I have a use case for allowing both Plex Live TV Guide data and XMLTV files, based on capture card.
My personal use case:
Plex TV Guide data works great for my local TV channels
I have set up NextPVR and Xteve to be able to stream local FM stations captured by my Happauge FM capture card. I live along the Canadian border, and many stations I listen to come from Canada and their online streams are geoblocked. With NextPVR, I can capture these stations and get Plex to see them on the ‘xteve’ tuner, but since there is no guide data available, I cannot map them into Plex.
I’m sure there are other real world examples where someone would want to use Plex TV Guide data for one capture card, and XMLTV for another.
I understand the potential issue with channel numbers overlapping which is presumably a key reason Plex do not want to allow this behaviour but for me this would be a really beneficial feature.
The trade off without this feature is the use an external XML file for all channels which would be a real shame given the quality of the Plex EPG data.
Currently I am mapping to inaccurate channels to solve my problem - ironically a Canadian option so I can use channel numbers in the 1000s which don’t overlap with the UK ones (typically 1-999 range) however it means the EPG is inaccurate.
Yes, I have done the same. My hope is to be able to generate my own XMLTV file that just displays the same “show” with the radio station’s name every hour.
Resurrecting this suggestion because I wasn’t aware someone else had already posted it, but I’m also having this issue, as are a number of other people trying to do the same thing as me in the Plex and Ersatz TV/DizqueTV subreddits and communities.
I’m trying to set up an Ersatz TV (simulated TV channels from my own media) alongside my Plex Over the Air Live TV setup and I’m running into the issue where we’re only allowed to use one data source or the other for the EPG - either live or XML. Unfortunately, they can’t be split between tuners - it’s one or the other.
This leaves me with an issue. Of course my custom-made Live TV channels aren’t going to be in the online guide data, and the live channels I’m pulling over-the-air aren’t going to be in the XML that my Ersatz TV is generating, so I’m stuck dealing with one, the other, doing some heavy kludging outside of Plex, or just using an external media server - none of which are ideal.
I’m not going to claim it’s a simple fix, but the most straight-forward one would be to allow different tuners to use different sources entirely. Allow me to import my Ersatz TV tuner using an xml file, and my main tuner using live data.
Any updates on this in 2024? I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement, but currently I’m stuck running two separate installations of Plex on two computers just to be able to use an EPG with my OTA antenna, and an EPG for a custom “tuner” I’ve made with my own TV stations.
It feels like absolute overkill when the solution would simply be to let Plex use multiple EPG sources in one installation.
