In the last week, I have only been testing Plex for one week to determine if I should switch from SageTV. I have seen the Plex guide data wrong on two occasions for shows I wanted to record (all episodes) from OTA. I use Schedules Direct on Sagetv, which has been spot on for a couple years, and only twice had I had the wrong data, that when I emailed them about the issue, it was corrected by the guide refresh the next day. I filled out the plex form earlier this week, and today, days later, after just refreshing the guide for San Diego it still shows the identical episode on two channels (69-1 & 69-2) I know the other show is on 69-1 so I am recording the show on both channels of Plex’s program guide, Hopefully it will record both.
Here is my question, can we use a different guide than what I am paying for with the Plex Pass?
PS. I even called Tivo as I read Plex buys their guide. No help there. I’d thought Schedules Direct would be cheaper, at least its accurate. . (my Buddy down the block’s has the shows listed correctly. in his Tivo’s program guide… Go Figure)
I assume the latter is what you can use with Plex right now. You just have to tell them which stations to include in the XML they provide to you. Because you can’t have a XML file which has all stations in it. It would be unmanageably big.
Their web interface has a way to subscribe to a lineup via zipcode and specify Antenna, so that looks promising. I setup my zip and OTA, but I don’t see a way to download a file yet. odd.
I was just reading some info on the SD orgs site, appears they only support open source TV programs. Since I am paying for Plex Pass maybe they don’t qualify? That would be too bad as their Guide has been Bullet Proof for a couple years now, and are very responsive if the guide is ever wrong, which has been extremely rare for us.
I just checked and I’ve been using it for over 4 years now. Time Flies. And I’ve seen the same number of issues with their guide in those 4 years as I have with Plex’s guide in 1 Week. And of course the SD guide was fixed by the next morning. Still waiting on Plex for many days now to fix it. UGH.
As far as I can gather, it doesn’t really matter which software you use. As long as you can get an updated XMLTV file from them on a regular basis, you should be good.
They call XMLTV their “SD-DD” service.
Alright, let me quickly break this down for y’all. Schedules Direct is a non-profit organization that has a somewhat unique license that allows them to distribute guide data for the open source/educational/research community. They are not allowed to “resell” this data to commercial entities and are restricted from it being utilized with non-open source applications. This is why Emby lost SD as an option when they went closed source.
That being said, you may be pleased to find out that SD licenses their EPG data from “Tribune Media Services”. The “chain of custody” for this product can be a little confusing as its been acquired and sold multiple times, but you can generally consider that anytime someone is talking about guide data from Tribune Media Services (TMS) or Gracenote or Nielsen, they are in fact all talking about the same product.
So when WE at Plex say that we’re returning to or previous EPG provider Gracenote…well, I think you can connect the dots.
That sounds like good news! They still say they are using gracenote. I guess waiting to look into Plex till this week was a stroke of luck on my part. If I had tried using this software earlier I would have marked my test as a fail, if the guide data can’t be trusted, using it as a DVR isn’t a good option. Missing two of my wife’s shows in one week would have relegated me & Plex to the 9th circle of hell forever. Hard to imagine your paying customers lived with this for what sounds like about a year. I bet your finance department can tell you the date that happened. -Bill
When you think about it, getting your guide from a competing company seems counter intuitive. They want to sell Tivo’s not make your competitive product better so you don’t buy their product.
I noticed the Plex Guide is still wrong a week later. Any idea when that new Gracenote guide will be implemented? I really don’t want to spend all that time & effort figuring out how to my schedules direct guide into Plex if the fix is only a few weeks (days hopefully) away. -Bill
