Announcing SageTV/Phoenix Channel for Plex Media Server

[bialio]

When I launch the Phoenix channel, most of the views it's pointing at by default return no results. They do of course show plenty of items in Phoenix as well as BMT. What logs do I need to see why they are empty?

[mkanet]

Lately, I've been using this plugin quite a bit; especially since I couldnt get the other plugin to work. I also submitted a request to add icons for this channel instead of the generic icons currently.

[mkanet]

Im no expert. But, I'll try to help. Are you certain you're "Connected" and logged into to your PLEX server? Are your TV shows at least showing up (and playable) under the normal PLEX library/TV shows section?

If so, are you CERTAIN you entered the right information when you configured this plugin? IP/DNS name, port, username/password (for your SageTV Jetty web server).

Originally Posted by bialio

When I launch the Phoenix channel, most of the views it's pointing at by default return no results. They do of course show plenty of items in Phoenix as well as BMT. What logs do I need to see why they are empty?

[ptaylor]

I've just found this plugin and customized the menu to only have the Unwatched TV view, as detailed in earlier posts.

Is there any way to mark items as Watched (in Plex) after you finish watching them? Any other way to interact with the files (Delete them, etc)?

[Edited: Read back a few pages and saw your comments about the Plex Channel's limited functionality, so I now know you can't yet mark files as watched or unwatched on a channel, so that's probably the same for deleting media)

I'm running this on a FireTV and was hoping to have a single view (Plex + SageTV, in one).

Thanks,
Paul

[pingmustard]

This looks like a pretty cool plugin. I've been able to my android and ipad to load up content from sagetv. However, I have 2 questions:

1. Does skip actually work? I tried the 30sec fast forward and it seems any click beyond the first is unstable, leading to video hang (tested on android and ipads). Is there a dependency on VLC version (if so, please let me know what version I should use).

2. I'm able to stream when I access plex from browser, android, ipad, but it fails on Plex Home Theater app on my desktop. I get this error:

"Unable to play media
Please check that this file exists and the necessary drive is mounted"

All plugins on my sageTV server are up to date...

Any idea as to cause/resolutions?

Thanks!

[jonnydeath]

Originally Posted by pingmustard

1. Does skip actually work? I tried the 30sec fast forward and it seems any click beyond the first is unstable, leading to video hang (tested on android and ipads). Is there a dependency on VLC version (if so, please let me know what version I should use).

I also have skip issues. In browser and plex iOS app, skip works when watching a show using the bmt scrapper. but the same show from from the phoenix channel does not.

Also. Why cant i use phoenix.view.primary.recordedmovies? I cant get my recorded movies to load any other way. I added a menu item with this, and it seems to work perfectly.

[massmanjr]

I have two 'video recording directories' setup in my Sage 'detailed setup' menu:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\Video
G:\TV_Recordings

For some reason this Phoenix Plex channel does not consistently pick up all the recordings and list them in the 'TV shows' section. I'm not sure what is causing this. Any suggestions?

[oldmike60]

I'd love to try this, but can't get started. All is in place, {localhost} entered and port 8080. But I don't know what to do about user name and PW. Tried my Plex ID and PW, no good. I had no idea that I even have a ID and PW on SAGE. Where can I find it? Searched System Info; not there.

I do get the Phoenix channel under Plex, so it is there, I just can't figure out the settings to kick it off.

Sorry to be so basic.

Mike

[oldmike60]

I decided that the PW and ID needed would be that for the Placeshifter server, so I set up those in that dialog and updated Plex server. In Plex Home Theater I get an icon for SAGE Search, but have not been able to get a hit. So it seems that I am closer, but the two are not yet swapping data. If there is a posting of step by step or checklist, etc, I would gladly follow that.

Environment:

WIN7-64 Home Premium on a clone PC
SAGE server is on same unit as Plex.
Plex working fine thru a Chromcast fob, controlled by my cell phone.
Comcast wifi/modem combo unit

[oldmike60]

So looked at all SAGE settings and noticed Placeshifter needed port 31099 forwarded to the SAGE server (10.0.0.3). Did so, no change.

I'm really stumbling in the dark here; would REALLY appreciate a bit of help.

[farscapesg1]

For those that are using this.. what kind of quality are you getting and what settings are you using? I've got the plugin set up and can access my SageTV recordings (usually 1080i recorded via a HDHomeRun Prime in .ts files). I've been tweaking settings on both the server side and the client and the loss of quality is very apparent when it tries to transcode Right now I've been testing an a Roku XS, iPad2, and iPhone 6 Plus with the Plex app, and so far my hopes of moving away from the SageTV extenders for recorded TV is diminishing. Not to mention I also have AirVideo on the IOS devices, and the transcoding quality using that is head over heels better than Plex's transcoding, using both their new and older transcoder... though the old plex transcoder works a lot better with the recorded TV then their new one.

Is the best option to convert these files using Handbrake or another program after they finish recording, instead of relying on Plex's transcoder? I've been testing the quality both on my virtual SageTV server (4 cores) as well as on a separate desktop with an i5 processor and really don't see a difference in quality or stability of viewing the content.

[oldmike60]

My last SAGE extender died, so had to move on. Tried WMC to XBOX 360s; terrible. Good at the server, but the extenders were unacceptable. Finally found TABLO, which like Silicon Dust has four tuners and LAN connected, but plays nicely with Plex, using a Tablo Channel. A scheduler, etc, are provided though rather primative as they are a start up finding their way. So a Tablo unit tucked in the garage wired to the LAN plus three Chromecasts again gives me one environment for both OTA recorded and downloaded. Even better: I can play all of it, even live TV, on my 4G phone while sitting in a mall waiting for my wife.

[farscapesg1]

Yeah... I really don't want to start down the path of yet another tv recording ecosystem

Honestly, I'm about to drop cable TV after the first of the year. We don't watch sports, so just about everything we watch can be handled by Hulu/Amazon/Netflix. I may just spend my Christmas vacation converting all my current recordings to .mp4 so Plex plays them over the Roku/IOS devices and be done with it. That and trying to tweak Plex a little more since the wife isn't happy with the layout. Years of SageTV has her and the kids spoiled, especially the 5 year old that can navigate SageTV from the startup menu to all of her shows without being able to read. I definitely have to figure out how to change the library icons in Plex for it to be a possibly replacement for SageTV

[wayner]

I am dabbling with Plex since it runs on so many platforms, especially iOS. But I find Plex struggles with Sage recordings, both OTA and HD-PVR. Like you I find that these recordings work much better in Air Video HD.

I watch a lot of sports so SkipFwd and SkipFwdx2 are crucial for me and these just don't work reliably for Sage recordings in Plex. And transcoding to MP4 isn't an option as I watch sports in near real-time.

[oldmike60]

I agree Plex could be more spiffy, and I have no thoughts on converting old SAGE OTA recordings, but apart from that, I returned three Rokus and went Chromecast all the way. Roku has fast fwd/rev; Plex has actual skips. I see no advantage of Roku over Chromecast and Plex. And it is portable; just waited for my wife in the Kohl's parking lot for an hour and watched some live news (Tablo) and a bit of a movie I had downloaded. You won't get that with Roku. I assume Plex has the same compliment of available channels, though I don't know since I don't do Netflix, etc, just OTA and download.

[farscapesg1]

When it comes to Roku/Chromecast/FireTV, to each his own I guess I've got a Roku XS right now as well as a Chromecast.. and the Chromecast gathers dust. My kids don't have tablets (yet) and I'm not going to hand them my phone everytime they want to watch something. I've also run into an issue where Chromecast only works with devices on the same wireless SSID (not just the same network). In my case, I have two wireless routers that have separate SSID's due to issues where one would stop communicating occasionally so my wife needed to be able to switch to the other network until I could get home to reset the router. If Chromecast is connected to SSID2 (upstairs with a better signal strength) and my phone that I've been carrying around all day is still connected to SSID1 (downstairs in my office)... the two devices refuse to see each other. Even though all the IP ranges are handled by a separate DHCP server (virtual server, nothing to do with wireless) From an IT perspective, this makes no sense to me why you would design something like that. If a device pulls a DHCP address... anything on that subnet should be able to communicate with it, not just devices connected to the exact same wireless router/SSID.

Anyways.. back to the topic I'm still tinkering with the settings, but I can say that the quality is completely unaffected whether I run it from a 4 vcpu virtual system on a server with an Xeon x3440 or separate machine with an i5 4570S processor. That tells me the transcoding isn't CPU bound in my case, and it is just a quality issue with how they transcode (since AirVideo on those same systems produces a nice, watchable picture). Just for grins, I fired up EMIT server (since I have an "old" Galaxy S3 phone) and the quality on that, while not quite the level of Airvideo, is even better than the the Plex transcoding.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by farscapesg1

That tells me the transcoding isn't CPU bound in my case, and it is just a quality issue with how they transcode (since AirVideo on those same systems produces a nice, watchable picture).

Have you tried posting to the Plex forums or had any discussions with Plex or Plex developers on this. I agree with your theory that the transcoder for Plex has issues, the question is "Will they do anything about this?"

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by oldmike60

So looked at all SAGE settings and noticed Placeshifter needed port 31099 forwarded to the SAGE server (10.0.0.3). Did so, no change.

I'm really stumbling in the dark here; would REALLY appreciate a bit of help.

My apologies... I've been absent from the forums for quite some time...

The username and password should be the username and password that you use for the SageTV WebServer. (default is sage/frey). You must have Phoenix installed as well (not necessarily the UI, but you need phoenix-core, and you need the Jetty Web Server plugin installed as well)

[AJ Bertelson]

Any idea on why I can play files through the web browser but not through the plex clients (android or the windows plex clients)?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by AJ Bertelson

Any idea on why I can play files through the web browser but not through the plex clients (android or the windows plex clients)?

I think I had to turn off Direct Play and Direct Stream in the Plex Setting -> Advanced -> Network section on Android.