so now I tend to have my recordings set to begin 1 minute early.

As for the UI presentation of live and DVR TV in the Plex app on my Apple TV, I have mixed feelings. It's OK, although there are several tweaks that I would make. 

The ad skip feature is nice but is pretty hit-or-miss in terms of correctly marking the beginning and end of ad breaks. So far, it's overly conservative -- it never wants to jump over any actual show but it tends to leave a lot of ads in, although this varies. In some shows, it's perfect; in others, there are entire ad breaks that it misses. I just inserted a different comskip.ini file into PMS today, one that's supposed to be better optimized for US OTA TV. We'll see how it does...


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

NashGuy said:


> I recently bit the bullet and bought a lifetime Plex Pass and began using it as my OTA DVR in conjunction with my little 2-tuner HDHomeRun Connect. I was probably influenced a bit by your recent recommendations. I had tried out Plex DVR a bit in years past, with mixed results. They've definitely improved it since.
> 
> Overall, I like it but I have had some teething issues, including a couple of missed recordings. At least one of those seems to be because the Plex Media Server on my Mac had crashed the previous night and I didn't notice it wasn't running the next day. So I used Automator to essentially create a script to kill and restart PMS every morning after I have my Mac scheduled to wake up. Also finding that lots of recordings seem to start a few seconds after the show has begun (which was never an issue with the MythTV DVR system I used to use), so now I tend to have my recordings set to begin 1 minute early.
> 
> ...


I've found that the Plex DVR ad skip has been more accurate than my TiVos were. Although nowhere near as accurate as it needs to be. Which is why I don't have auto skip enabled. I have it set where I need to manually select the skip button to skip.

I use Plex DVR on a Windows PC and, so far, have never run into it crashing. I do run Plex as a Service. With a program called "PmsService". Which runs in the background. So I don't need to be logged into the PC. And so the Plex service will automatically start after a re-boot of the PC. Like after it applies updates. No idea if there is a Mac version.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

aaronwt said:


> I've found that the Plex DVR ad skip has been more accurate than my TiVos were. Although nowhere near as accurate as it needs to be. Which is why I don't have auto skip enabled. I have it set where I need to manually select the skip button to skip.


Yeah, I also have it set to pop up the Skip Ads button. In case you're interested in trying out any alternate comskip.ini files, see here.



aaronwt said:


> I use Plex DVR on a Windows PC and, so far, have never run into it crashing. I do run Plex as a Service. With a program called "PmsService". Which runs in the background. So I don't need to be logged into the PC. And so the Plex service will automatically start after a re-boot of the PC. Like after it applies updates. No idea if there is a Mac version.


Yeah, I also have the PMS app configured to run in the background on my Mac. (Just shows up as a tiny icon in the menu strip at the top of the Mac screen, sort of like the old Windows system tray.) It's also one of the apps that I have set in Mac System Preferences to auto-launch when the computer reboots. I actually decided earlier today to try having my Mac auto shutdown late every night (instead of auto-sleeping) and then auto boot-up early every morning (instead of auto-waking). Just good for overall system hygiene, I think, to do the daily reboot. Frees up RAM, etc.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

NashGuy said:


> Yeah, I also have it set to pop up the Skip Ads button. In case you're interested in trying out any alternate comskip.ini files, see here.
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I also have the PMS app configured to run in the background on my Mac. (Just shows up as a tiny icon in the menu strip at the top of the Mac screen, sort of like the old Windows system tray.) It's also one of the apps that I have set in Mac System Preferences to auto-launch when the computer reboots. I actually decided earlier today to try having my Mac auto shutdown late every night (instead of auto-sleeping) and then auto boot-up early every morning (instead of auto-waking). Just good for overall system hygiene, I think, to do the daily reboot. Frees up RAM, etc.


In the Plex DVR FAQ they say to not configure a PC to go to sleep. Since Plex won't necessarily wake it up for a recording. Maybe it is different with a MAC, but for a PC they say not to enable it. So I have my Plex DVR PC set to never sleep.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

aaronwt said:


> In the Plex DVR FAQ they say to not configure a PC to go to sleep. Since Plex won't necessarily wake it up for a recording. Maybe it is different with a MAC, but for a PC they say not to enable it. So I have my Plex DVR PC set to never sleep.


You can easily set a Mac to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day in System Preferences. So that's what I had been doing for years. And then recently I had created a daily time-triggered script (created using Apple's Automator app) to shut down then start back up PMS every day, a few minutes after the Mac woke up. But, as I say, now I've got System Preferences set to completely shut down the Mac every night then boot it up in the morning and I have PMS as one of the apps set to auto-launch upon boot up.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

NashGuy said:


> You can easily set a Mac to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day in System Preferences. So that's what I had been doing for years. And then recently I had created a daily time-triggered script (created using Apple's Automator app) to shut down then start back up PMS every day, a few minutes after the Mac woke up. But, as I say, now I've got System Preferences set to completely shut down the Mac every night then boot it up in the morning and I have PMS as one of the apps set to auto-launch upon boot up.


I can't do that with my Plex DVR PC, because I have so many things recording daily. It's rare that there is an hour period that is free from something being recorded on my Plex DVR.

You did mention earlier how plex had crashed on you. I got my Plex DVR to crash this evening. Well maybe not crash, but it had stopped recording.
I had picked up a third HDHomeRun Prime from eBay. For only $38 after shipping  . I received this evening and was testing it out. So I had tried to get thirteen concurrent recordings going between my three Primes and the Flex 4K. It got up to twelve recordings, but wouldn't do a thirteenth one. And on the 8PM hour, when all the recordings stopped, is when it seemed to choke. Since it was running the commercial skip on everything. Everything that was recorded did show up properly, but for a few minutes I couldn't access the Plex DVR. While it was simultaneously running, the commercial skip on the twelve recordings.

And the two recordings that were set to start at 8PM, did not initiate. Since I did not have them set to allow for partial airings. They were news recordings and I typically have those set with the partial airing option enabled. But I never set those two shows for some reason. So once I enabled the partial recording option, those recordings started up.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

aaronwt said:


> So I had tried to get thirteen concurrent recordings going between my three Primes and the Flex 4K. It got up to twelve recordings, but wouldn't do a thirteenth one. And on the 8PM hour, when all the recordings stopped, is when it seemed to choke.


LOL. Well at least it crashed on you for good reason. Whatever caused it crash on me recently I can guarantee you was a far, far less onerous workload.

Oh, BTW, since you're using a Flex 4K with it -- has Plex yet gotten Dolby licensing to support AC-4 audio on ATSC 3.0? Last I read, they had not, so ATSC 3.0 channels still had no sound in Plex.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

NashGuy said:


> LOL. Well at least it crashed on you for good reason. Whatever caused it crash on me recently I can guarantee you was a far, far less onerous workload.
> 
> Oh, BTW, since you're using a Flex 4K with it -- has Plex yet gotten Dolby licensing to support AC-4 audio on ATSC 3.0? Last I read, they had not, so ATSC 3.0 channels still had no sound in Plex.


When I checked last week, AC-4 audio was still not working with Plex.


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