After waiting for quite some time for Beta 4, unfortunately there is absolutely no improvement to the EPG for regional Australian viewers.
I refer to previous postings in the forum where many users have indicated that Plex DVR does not contain the EPG for Australian viewers outside the capital cities. I’ve provided the correct data requirements previously for Wollongong NSW, and continue to be advised that Gracenote is the cause of the problem.
Plex is paying Gracenote for a subscription, but clearly Gracenote does not care much for their customers. Yes, disappointed after waiting so long for Beta 4, and absolutely no improvement to EPG listings.
“Global Reach
A world leader in TV Listings and Electronic Program Guides (EPG) for North America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.”
In Australia dozens of other products and services have COMPLETE EPG guides. So clearly with such an incomplete EPG data feed for Australia (part of Asia generally) this is a FALSE claim.
@elan thanks I guess it’s hard and frustrating for Plex too. Can you ask them also why about 30% of the guide is missing cover art, I’ve seen USA YouTube videos and they all have images in the guide and more consistent meta data. They need to make a lot better effort on Australian content all up. Is there anyone IceTV could contact as they are willing to look into providing their excellent data but it may have to be modified to get all the metadata. I have the owners contact details but I can’t post them publicly.
@ian.spencer said:
Is there anyone IceTV could contact as they are willing to look into providing their excellent data but it may have to be modified to get all the metadata. I have the owners contact details but I can’t post them publicly.
Thanks, Ian! Please give them my email, elan at plex dot tee-vee
As much as I am a Ice TV Fan I am not sure I would recommend them considering the huge debacle over the ICETV recorder with the company being dragged into administration over it and of course us subscribers losing out any existing subscriptions we had when they merged out of administration…
@ozgreg I had 4 years prepaid and it was a mess not all of their own making and disapointing. Businesses fail, they salvaged what they did and moved on so have I. The Melbourne Guide is patchy and it’s unlikely they will give rural Australia any love anytime soon unless you know more. I had I think one week downtime with IceTV in about 10 years. I just brought a full priced plex lifetime licence to encourage the developers but I suspect their requests to Gracenote are not on the top of their list for Australia. IceTV know Australian Guide data better than anyone.
Its not monthly subscription and their business model is better, manufacturing was fraught with danger but they would be hero’s if it all worked out.
I’m frustrated enough with the guide to pay someone to do it for me who have a good track record with guide data.
@ian.spencer said:
Is there anyone IceTV could contact as they are willing to look into providing their excellent data but it may have to be modified to get all the metadata. I have the owners contact details but I can’t post them publicly.
Thanks, Ian! Please give them my email, elan at plex dot tee-vee
@elan I have sent Colin your email address he should be back to you soon. Thanks so much for your interest in Australian Guide data. Optimally Gracenote would be on top of it but there a big company and were a small population but as Free to air TV is still very prevalent in Australia Plex DVR is an ideal replacement for Windows Media Center.
It isn’t just Australia, the EPG for Canada for my area lacks 70% of the channels I get, one of which is the most prominent Canadian channel (CBC), but it seems to have an entry for the french version, go figure.
@essentialinfo@gmail.com said:
After waiting for quite some time for Beta 4, unfortunately there is absolutely no improvement to the EPG for regional Australian viewers.
I refer to previous postings in the forum where many users have indicated that Plex DVR does not contain the EPG for Australian viewers outside the capital cities. I’ve provided the correct data requirements previously for Wollongong NSW, and continue to be advised that Gracenote is the cause of the problem.
Plex is paying Gracenote for a subscription, but clearly Gracenote does not care much for their customers. Yes, disappointed after waiting so long for Beta 4, and absolutely no improvement to EPG listings.
Not just regional. Still missing two channels in metro Sydney (7flix and 9Life), SBSViceland is labelled SBS2. There’s still mismatching of shows. A-leage (sport) after I pointed it out started matching properly to Hyundai A-League (sport), but after about a fortnight it went back to matching against The League (sitcom).
Those problems aside, I’m absolutely loving it though. So very glad the Plex team are bringing this to their product. It’s going to be loved even more when the sports I normally like to watch (but rarely do due to scheduling conflicts) return to FTA TV.
As a new user I was a bit disappointed to discover these epg issues after just paying for lifetime premium. The presentation of the epg data makes it hard to notice that things are missing and I had just assumed that because it was a paid commercial service it would be complete and correct!
Can another Australian (preferably Melbourne) user advise which source is best to select for the most complete data? I’m using Fetch TV at the moment and that is missing a few channels completely and seeming to fail to populate others that it claims to have (such as Food Network). It seems you can’t easily change epg sources but have to delete the whole dvr setup and start again which seems strange, too. Why not just have an option to select a different source and refresh the data?
And given these issues, an option to simply manually record a channel and time would be good, since you simply can’t record at the moment if the epg is missing or wrong as far as I can see? I’d also like to see a traditional grid of channels and programs as an option so that missing data is obvious.
@lennier76 said:
And given these issues, an option to simply manually record a channel and time would be good, since you simply can’t record at the moment if the epg is missing or wrong as far as I can see?
@lennier76 said:
And given these issues, an option to simply manually record a channel and time would be good, since you simply can’t record at the moment if the epg is missing or wrong as far as I can see?
We’ve definitely got this request on our radar!
Thanks Elan, that’s good to know at least. Plex seems great in many respects so I don’t want to seem too negative about it, and I realise DVR is still beta, but basic functionality like correct epg information is hopefully high on the priority list. Is there an official way to submit feature requests or is this forum the appropriate place?
@elan Hope you got the info from Colin ok.
My Windows Media Center died today and the Cricket is on again tomorrow. There are 3 sessions in a day. Your guide still refuses to recognise more than one session per day. As an emergency is there any way of manually editing or doing anything to get the specific channel to record or show the programs. A way to record a time period would work also. So close but so far. I think the confusion is the main title is the same but the subtitle changes maybe Gracenote just can’t handle this but you would think that would be considered another episode for the day. https://www.yourtv.com.au/search?q=First+Test+-+Australia+v+Pakistan®ion=94
Just a thought I am going to try and add 6 hours after in the minutes after end setting and hope that doesn’t crash, (I wonder how many minutes can be added) and see if Plex handles that then it will cover the complete day.
@BastardSheep said:
Not just regional. Still missing two channels in metro Sydney (7flix and 9Life), SBSViceland is labelled SBS2. There’s still mismatching of shows. A-leage (sport) after I pointed it out started matching properly to Hyundai A-League (sport), but after about a fortnight it went back to matching against The League (sitcom).
Those problems aside, I’m absolutely loving it though. So very glad the Plex team are bringing this to their product. It’s going to be loved even more when the sports I normally like to watch (but rarely do due to scheduling conflicts) return to FTA TV.
I switched over the Channels tvOS app last night to use gracenote’s guide, and all the channel matching issues I mention above were also in there. So I now see this is definitely something Gracenote are well behind the ball on and something definitely in their court to fix.
