I’m looking at Plex again after a long (long) time.
I’ve currently got a MythTV backend and a LibreElec (Kodi) front end for accessing my ripped movies (DVDs and Blu-Rays), and for watching live/recorded OTA TV (HDHomeRun antennas).
Can (paid) Plex replace all of this?
I’m thinking I can reduce my Myth/Kodi boxes down to a single Plex box, and use phone apps to stream to a FireStick or a Chromecast. Is that correct?
Thanks,
John
P.S. Plan would be to install Plex server on Manjaro Linux (Arch based).
I can’t speak to Kodi, but I do have experience with MythTV. I used it successfully for maybe 2 years, before Plex supported LiveTV. MythTV was a pain (for me at least) to set up, but once
set it, it ran pretty much flawlessly for me. The whole time, I was using using Plex to watch
the TV shows I recorded with MythTV. Eventually, Plex came out with LiveTV. Even though
I was (and continue to be) a Plex Pass subscriber, I didn’t jump in turn off MythTV for me.
It worked fine, didn’t seem any reason to mess with it. Later on I had to replace my
hardware, and reinstall/re-setup Plex again. This time I tried Plex LiveTV instead of
Mythtv, and (no joke) it took me maybe 20 minutes to set it up and it also pretty much
works flawlessly.
Plex LiveTV is not as feature rich as MythTV. For example, if you are recording every
episode of a series, with MytvTV, you can easily choose to skip one episode if you
wanted to. You can’t do that with Plex LiveTV. The interface for seeing the listings
is also much better with MythTV. But it’s good enough with Plex, and I don’t
hesitate to recommend it. It’s much, much easier to set up than MythTV and it’s
nice have one interface to mess with instead of two.
I would politely remind you that Manjaro is not officially supported by Plex:
Ubuntu, Suse, Debian, and Centos/Fedora are. While Plex will likely run with
no problems on Manjaro for you, that could change in the future. Consider running
an officially supported distribution so you don’t regret it later. I’m speaking from
direct experience on that, not just a hypothetical.
So it sounds like I can replace everything with Plex without too many issues, and get some other nice features toboot. I only touch the very surface of myth, so it’s really overkill, and the setup is indeed a pain. I’m nearing a hardware upgrade as well, which is one reason I’m looking at this again.
I understand about Manjaro vs Ubuntu, but gods I hate having to upgrade. I have NEVER had a system upgrade go well, which is why I’ve switched to a rolling release distro. There’s a lot of “unsupported” software that works just fine on Arch/Manjaro (esp more popular things like mythtv and Plex). If it doesn’t work, well then, I’ll switch.
If you don’t use the fancy features of MythTV, and you have a tuner(s) that Plex recognizes,
I think you should be very happy with Plex. I am, anyway.
LiveTV is free (I’m pretty sure), but the DVR functionality is part of (paid) Plex Pass.
You could just install (free) Plex and try it out, verifying your tuner gets recognized,
etc, before deciding to pay for a Plex Pass. It’s easy (trivial) to upgrade to a
Plex Pass if you decide to do that: you don’t have to re-install anything.
Here are some suggestions.
/var/lib/plexmediaserver will start to use a lot of space depending on how much media you add. I recommend you create some separate partition somewhere and symbolically link
/var/lib/plexmediaserver to that partition so you can resize it more easily if needed.
Come up with some plan for that now.
I don’t know the naming conventions required/used by Kodi. Spend some time researching how Plex wants your media named and fix any problems before you start scanning your
files. It’s easier to do it right at the beginning than try to fix it later. You’ll find many posts
in these forums where the problem being asked about is caused by the user not following
the naming conventions.
I ran Plex on (officially unsupported) PCLinuxos for a couple of years, no problem. PCLOS does not use systemd. Somewhere along the way, Plex stopped (I think this may have
changed, I’m not sure) supporting sysv init: Plex required systemd. Pretty much at the
same time, Plex changed the TV listings provider. In order to get TV listings, you had
to upgrade the Plex server. I couldn’t do that easily because of the systemd requirement.
I moved my server to Centos at that time because Centos is meant for servers: there’s only
security updates. Anyhow, I’m just cautioning your that while Plex will likely run just fine on
Manjaro for you right now, there’s no guarantee that will always be true.
I am not sure, but the support from Plex seems not existing. There is no way to get in touch with a technical person to report issues. Everything works through this forum. I have created a post for a serious android app issue and none of the plex employees are interested to to address or just to acknowledge
You can add minutes before or after the start of a scheduled recording by
clicking on “Show Advanced” in the bottom left of the screen. I always add
60 minutes to the end of a football game.
I’m glad you also found the install easier than MytvTV.
Server Version#: Linux - Version 1.19.5.3112
Player Version#: 8.5.1.19778
This issue is only with android apps, I can see the lyrics from webapp and Apple App. But not with android. Checked with multiple android device and can see same issue.
This was working well early, but after buying the PlexPass this issue started on Android App.
I can see the Lyrics Icon, but when I click this, I can see only a black scree and no lyrics.
Its working well on webapp and apple app. Issue is only with Android.
I tried commercial detection/deletion once or twice; it didn’t work very well for me
on the show I tried. I believe there is some way to customize the settings based on
the show/channel you want to process, and if I wanted to put some more effort into it, I’d look
there first. I (PMS) create thumbnails for all the shows I record immediately (there’s
a setting for that, go look for it) and use a Roku to play my media. With the
thumbnails and the Roku “skip head 10 seconds” button, I can quickly skip thru
commercials. While I’d like it more if “comskip” just worked, reliably out of the box,
I don’t want to spend any time on it.
I think Mythtv and Plex use the same GPL-ed comskip code for commercial detection
and deletion (could be wrong).
I’ll keep that as long as I’m able.
