I’ve given up on live tv with Plex. It should be way more mature by now so I assume it was just a tease to get people in with no real priority given to it.
I’ve moved on to the Amazon FireTV Recast. Right out of the box it is as close to as robust as Windows Media Center was and no one has been able to touch that.
How well does the Recast work with live streams and recordings? I’ve been having issues with recording live tv and also streaming live TV. Can you access the shows remotely (away from home) without too much buffering? I’ve got Plex Pass and have been trying to use the DVR for the last few months, but the recorded content (usually MPEG2) has problems playing on certain streaming devices (like Roku, FireTV Stick and strangely Apple TV). How is the Recast app support on different players?
I haven’t had a chance to access it outside the home yet and I haven’t recorded anything yet.
I recorded Jeopardy on the recast last night. I disconnected my phone from my local wifi so I was on my phone’s data network. Replaying Jeopardy looked fantastic, a little blocky at times, but never buffered. Live tv looked even better. You have to use the FireTV app and you can change the quality settings. The default quality is on the “Good” setting which is 0.81Mbps but it can go up to 8.26Mbps. The EPG on the FireTV app doesn’t show the grid, just the shows currently on now. But I can live with that since its actually usable remotely vs my Plex server’s tv not usable at all (movies are fine).
That’s great. I’ve got TMobile, I’d be curious if the streaming traffic appears as if it’s Amazon video streaming, which is “unlimited” per T-Mobile Binge. That’s one negative about streaming Plex is the traffic is all coming from your home. If it’s counted as Amazon streaming traffic, that alone might be worth the switch, at least for OTA TV.
Plex DVR would be so much better if only it was able to utilize the EPG information contained in the transport stream produced by most DVB-C tuners. Instead, Plex DVR requires the use of an external service to get the programming of each and every channel.
In my case, there simply is no proper listing to use, since I’m on a local cable operator not included in the choices of EPG providers used by Plex DVR. So some channels are simply not usable due to lack of EPG service information, even though the data stream itself would contain complete EPG information for that channel as specified in the DVB-C (and -T) specifications.
If this Plex DVR feature is to mature, it needs to adopt the approach employed by most DVB-C tuner boxes and retrieve EPG information directly out of the transport stream and cache it. Not only would this relieve users of having to match up channels with service listings, it would also open the whole thing up to DVB-S and other reception options, in one fell swoop.
How can you say it’s “as robust as WMC” when it doesn’t even have a grid-style guide??
It does show the grid EPG from a FireTV device, but doesn’t when using the FireTV app from a non-Amazon device. Maybe a future update to the app will enable it. But that has nothing to do with the robustness of the device. The device seems to be very stable and works as designed which is miles ahead of Plex Live TV DVR.
Sadly I too have moved away from Plex DVR. I really wanted it to work. For about a year now I’ve lived with missed recordings, 0 minute recordings, recordings that can’t be played back, live tv that won’t play and a myriad of other issues. Sometimes it’s been reliable for as long as a few weeks, but it always seems to degrade back to the point of not being reliable. Plex is a beautiful concept, great user interface but unbelievably buggy. Since DVR was unveiled I feel like it went from about 75% complete to about 85% but never made it past that point. The notion there’s still not a grid guide in the FireTV app is pretty appalling, as is the complete lack of reliability.
Out of the gate the Recast isn’t as sexy, it doesn’t do nearly as many things as Plex but what it does, it does very reliably. I’ve now been using it for about 10 days and it’s been rock solid. I can watch a recording in progress with no issues, I can fast forward and rewind without fear of the playback dying. I wish it was higher quality than 720p on playback. I wish it supported more than two playback streams simultaneously and I really wish a Fire TV Stick out of the house could access recordings on my Recast at home (2nd home) but I have a feeling a lot of that will improve over time.
Additionally, at $220 and $280 for two and four tuner versions its hard to beat the price. There’s no ongoing guide cost and that includes the tuners and storage. Overall, the Recast is a pretty compelling offering. If Plex was reliable I wouldn’t have moved away from it, but given what we’re getting right now I just can’t stick with it.
Ben
I’m not worried about higher than 720p since none of my local stations broadcast higher than that. I think as far as Live TV with a OTA tuner, the Recast is very close to being as good and stable as Windows Media Center.
The last year or so the EPG with WMC was flaky at best so I had to use EPG123 with a Schedules Direct subscription.
Sure, its not “perfect”, but its a fairly polished first gen product I expect will get better once they’ve received feedback and come out with some updates.
I think your opinion of Plex DVR being 75-85% complete is very generous. With the bugs and lack of some features I’ve been used to with WMC I don’t give it any higher than 65%. Seems like they’ve just been teasing it out to get people to sign up for Plex Pass and have no real intention of making it a viable feature. Just my opinion.
This is an interesting thread. I would honestly like to see Plex support the recast in some way. If I could map the recordings and provide access for playback that would be one thing, accessing the Recast live streams as a replacement for the HDHomerun would also be great.
The more Plex can work with Amazon’s Alexa suite the better for Plex.
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