Plex as a front end for Sage

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by wayner

I guess the only downsides to Plex are the same as many of the other options:

1. No live TV.
2. No currently recording shows.
3. No way to schedule shows.

Issue 3 can be solved, at least on a PC, by running the Sage Web UI.

But there are lots of upsides, especially if it works just as well on a Roku as then you are getting very cheap clients.

As mentioned in a link somewhere here, Plex is also one of the first 50 with an app for the new GoogleTV. Supposedly it works really well there too.

[tmiranda]

What are the pros and cons of this vs. the many other options out there? Plex is playing in a very crowded and fragmented market, why not wait until there is a clear winner? At this point I have no idea who the winners and losers will be

[briands]

Originally Posted by wayner

I guess the only downsides to Plex are the same as many of the other options:

1. No live TV.
2. No currently recording shows.
3. No way to schedule shows.

Issue 3 can be solved, at least on a PC, by running the Sage Web UI.

But there are lots of upsides, especially if it works just as well on a Roku as then you are getting very cheap clients.

For number 2... would this work if you had sage split up the recording into small files?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by briands

For number 2... would this work if you had sage split up the recording into small files?

Sage recordings are not locked from reading while recording (they ARE locked from writing). Therefore, as long as the player can playback from an incomplete file, it should still work. Some players can, some players can't. I'm not sure which side of the fence Plex is on.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

What are the pros and cons of this vs. the many other options out there? Plex is playing in a very crowded and fragmented market, why not wait until there is a clear winner? At this point I have no idea who the winners and losers will be

The main pros of Plex is it's a VERY nice looking UI. Absolutely gorgeous. As long as you include the episode name and number in the recording, plex will scan it and download the metadata for it.

I mentioned elsewhere, but when you click on a folder for a specific show, the theme music for that show starts playing automatically.

Plex will also scan your music, movies, pics, etc.

One cool thing about the media scanning - rather than just having a Movies menu item, you can have customize it any way you want. I can have a Menu Item called "My Movies" and one called "Bob's Movies" and "Sally's Movies"
This is nice because my son can immediately go to his folder and all his shows are in there. Nothing else he needs to do.

Cons -
I'm not sure about playing currently recorded shows. One of the biggest obstacles to it, regardless if it's even possible, is the recordings don't show up unless the directory is scanned. You can configure how frequently the directory is scanned though. I don't know what the drawbacks are if you scan too frequently. It'd be nice if you could have it scan more frequently during primetime and less frequently the rest of the time, but scanning too often could also interfere with the server if it's busy, so maybe it's best to scan less frequently during prime recording hours.

Another big con that is sure to be addressed at some point - the latest version there doesn't seem to be a way to read comskip files.

Personally, for me, I would like to run Plex just for my movies (I've got tons) and my archived TV. The sage app for Boxee isn't as nice looking as Plex, but it's more usable for recordings, doesn't need to be scanned, and has the support for comskip.

I wouldn't connect a Boxee and a Roku or GoogleTV to the same TV. I'd just get a Boxee and be done with it. But if I was going to use a PC client, I'd use Plex and Boxee together.

As far as why not wait? I like to play with the different options so I can see what's available. There may not be a single 'winner'. Multiple solutions may end up being required. At this point, I'm Ok with that as long as it's a single box and a single remote and it's easy to switch between the different solutions.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by ybrew

Cons -
I'm not sure about playing currently recorded shows. One of the biggest obstacles to it, regardless if it's even possible, is the recordings don't show up unless the directory is scanned. You can configure how frequently the directory is scanned though. I don't know what the drawbacks are if you scan too frequently. It'd be nice if you could have it scan more frequently during primetime and less frequently the rest of the time, but scanning too often could also interfere with the server if it's busy, so maybe it's best to scan less frequently during prime recording hours.

It should be possible to have SJQ kick off a scan off Plex whenever Sage has finished a recording. It may also be possible to have Sage send the metadata to Plex or have Plex read something like a .properties - there is a plugin for XBMC-Sage integration that works like this.

[gplasky]

You can set Plex to detect for added files instead of defining a time to scan. (Update my library when changes to my folders are detected.) The library will be updated when file system changes are detected. If you’re often making changes to your media folders (like downloading internet media directly to a Section folder), you may notice the Media Server is continually scanning. In this case, don’t select this option.

Gerry

[polen]

I went ahead and got the Plex for Android client on my Sony GTV and setup the Plex server on my SageTV server.

Will not play any Video_TS vob DVD rips. As noted on the app info in the market. I believe this is just a limitation of the Android client.

Played SD files recorded from HDHR fine, but no way to zoom video/aspect ratio.

Played HD 1080p, but video and/or sound would cut out every 4 or 5 seconds.

Played HD video made on my android phone just fine.

Played flv video files too.

Loaded all my photos but no slideshow and no list view options. Also, when I was done looking at a photo and went back to list, it went to the start of the list.

Loaded all my music and gave many standard ways to view, like album, artist, etc... but no way to make a play list. Like with photo when you go back to list it went to start of list, so you loose your place.

The GTV Android client has a way to go and I hope they work out the Video_TS issue and HD performance.

I just had to add that Jeff spoiled us with SageTV. We all now have a high standard for any media players. Plex is no where close, but it's very good for what is out there.

-Polen

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by polen

Will not play any Video_TS vob DVD rips.

Not sure that you could do that easily on any mobile platform, or say play an ISO file...

[chiledog]

Originally Posted by polen

I went ahead and got the Plex for Android client on my Sony GTV and setup the Plex server on my SageTV server.

Have you tried Plex for GoogleTV? (instead of Android). They split the Android client into two (Android and GoogleTV). The GoolgeTV client does not transcode the streams. I wonder if you might have been running into transcoding issues on the server?

http://darrin.plexapp.com/2011/11/02...for-google-tv/

(I have a Revue and would love to try Plex out. Unfortunately, I do not have the Honeycomb update yet.)

[profit]

so would plex allow a download to a googletv box where you could access existing recordings? Is it correct to assume livetv is non functional right now.

I bought a boxee last night and am underwhelmed and wondering if I should spend $600 on 2 hd300's to extend the live of my current system and add support for a projector I am buying.

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

What are the pros and cons of this vs. the many other options out there? Plex is playing in a very crowded and fragmented market, why not wait until there is a clear winner? At this point I have no idea who the winners and losers will be

The cool thing about Plex (besides the beautiful metadata integration with theTVDB), is that it is available on lots of platforms. I like that it is server based (the server is python plugins like the BB) but you can render it on the client with many options.

I recently watched a recorded 1080i episode of Grimm natively with a Plex client on my Samsung TV and skipping and seeking was actually pretty good. Resume is broken on mpeg-ts files right now and it doesn't handle edl files but it is really promising.

Martin

[drewg]

Originally Posted by emveepee

I recently watched a recorded 1080i episode of Grimm natively with a Plex client on my Samsung TV and skipping and seeking was actually pretty good. Resume is broken on mpeg-ts files right now and it doesn't handle edl files but it is really promising.

Martin

I'm somewhat regretting my choice of an LG plasma... Plex is miserable on my LG. Skipping/seeking in an MPEG2-TS file (Eg, nearly all my HD recordings) does not work, so the WAF is basically 0.

Also, flash is not supported, so the interesting plugins (nbc, abc, etc) do not work.

Sigh.

Drew

[phelme]

I may have to give the Android client a go.

Originally Posted by emveepee

...I recently watched a recorded 1080i episode of Grimm natively with a Plex client...

I've tried several episodes of Grimm; except for the humorous "bludbad" sidekick I find I can't get that engaged. Not sure what's missing for me, but a different "CGI head of the week" isn't it.

[darcilicious]

Shows like Grimm sometimes take a half a season or more to find their footing. I had similar thoughts about Haven after just a few episodes but it really picked up near the end of season one and is a pretty good show overall these days.

Luckily Grimm has been picked up for a full season so it still has a chance at least.

[PiX64]

Has anyone been able to get plex to scan symlinks?

I am working on using the code from the xbmc integration script with plex. the symlinks that are created can be created on tv currently recording, as well as old files. All my links perfectly and in xbmc actually work like a champ.

Plex however is being a bit of a PITA in scanning the symlinks. If we can figure out how to get plex to scan and catalogue symlinks, we will have a viable front end for sage that works on many devices! im currently using atv2 with plex and its pretty darn sweet.

[PiX64]

soooo!!

symlinks don't work but hard links do!

i currently have a few shows being created with hardlinks and they are showing up and being scraped successfully by plex.

ill see if i can modify the integration code to create hardlinks rather than symbolic redirect links.

Also if anyone wants to look into this for me i would greatly appreciate it. I cannot seem to find any doc anywhere about creating symlinks in windows XP...currently my modifieid script is only working in windows 7 which i imagine will be an issue for some folks.

[stuckless]

Given that Plex has a plugin api... Wouldn't it be fairly easy to write a plugin that exposes the sagetv files + metadata to the Plex server? I've never looked at the plugin api... I sort of lost interest when I realized that there isn't a linux client, so there's no easy way that I could do any development/testing on this myself.

[PiX64]

Sean - Thats a great option and i didn't even think of that. Ill look into it more.

[PiX64]

plex likes the hardlinks for cataloguing, but not so much for playback :-/

makes sense i suppose if i would have thought about it for more than 10 seconds.