Plex Pass now includes free Live TV!

[NetworkGuy]

Anyone see this?
https://www.plex.tv/blog/well-do-it-live/

[wayner]

It is functionality they needed to add, but who really cares about watching LiveTV? I don't think that my kids even understand the concept of LiveTV as they have grown up only using SageTV and stuff like Netflix and Youtube.

They also talk about supporting additional tuners but it looks like the still only support OTA or QAM. It seems there is no way to tune channels on external boxes - which isn't surprising.

[stanger89]

For a minute I thought you were talking about a new streaming service.

Guess I just don't get the need/excitement about streaming TV from my house to elsewhere. When I'm away from home I generally don't have enough time to care that I don't have access to my TV.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Guess I just don't get the need/excitement about streaming TV from my house to elsewhere. When I'm away from home I generally don't have enough time to care that I don't have access to my TV.

I am guessing that you are not a sports fan? When you are on a business trip to Europe and your team has a big game then stuff like this can be very useful. Then the problem becomes - can you sustain a sufficient bitrate to be able to stream video.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by wayner

I am guessing that you are not a sports fan? When you are on a business trip to Europe and your team has a big game then stuff like this can be very useful. Then the problem becomes - can you sustain a sufficient bitrate to be able to stream video.

Um, when you're in Europe big hockey games are in the middle of the night. That's what you play in Canada, Eh?

I totally get jet lag, but there has only only a few cases when I was travelling and the Red Wings were still in it that I streamed live TV.

The Lions I've streamed a couple times or more just because I'm a glutton for punishment, but frankly I'm going to some castle or something if staying the weekend.

The Tigers play so much it doesn't matter if I miss a game or four.

When I'm on the road live TV seems a bit unneeded. I do like to catch up on recorded things when unable to sleep at some weird timezone.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

The Lions I've streamed a couple times or more just because I'm a glutton for punishment, but frankly I'm going to some castle or something if staying the weekend.

I watch Lions games for the same reason(s) that people slow down and gawk at accidents.

[wayner]

The Leafs haven't had many important games in the last year so I haven't had to worry about that. But I did try to live stream to watch a NBA Raptors games seven about a year ago when I was in Beijing.

[farscapesg1]

Hmmm, been waiting for them to add this. We've switched over to Plex for DVR needs and have been pretty happy with it (even becoming accustomed to no "grid view" ). The one thing the wife has been wanting was a way to use LiveTV for either just "background noise" or for special occasions like New Years, Presidential addresses, or weather/news updates.

Of course, they announce it for Android TV and IOS only for now... I'm sure it will take awhile, if ever, to bring it to Roku. I may need to start looking into Android TV options.

Even more important to me is it looks like they are finally adding some DVR control to the clients, instead of having to do everything through the web interface. This will be the huge thing for me. Being able to schedule and modify recordings from my phone app, and hopefully the Roku app soon, instead of having to get on the computer to use the web interface.

[SWKerr]

I have been waiting on this for awhile but it is just a baby step to what I really need. For now it does not actually allow you to watch in progress recording just live TV.

I like to watch Sports and News shows in near real time but seldom is it actually Live TV. If you want to start at the beginning of a recording in progress you are still SOL.

Emby does this already and has a Grid EPG Guide but the playback across devices tends not to be as stable as Plex. Emby and Plex are still fighting it out as a possible SageTV replacement but for now neither is really there.

[Taddeusz]

The lack of a grid in the Plex DVR really has me turned off of it. IMHO, it makes it difficult to find things. Especially since they now have live TV. Even Sling TV is apparently now moving to a grid view for currently airing television. Since live television is time based it makes more sense to display the schedule in a time based format. A grid doesn't make sense if you're searching for a particular show since that is not time dependent.

[glenner]

Yeah.. Plex looks great.. and I do run it on the side as it will index all my media, including SageTV recordings. So it's nice... works on all my mobile devices too...

Though the Plex DVR looks interesting... the inability to watch a recording while in progress is a deal breaker for me. I'm also not sure I'm crazy about the fast/skip forward/back in plex... It just has a ways to go before it can really be viewed as a useful DVR. On the plus side, I believe the EPG works and is included. And so a lifetime Plex Pass is maybe a good deal...

If Plex eventually gets the whole DVR solution right, Sage will have strong some competition.

-glenner.

__________________
Old Setup:
Server:IBM ThinkCenter M50 (Pentium 4! circa 2000), WinXP, 4GB RAM, 40GB IDE HDD, 6 x SATA HDD (8TB total), HDHR Dual Tuner (HDHR-US), CM 4221/7778
Software: SageTV v6.6.2, SageMC/Foofaraw theme (high WAF)
Clients: 3 x HD300
New Setup:
Server: Lenovo M910 Tiny (i5-7500T), Win10Pro, 32GB RAM, 512 SSD, 6 HDD (8TB total), HDHR Dual Tuner (HDHR-US), HDHR Extend (HDTC-2US), CM 4221/7778
Software: SageTV v9.1.2.662, SageMC/Foofaraw theme (high WAF), SD EPG
Clients: 3 x HD300

[Monedeath]

Plex Media Server 1.7.4 is now available to PlexPass users

NEW:

(Web) Updated Plex Web to 3.9.1
(DVR) Support for WinTV-HVR-22XX PCIe tuners
(DVR) Support for timeshift in live streams (requires upcoming iOS v4.14 and Android TV v6.2 app releases)

Well, there goes that(end of last month), time shifting of live T.V. Can now happen in Plex. Haven't looked at their DVR options yet myself, but that was a major hurdle right there.

They still can't handle Cable Card protected content though, IIRC. So Sage still wins that one for now.

[SHS]

Well so far I got say I'm all ready disappointed in it.
After get my new Antenna (Channel Master CM-3020) up and going it seem that one of tuner is DOA on my quadHD carp now I have sent in for repair.

Here what I see so far

1: No EPG guide listing that a in self is major disappointment as I can't browse thru the channels with a interactive menu of program scheduling, I don't mind the On Right Now and Starting Soon and other useful interactive category that are there that I'm cool with.

2: No reg Recording folder I like to keep my Movie & TV Show from DVD & Blu-ray rips separate, in fact no other 3rdparty PVR/DVR recording app even dose this what so ever this need to get fix ASP and love god DO NOT group them under Movie & TV Show put in there on own listing like TV recording.

3: I don't like the fact that your using mkv as the container when should be using the stock ts container unless it is transcoding and even then I would prefer it to be mp4.

4: The player seem lack some basic control like FF and RW a long with Skip x number of sec.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by Monedeath

Well, there goes that(end of last month), time shifting of live T.V. Can now happen in Plex. Haven't looked at their DVR options yet myself, but that was a major hurdle right there.

They still can't handle Cable Card protected content though, IIRC. So Sage still wins that one for now.

I was kind of surprised of by the fact that they add in the HVR-22xx model after all it was discontinued not to long ago and is petty useless if don't make use of analog side of thing.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by SHS

Well so far I got say I'm all ready disappointed in it.
After get my new Antenna (Channel Master CM-3020) up and going it seem that one of tuner is DOA on my quadHD carp now I have sent in for repair.

Here what I see so far

1: No EPG guide listing that a in self is major disappointment as I can't browse thru the channels with a interactive menu of program scheduling, I don't mind the On Right Now and Starting Soon and other useful interactive category that are there that I'm cool with.

2: No reg Recording folder I like to keep my Movie & TV Show from DVD & Blu-ray rips separate, in fact no other 3rdparty PVR/DVR recording app even dose this what so ever this need to get fix ASP and love god DO NOT group them under Movie & TV Show put in there on own listing like TV recording.

3: I don't like the fact that your using mkv as the container when should be using the stock ts container unless it is transcoding and even then I would prefer it to be mp4.

4: The player seem lack some basic control like FF and RW a long with Skip x number of sec.

I do have a problem with their EPG but maybe it's because I'm so used to the traditional timeline grid type of view. It just makes more sense to me than the "what's on now" and list of shows types of views.

I don't understand why the media container would matter. As long as their transformation process does not induce errors in the streams I don't have a problem with the container used. What I do see as a problem is that the closed captions don't seem to be recognized. I do also notice that Plex does not recognize the closed captions from my SageTV recordings. It may be because it seems the ATSC captioning is muxed into the video stream itself rather than being distinct streams like the audio.

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by SHS

Well so far I got say I'm all ready disappointed in it.
After get my new Antenna (Channel Master CM-3020) up and going it seem that one of tuner is DOA on my quadHD carp now I have sent in for repair.

Here what I see so far

1: No EPG guide listing that a in self is major disappointment as I can't browse thru the channels with a interactive menu of program scheduling, I don't mind the On Right Now and Starting Soon and other useful interactive category that are there that I'm cool with.

2: No reg Recording folder I like to keep my Movie & TV Show from DVD & Blu-ray rips separate, in fact no other 3rdparty PVR/DVR recording app even dose this what so ever this need to get fix ASP and love god DO NOT group them under Movie & TV Show put in there on own listing like TV recording.

3: I don't like the fact that your using mkv as the container when should be using the stock ts container unless it is transcoding and even then I would prefer it to be mp4.

4: The player seem lack some basic control like FF and RW a long with Skip x number of sec.

I picked Emby mostly because of the traditional guide option. They do have views that work much like Plex but I just find the traditional grid much easier to navigate quickly. Hulu TV has the same problem with no traditional grid guide. I think these providers don't think people using their services want live TV and I suspect they are mostly correct. I only watch News and Sports in Live or near live time frames. If I was just recording shows to binge watch later the lack of the traditional guide would not be as annoying. (and I can't explain why exactly that is true for me.)

I would prefer to standardize on mp4 but am wondering if there is a reason that Plex chose mkv for recordings. I am recording OTA programs with Emby right now as mkv. They have the option to leave it as a "ts" or to transcode on the fly to either "mp4" or "mkv". I have found that I can not start a in progress recording from the beginning with a "mp4" I can watch a live stream with the "mp4" option but it will not allow me to start from the beginning and pause and skip. With the "mkv" option I can start from the beginning of an in progress recording. I am wondering if there is something in the container that makes mkv better suited for naviaging in process streams?

I have setup and tested with Plex Live TV and you can pick where the recordings are stored by Library. So I don't see why you could not manage them the way you would like. One of my main Plex complaints is the difficulty of combining them. I really want all TV to show up in one view.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I do have a problem with their EPG but maybe it's because I'm so used to the traditional timeline grid type of view. It just makes more sense to me than the "what's on now" and list of shows types of views.

I don't understand why the media container would matter. As long as their transformation process does not induce errors in the streams I don't have a problem with the container used. What I do see as a problem is that the closed captions don't seem to be recognized. I do also notice that Plex does not recognize the closed captions from my SageTV recordings. It may be because it seems the ATSC captioning is muxed into the video stream itself rather than being distinct streams like the audio.

1: Let say for example there show come on Friday at 10pm and can't recall the name of it nor channel that going to be air on and your not sure if on this week or next week so with out traditional timeline grid it will be next to impossible to find.

2: MKV wasn't made for transport streams which you rev from tuner in ts in the first place and I have one windows 7 system that doesn't like mkv steam in fact I had more issus with mkv that any other format which why I don't care for one bit.

3: TS is better when deal CC which why you loss it with mkv.

Any way the good news I heard that they switch it back to ts with latest beta so CC is now back like should in the ts steam.

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by SHS

1: Let say for example there show come on Friday at 10pm and can't recall the name of it nor channel that going to be air on and your not sure if on this week or next week so with out traditional timeline grid it will be next to impossible to find.

2: MKV wasn't made for transport streams which you rev from tuner in ts in the first place and I have one windows 7 system that doesn't like mkv steam in fact I had more issus with mkv that any other format which why I don't care for one bit.

3: TS is better when deal CC which why you loss it with mkv.

Any way the good news I heard that they switch it back to ts with latest beta so CC is now back like should in the ts steam.

I have the most trouble with the ts files on my FireTV and Android TV devices.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I have the most trouble with the ts files on my FireTV and Android TV devices.

That odd it should be doing automatic on fly transcoding to mp4 to those device.

[farscapesg1]

LiveTV timeshifting is one of the last things I was really looking forward to for PLEX DVR. I don't remember the last time I used the EPG in SageTV before switching, and I haven't missed it. Maybe it's because the family has gotten used to the Netflix/Amazon streaming layouts. Maybe it is because I know ahead of time what I want to watch and set up favorites in SageTV, and do the same with PLEX. I guess that is mostly from our viewing habits of knowing what we want to watch ahead of time and not picking things at random to try.

For the most part, the DVR has been pretty solid for us. More stable with my HDHR Prime than my SageTV server had been for the last couple years. We let it record, then I run MCEBuddy to transcode to mp4 and mark commercials.. just in the off chance they include support for comskip/EDL files at some point

Comskip support and end client support are the last two things to make it pretty much perfect for our house. By end client I mean better interface support so we have LiveTV and options to set up recordings on things like the Roku devices and even just the Windows 10 app. At least now I can set them up on my iPhone, but having to use another device or interface (web on a windows 10 machine) to configure recordings is ridiculous.