Hi Everyone - I’m trying to solve what I’ll call the ‘NFL Problem’. I like to set my Plex to record the games. NFL games never end on time, so I usually add 60 minutes just in case it goes to OT. Here’s my issues:
If I select for it to remove commercials, this can add multiple hours until I can view the recording, or entirely delete the recording due to length (I assume?) Ugh. I don’t set this anymore and try to fast forward by guessing minutes for commercials.
If I don’t try to watch it from beginning during the scheduled time, I’m now in a purgatory where I can’t access the recording. The guide is the only way to pull up something that is recording and it won’t allow me to go back in time. This is the biggest problem.
Is there a better way to do this? I’d love to be able to pull up the game while it’s recording and not worry if it’s past when FOX said it would end.
My recommendation would be to record to a plex library using something other than Plex DVR. I use NextPVR but just about any DVR software should be ok. Plex generally would play the .ts file in progress just fine since it’s just a file in the library. This allows you to work around Plex’s idiotic design that prevents starting playback during “extra” recording time.
Note, however, that when you start playback, Plex will think the file is whatever length it was when you started playback. So when it gets to that time position in the file, playback will almost certainly stop. My workaround was simply to stop and start playback whenever a commercial started (since that was easy to remember). This would refresh the file length for playback to the latest length. Yeah, a bit annoying but not nearly as annoying as trying to work around all the idiotic problems in Plex DVR …