I’m a new Plex Pass member and purchased mainly because I love the product and am intrigued by the beta DVR functionality. I have an LG C6 and currently use the TV’s baked-in PMP app to play all of my content from my Plex server. Works great.
Unfortunately, Plex can’t do it all yet, and I’m still using WMC and an Xbox 360S as my main Live TV / DVR solution with my HDHomeRun Prime (w/ Comcast). I had a notion to get in on the ground floor early, though, and see what could be done about potentially replacing this setup in the future, as WMC is extremely long in the tooth and is the primary reason I can’t upgrade my server to Windows 10.
I downloaded and installed the HDGrandSlam add-on for Plex and it works great at tuning the channels but there’s no EPG at all. That’s a no-go in my house with wife / kids using the TV daily. And you currently can’t watch / time-shift programs being recorded with the Plex DVR, but I am assuming this will change with future releases.
So, I guess I’m wondering if the following is feasible:
Install Kodi on my laptop connected via HDMI and use its live TV front-end with either the HDHomeRun add-on or another add-on that does the same job
Install the Plex DVR server version and configure that to take on WMC’s old role of recording shows
Install PlexKodiConnect or the official Plex app for Kodi to present the Plex DVR content to Kodi … I guess this avoids switching between the TV’s native Plex app and the laptop w/ Kodi needlessly
I very much want to keep Plex as the back end solution because of all it does for me (tablets, mobile devices, remote access, etc.) and would resist just going 100% Kodi as a whole hog replacement for WMC. I want to integrate these environments if I can, if it’s feasible.
Now, this would all be solved rather handily if the Plex devs could get time-shifted DVR’d programming working or even better, bring live TV directly in to Plex. Maybe this year?
I have a similar setup, although it’s been around a lot longer than the Plex DVR setup has been…
I have plex running on a server tucked away, and an HTPC under the TV which runs Kodi (actually there’s a couple of them round the house). I’m using the PlexKodiConnect script to get content from Plex into the Kodi library.
For DVR, I’m using TVHeadend as a backend, running on the same server as Plex is. I have a HD Homerun (via aerial) and a 4 way Sat>IP server. TVH saves recordings in a reasonably plex friendly format and naming convention, so most recordings just pop straight into Plex for sync to mobile clients etc. There are some plugins for watching live TV and recording metadata between TVH and Plex but I’ve not looked into them much.
For playback, I use the TVHeadend client in Kodi, which integrates directly into Kodi’s DVR functions, so you can watch live TV, pause live playback, get full EPG, set up recordings, delete watched content etc.
IMHO this gives the best amount of flexibility and functionality as TVH has way more features for scheduling and tuner priority than either plex or the HDHR plugin for Kodi (eg. if you are watching live TV and a recording is due, which takes precedence). I’m also not dependant on any one ‘vendor’ - I could switch out TVH for MythTV, VDR etc, I could switch Kodi for Emby player, or I could switch Plex for Emby Server
IMHO, if the Plex devs are canny, they will open up their DVR solution to support backends like TVH, as it removes a lot of duplicated effort and opens up support for a huge amount of devices, not just from one vendor.
@jon-plex said:
I have a similar setup, although it’s been around a lot longer than the Plex DVR setup has been…
I have plex running on a server tucked away, and an HTPC under the TV which runs Kodi (actually there’s a couple of them round the house). I’m using the PlexKodiConnect script to get content from Plex into the Kodi library.
For DVR, I’m using TVHeadend as a backend, running on the same server as Plex is. I have a HD Homerun (via aerial) and a 4 way Sat>IP server. TVH saves recordings in a reasonably plex friendly format and naming convention, so most recordings just pop straight into Plex for sync to mobile clients etc. There are some plugins for watching live TV and recording metadata between TVH and Plex but I’ve not looked into them much.
For playback, I use the TVHeadend client in Kodi, which integrates directly into Kodi’s DVR functions, so you can watch live TV, pause live playback, get full EPG, set up recordings, delete watched content etc.
IMHO this gives the best amount of flexibility and functionality as TVH has way more features for scheduling and tuner priority than either plex or the HDHR plugin for Kodi (eg. if you are watching live TV and a recording is due, which takes precedence). I’m also not dependant on any one ‘vendor’ - I could switch out TVH for MythTV, VDR etc, I could switch Kodi for Emby player, or I could switch Plex for Emby Server
IMHO, if the Plex devs are canny, they will open up their DVR solution to support backends like TVH, as it removes a lot of duplicated effort and opens up support for a huge amount of devices, not just from one vendor.
So I am assuming that you’re running your Plex backend server and TVHeadEnd on Linux (since apparently there’s no Windows distro for TVHeadEnd) - what version of Linux you’re running?
I’m looking to make the move out of WMC in the near future and have to figure out just what I need to build and what the level of effort will be. I know it’s been a bit tricky to integrate HDHomeRun Primes into TVHeadEnd but I guess that has changed with the later revs (4.2+) - what version of TVHeadEnd did you decide to use?
I have a reasonably decent laptop that is linked to my LG C6 OLED through my Onkyo 805 receiver - I was planning to use that as my Kodi front-end since I can pass through all audio to my receiver, leverage my back end Plex library, and use TVHeadEnd for DVR/live TV. I’ve got a FLIRC so I can pass all the IR I need to control Kodi with my Harmony remote. For 4k content I’d just DLNA straight to the TV using the LG app since my receiver doesn’t support 4k anyway.
The one thing that would probably nuke this would be if the performance of live TV was not as good as Windows Media Center. For all of its flaws and quirks, WMC tunes channels very fast and has extremely reliable pause / seek / skip inside of live TV buffer. I installed the HDHomeRun PVR / live TV add-on for plex (albeit, using Kodi Krypton RC2) and the live TV performance was complete trash. Probably just the HDHomeRun add-on’s lousy nature, but it did at least flag the issue as a potential gotcha for later.
Just a heads up.
Plex DVR is a LONG way from being ready for prime time.
Many technical hurdles to overcome to make it a real “Player” in the market and Plex is largely ignoring results of the SO CALLED Beta test.
All we can do is cross our fingers and hope Plex get’s their act together on this really great new feature. It does appears many are way ahead of them in this space.
So I am assuming that you’re running your Plex backend server and TVHeadEnd on Linux (since apparently there’s no Windows distro for TVHeadEnd) - what version of Linux you’re running?
Yep. Both (and some other stuff) are running on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
I’m looking to make the move out of WMC in the near future and have to figure out just what I need to build and what the level of effort will be. I know it’s been a bit tricky to integrate HDHomeRun Primes into TVHeadEnd but I guess that has changed with the later revs (4.2+) - what version of TVHeadEnd did you decide to use?
I’m not sure about the Primes, but with the european versions (HDHR Connect?) it just gets detected by TVH, no additional software / drivers needed. I’m using 4.0.9…
I have a reasonably decent laptop that is linked to my LG C6 OLED through my Onkyo 805 receiver - I was planning to use that as my Kodi front-end since I can pass through all audio to my receiver, leverage my back end Plex library, and use TVHeadEnd for DVR/live TV. I’ve got a FLIRC so I can pass all the IR I need to control Kodi with my Harmony remote. For 4k content I’d just DLNA straight to the TV using the LG app since my receiver doesn’t support 4k anyway.
The one thing that would probably nuke this would be if the performance of live TV was not as good as Windows Media Center. For all of its flaws and quirks, WMC tunes channels very fast and has extremely reliable pause / seek / skip inside of live TV buffer. I installed the HDHomeRun PVR / live TV add-on for plex (albeit, using Kodi Krypton RC2) and the live TV performance was complete trash. Probably just the HDHomeRun add-on’s lousy nature, but it did at least flag the issue as a potential gotcha for later.
I’ve not really played with the timeshifting that much with TVH / Kodi. Channel changes are fairly quick, and with the latest version of the Kodi plugin you can do ‘predictive’ channel switching to speed up changes - if you go up a channel it will tune the next channel up in case you go up another channel. Obviously you need to have enough tuners to be able to do this!
Maybe this year?