(Better) Support for .WTV files

Feature Suggestions
1
(WMC recorded files)
Would LOVE for there to be better support for WMC recorded TV files :) See also:
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/43353-windows-media-center-files-not-appearing-in-plex
2

Indeed…

3

Here is another thread with more details on how to make the most of things within the current Plex limitations:

http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/23536-wtv-file-support



IMO, what I think is needed and what could really make Plex great is twofold:


  1. The ability for Plex to get all of the metadata it needs directly from the .WTV files. These already have the necessary metadata embedded in them. No need to go to TVDB. A developer can chime in here, but I suspect this would not be difficult.
  2. The ability for Plex to constantly refresh/update the time duration of a .WTV file that is being played. This will be useful for playing .WTV TV show recordings that are still in the process of being recorded. Again, this doesn’t seem like it should be difficult. Used in conjunction with a 3rd party iOS scheduling app (RemotePotato or the app that Ceton sells), this would give us some pseudo-live TV / DVR capabilities.
  3. Future enhancement (more complicated): The ability to bring up a television guide within Plex and have that remotely control Windows Media Center running on the Plex server. Selecting a channel/show could trigger a recording request on WMC and Plex could then switch into the mode of playing that in-progress .WTV file with on-the-fly transcoding.
4

Not to hijack your recommendation, but I just started up a feature request of my own. In mine I’ve provided some specific details as to the changes the devs would need to make, and I’ve also made mine more generic (one aspect is probably more WTV-specific, but the other would apply to any DVR back-end). Please take a look and up-vote it if you like my suggestions:

http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/59022-super-easy-enhancement-dvr-pseudo-live-tv-support-for-all-clients/

5

Adding WTV support shouldn’t be very complicated. The only problem is that Plex likes Season and Episode Number and Windows Media Center works with original air date.



Looking through the code it appears for basic support of WTV the following is required -


  1. Plex Series Scanner.py needs to be updated to support .wtv as it has ‘.mp4’, ‘.m4v’, ‘.mov’ currently. This would be a separate IF block (if ext = .wtv) in the beginning as there is no series directory structure and just loop through the files rather than the directory structure. For each file, the Windows extended file properties contain all the metadata - not sure how to retrieve this in Python and if the extended file properties are supported.



    This should be getting the series name, episode name, and original broadcast date from the file properties. The call to Media.Episode will have the show title, episode title, and year. The season number and episode number are not provided and will have to be derived from the original broadcast date.


  2. Initially, there should not have to be any changes to the TheTVDB agent as it should work fine once the scanner sets the appropriate attributes for the series. To fully support episodes, an update will have to be made to use episode name rather than episode number for matching.



    For a WTV file the Windows file attributes contain all the metadata (listed in order on the properties page) -



    Title = series name

    Length = recorded length

    Recording Time = time show recording started

    Broadcast Date = original broadcast date (time is always 12am)

    Program description = show description

    Rerun = Yes or no

    Subtitle = episode name (e.g., Downton Abbey, Season 3)

    Episode Name = episode name = subtitle



    There are also attributes like channel number, channel call sign, TV credits, cc, SAP, HD, parental rating, protected, etc.



    One advanced feature or setting is to exclude or mark all shows set as Protected as this appears to be the Copy Once flag and these shows could not be watched via Plex.



    With the addition of WTV support and PlexSync, Plex will be a killer add-on for all Windows Media Center users.
6

+1 to this feature

7

I've given up. I use MCEBuddy to rename the recordings to the SxxExx format and let plex scan those.

It's silly, but it works.Yay.

I don't need "series/season/Ep" sortings. I think MC users would be fine with series/episode by date recorded and alternately date aired.

8

Really wish we could get an official response to this. This seems like a simple fix that would be hugely beneficial to WMC users. I don't get why Plex ignores WMC. It's literally the only way to watch DRM/cable card TV on a Htpc. Anyone? 

9

DRM content will not play on plex, so that’s really not a reason to support WTV.

I suppose Plex could get a PlayReady license and build a secure transcoder. With MC essentially dead at Microsoft, that’s not and investment I world make…

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

10

DRM content will not play on plex, so that's really not a reason to support WTV.

I suppose Plex could get a PlayReady license and build a secure transcoder. With MC essentially dead at Microsoft, that's not and investment I world make...

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

That's a good point. I should have phrased it differently. WMC setups are the only way to watch TV with DRM'd channels, which makes it popular among the HTPC crowd. However, for most providers, only premium channel content, like HBO, actually has DRM protection. So there's a large number of WMC users who stream the 90% of the content they can. For a simple change to recognize WTV files with the WMC naming convention as recorded TV, Plex could be much more valuable to a good portion of users who would be natural customers.

11

Right, I have Comcast and no premium channels (e.g., HBO), and all of my recordings are DRM-free.

12

I use this WTV-Metarenamer (http://wtvmetarenamer.codeplex.com/ ) to automatically rename wtv files and move them into folders that are in Plex's library.  Works very, very well.  You can even tie the script to be called when a show finishes recording so there's no lag to show up in Plex.

I use subdirectories off the Recorded TV folder so they both show up in Plex and in WMC Recorded-Tv.

13

Early 2021 clean-up: duplicate