I would like to have a standard TV Guide/Programming Guide that all tradition service providers provide. It is the most efficient and fastest way to see what is on - especially if you don’t know the names of shows that you may be interested in. The current Plex guide has all kinds of options for searching and sorting for TV shows, but it skips the most basic view that is the easiest to use. Windows Media Center, TV Guide, Cable providers and the like all provide a quick grid view in which one can easily see the channels, shows, time and day. Also allows once to easy scroll ahead of time / day to see what is coming up. I was looking to record a TV show at 10 am on any channel to do some testing, but since this type of grid view does not exist (unless I am missing a setting) I was not able to find something easily to record as I did not know any names of shows that were coming on at 10 a.m. The “Coming Soon” option is the closest thing, but that is only for the next hour.
Here is actually a better example of what ideally is the most efficient for how I would use the plex programming guide even more so than the original WMC example I started this post with. The following image is the MY MC app that someone created to control WMC. As you can see it has all the channels listed by hour along with the shows outlined. This is the fastest way for me to see what is coming on and allows me to quickly see what I may want to record. The key features that I see in this app are:
Ability to see all channels and all shows by day/hour. Granted, if you have more channels than what can be shown on a single screen, you would have to scroll up/down.
Allows you to advance forward and back by hour(s) and by day(s) with the shortcuts at the bottom of the screen.
Has a “Now” button to quickly get back to the current broadcasting shows in case you do advance the time/day.
Allows to select a show on the grid, and a 2nd window automatically pops up which allows me to then either select the ability to Record the Show, or record the series (see 2nd picture).
Shows on the same programming guide what shows you have schedule to be recorded so you don’t have to go to a separate screen as plex currently requires. The recording symbol on the programming guide shows up as a single red dot when you are recording a single episode, or multiple red dots partially overlapping like shown on the programming guide below when you have programmed it to record the series automatically for all shows (in my use case, it has the ability to record only all NEW shows in a series, so when there are repeats, it does not record those unless I setup the setting to do that).
What MY MC does NOT have on the programming guide which I would even more useful is some indication of which shows are NEW like the TV Guide app does (see 3rd picture below). MY MC does tell you if it is a new show or a repeat, but you have to select the show to open up the 2nd screen as shown on the 2nd image to tell that. Ideally, this would be on the programming guide without having to open up each episode to check.
Please consider making this into another Programming Option to make Plex catch up with the rest of DVR provider options where once can scroll through a view like this by hour and day to quickly see what is coming. In Windows Media Center, you can than select any show from the Grid and request either that episode or series to be recorded.
This is totally needed. And if so, please include channel “favorites,” to be defined by the user; so when selected, only the Favorite channels setup by the user are seen in the guide.
Even if we could get channel numbers in the “watch now” section of the “program guide” that would be nice. Maybe prefix before the letters like “7.1 WABC”. It makes it easier to determine if the show is a syndicated version or current season.
Absolutely agree. The current schedule listing is difficult at best. Pictures are nice, but I need to see what’s coming on which channel hours or days ahead of time.
Yep, this is one of my biggest pain points with the Plex Live TV and DVR capability. Not sure you can even call it a “program guide” without the typical Channel/Time layout that others have had for decades. I could probably never completely use Plex DVR and Live TV until a traditional program guide is implemented, since its so painful to find out whats on quickly.
This is probably my biggest roadblock when it comes to going to plex 100%. I still have a hybrid environment with Mediaportal, where mediaportal handles all the recording tasks, and plex just subscribes to the recorded TV folder it writes to. I’d prefer to have plex be my go-to environment, and adding a traditional program guide would go a long way to simplify the transition.
It’s a huge roadblock for me as well. Hybrid WMC/Plex environment here as well. It is way easier to schedule and search for programming in a grid. Much easier to visualize as well.
It would be nice to at least have someone from Plex respond to why this is not easily added. The only theory I have heard is that someone owns the patent on a grid style programming guide and anyone that wants to use that format has to pay a fee and plex does not want to. I have no idea if any of that is true, but I would rather pay a few bucks more per year to have a functional TV guide instead poor choice they provide now. I will continue to not make Plex my primary media software until this can be addressed. I suppose from Plex’s perspective, everyone that is complaining about this here are already plex pass members so there is not incentive for them to do so as we already paid are dues.
I really look forward to this feature. And since you can’t flip through channels with your remove like a regular tv, would be nice if you hit the UP arrow (on Apple TV, Roku) it fades out and shows the guide (DirectNOw does a good job of this) and if you hit DOWN arrow, it would show the show icon and description, etc.
I’ve just built my first Plex Server on Windows 10 and have been using WMC for about 8 years (i’ve actually lost count).
The very first thing I noticed in Plex was the lack of an easy to read EPG with recording options.
So an improvement in this area is critical to me and my users otherwise Plex won’t get across the line.
Another handy feature (which I may have missed) is a “Delete if space required” option on all scheduled recordings.
When you have a household full of children and 4x DVB-T tuners your storage space can be consumed quickly!
Allowing the MCPC (plex) server to decide if it needs the disk space can save issues.
Am I missing something simple here? I am trying to migrate from WMC to Plex for whole house. HOW do you search for your TV shows to set recording up? It seems that I have wait for the day the show airs to set a season recording, but no way to search a few days ahead to set a recording. Am i missing something simple here?
mdp123 - It’s not intuitive and I use the web client to do this. Go to “Program Guide” (left side of window). Change “Discover” to “Shows” (top center of window). That will list the shows alphabetically and from there you should see your show. Instead of “Shows” you could also select “News”, “Movies”, “Sports”. I hope this helps for you, but of course a “real” programming guide would be nice.
