The user base is often critical of the Plex engineering team as some features don’t work as well, or some publicized timeline is missed but this is not such a post.
I have been using the DVR for about a year and a half and I think that while there is still room for improvement, it has NEVER been a better time to be a Plex DVR user. The latest improvements on the Android TV app go a long way in making Plex a practical choice for DVR. At least on my setup, tuning into a channel is now a sub 3 second operation (used to be 8 seconds, yes it can still get better), seeking is instant when you have buffer and sub 2 second operation when seeking outside the buffered stream. Most importantly seeking does not result in crashes. More over holding the -> arrow down gives you fast and effortless seeking through a recording that might be more than a couple of hours (instead of having to seek 10 seconds per click). Those improvements, while small, go a LONG way in improving the everyday experience and I want the Plex team to know that users are paying attention.
On the server side, the improvements around recordings stuck at 100% and missed recordings made it so that you can trust Plex (without needing to verify all the time). Also, the improvements around making sure that transcode is a last resort thing for playback (plus HEVC support) are definitely a welcome addition. Of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention being able to time-shift live TV having gotten more robust with every incremental release!
Now let’s get some LiveTV caption support and the long-promised grid-based EPG (insert your own high priority missing feature here) and we can finally start the discussion about Plex being a true replacement for WMC (which is what I used to have).
Thanks team and Congratulations!
Kosta
I too would say there is no need to be overly critical of the Plex development team.
There are a number of noteworthy features that work well and Plex DVR is a viable option IMO. Not quite as robust as Microsoft Media Center in a number of ways but there are some areas where Plex surpasses the old gold standard.
The grid style guide is an impotent omission. The current ETA is not written in stone but the end of Q1 is nearing rapidly. I believe it was also mentioned that “Apple TV” will be the first platform recipient of the improved grid style guide. So presumably all others will have to wait an as of yet unspecified time.
I think its worth sticking in there though. Plex does what it was initially designed to do well. The new features like Live TV and DVR should be given some space to mature IMO.
I will say this though, I really hope the new grid style feature ETA doesn’t slip again. IMO this is something that really needs to be prioritized.
Plex is OK a long as you have a simple setup … but when it comes to handling multiple devices and multiple EPG schedules it fails miserably … It cannot handle the tuners I have in my signature gracefully at all… other DVR software handles all my tuners and different EPG schedules flawlessly.
@tachtevrenidis said:
The user base is often critical of the Plex engineering team as some features don’t work as well, or some publicized timeline is missed but this is not such a post.
I have been using the DVR for about a year and a half and I think that while there is still room for improvement, it has NEVER been a better time to be a Plex DVR user. The latest improvements on the Android TV app go a long way in making Plex a practical choice for DVR. At least on my setup, tuning into a channel is now a sub 3 second operation (used to be 8 seconds, yes it can still get better), seeking is instant when you have buffer and sub 2 second operation when seeking outside the buffered stream. Most importantly seeking does not result in crashes. More over holding the → arrow down gives you fast and effortless seeking through a recording that might be more than a couple of hours (instead of having to seek 10 seconds per click). Those improvements, while small, go a LONG way in improving the everyday experience and I want the Plex team to know that users are paying attention.
On the server side, the improvements around recordings stuck at 100% and missed recordings made it so that you can trust Plex (without needing to verify all the time). Also, the improvements around making sure that transcode is a last resort thing for playback (plus HEVC support) are definitely a welcome addition. Of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention being able to time-shift live TV having gotten more robust with every incremental release!
Now let’s get some LiveTV caption support and the long-promised grid-based EPG (insert your own high priority missing feature here) and we can finally start the discussion about Plex being a true replacement for WMC (which is what I used to have).
Thanks team and Congratulations!
Kosta
Yes and yes to direct play dvb subtitle support
@nyplayer said:
Plex is OK a long as you have a simple setup … but when it comes to handling multiple devices and multiple EPG schedules it fails miserably … It cannot handle the tuners I have in my signature gracefully at all… other DVR software handles all my tuners and different EPG schedules flawlessly.
Very good point.
Microsoft Media Center allowed a default four of kind with respect to dissimilar tuners. Tuner salad extended that to six tuners of a kind IIRC. So by default you could have 4x cablecard, 4x DVB-T, 4x NTSC analog, 4x ATSC digital over the air, 4x Clear QAM and so on. All with their own respective guide data integrated into a single easy to use grid guide style lineup.
@nyplayer said:
Plex is OK a long as you have a simple setup … but when it comes to handling multiple devices and multiple EPG schedules it fails miserably … It cannot handle the tuners I have in my signature gracefully at all… other DVR software handles all my tuners and different EPG schedules flawlessly.
I would say that if you are using that many tuners with such a low powered server you are bound to run into problems.
Maybe rethink your system design? Sometimes just plugging things in doesn’t always work.
@Stephen3001 said:
@nyplayer said:
Plex is OK a long as you have a simple setup … but when it comes to handling multiple devices and multiple EPG schedules it fails miserably … It cannot handle the tuners I have in my signature gracefully at all… other DVR software handles all my tuners and different EPG schedules flawlessly.
I would say that if you are using that many tuners with such a low powered server you are bound to run into problems.
Maybe rethink your system design? Sometimes just plugging things in doesn’t always work.
It has nothing to do with Power … I run SageTV and EMBY on my I7 also PLEX DVR (testing) the problem is that Plex does not Work with multiple EPG or sharing of Multiple HDHomeRun devices. The problem is not transcoding or anything like that … it just does Not Share tuners with other Apps or support OTA and Cable EPG. Network tuners are meant to be shared until PLEX fixes this it is not a viable solution if you share your tuners.
For Example the HDHomeRun Primes has 3 tuners … I am watching HBO (DRM) on tuner 0 using the HDHomeRun app… Plex is scheduled to record it tries to use tuner 0 it craps out and will not try to use tuners 1 or 2 … or my other Prime. Plex needs to check if a tuner is in use before trying to use it… and move on to other tuner or Device.
The Plex Server I run on my PR4100 does not run the DVR only serves up media.
I totally agree with nyplayer.
Even if all those tuners were configured in one system it doesn’t mean they would all typically be used at once. Such a thing would be exceedingly rare.
The issue is how the DVR software is designed to make use of such tuners.
@nyplayer your signature didn’t mention the additional I7, sorry for the mix up.
However I still think that better system design might alleviate some of the problems. This is not an uncommon problem, I’ve seen it in many system designs.
Plugging everything together and trying to make everything available to every device is usually fraught with danger. I’m all for proper system design. Working out what resources are needed where and then designing the system accordingly.
If you want to do it that way, that’s fine, I however would not. Different ways of doing things.
multiple EPG with multiple heterogeneous capture sources seems quite niche to me. This borders on the professional video broadcaster-type of setup. Let Plex get all the features working on a straight up setup (single EPG, a couple of identical tuners max), that has got to be the sweet spot and the bar IMO.
@tachtevrenidis said:
multiple EPG with multiple heterogeneous capture sources seems quite niche to me. This borders on the professional video broadcaster-type of setup. Let Plex get all the features working on a straight up setup (single EPG, a couple of identical tuners max), that has got to be the sweet spot and the bar IMO.
I’m of two minds on this. First I think you’re right. Get the basics done and done right.
However, when people look at Plex DVR they probably think “great for cord cutting”. They aren’t wrong in thinking this but its worth pointing out that there is cablecard support too. So what is Plex developers really saying here with such a move? I take it that they are saying that they are willing to take on features that are more complex,…within reason.
The problem then becomes where to draw the line in terms of features and complexity?
Take a look at the development of the SiliconDust HDHomeRun DVR software for example. In this case they support ATSC and cablecard tuners in combination. They are also currently working on DRM support which IMO will be an important feature given that ATSC 3.0 will have DRM support (4K OTA Broadcasting). Since SiliconDust presumably is in such development as a means of supporting their business model (IE selling their tuners) their software only has support for SiliconDust branded tuners. So their limitations make perfect sense for them, less so for the customer though since the HDHomeRun DVR software isn’t free.
Plex is putting in the work to support more tuners but where they stop short should make sense. IMO supporting heterogeneous tuners (and guide data) isn’t a good place to draw the line. I say this keeping in mind that two or more homogeneous multi-tuner tuners still don’t work well in Plex.
Plex is a great product. Its good to see that they are putting in the work to make it better.
If I attempt to distill your point, it would be: “what is Plex’s differentiator that would make me choose Plex over SiliconDust since SD already does great with its own tuners?”. And the answer would be in customizability and no-vendor-allegiance (which is your point, I think). This is a great point. To me, Plex’s differentiator is place-shifting. I don’t know a lot about the SiliconDust DVR but does it provide the capability to stream outside your Wifi (with all the transcoding options etc that Plex does?). For me, the ability to stream and the ability to offline content so I can watch on planes etc. is the number 1 core-competency of Plex (I hope that DVR becomes the second one, and they stop getting distracted with VR, News, Podcasts which I hear is coming etc.).
I definitely see your point though. Without trying to reduce the inherent complexity, it seems like being able to support multiple types of tuners at the same time (assuming that you already have support for those on a one at a time basis) is all predicated on having a robust abstraction layer in the architecture. Ultimately the DVR should not have to know what type of tuner it talks to, but just request an available tuner meeting the right criteria (applicable to the program that is to be recorded, and/or that it can do HD if that is what is specific in the recording preferences etc). The rest should be abstracted out.
K
