Configure comskip without 'supported Plex DVR'

[crakerjac21]

Server Version#: 1.22.0.4163
Tuner Make/Model: Tivo (unsupported DVR)
Plex Pass subscriber: Yes

I record TV with my home Tivo DVR. I have a cron task that will pull download my Tivo recordings, decrypt them and place them in my Plex library.

I was reading through the Plex support articles, and I saw “It’s also possible to enable the commercial detection to run for content in a regular TV library that was not recorded with the Plex DVR”. The catch is that I need to “Have a Plex DVR set up and configured on your Plex Media Server”.

To do this, Plex needs a ‘supported DVR’ configured right? Is there any way to set up the DVR/comskip functionality on (a Linux) PMS without a HDHomerun tuner?

[crakerjac21]

Figured it out. Posting my solution with the hopes that this may help someone else long after this thread dies.

1. Cloned tvhProxy from GitHub (GitHub - jkaberg/tvhProxy: An small flask app to help Plex DVR connect with Tvheadend)
2. Modified the tvhProxy.py python script to return an arbitrary channel list (in my case just a single channel) instead of actually going out and scanning for channels.
3. Run tvhProxy
4. Set up Plex DVR and point to tvhProxy with my defined list of channels
5. Close/discard tvhProxy

The thought here is that tvhProxy gives Plex DVR just enough info to configure the DVR and enable the comskip functionality. Once the Plex DVR is configured, I close tvhProxy and the Plex DVR just shows that it’s not connected.

The change I made to the tvhProxy was to remove the scan for channels and return just a single channel for Plex:

@app.route('/lineup.json')
def lineup():
    lineup = []

#    for c in _get_channels():
#        if c['enabled']:
#            url = '%s/stream/channel/%s?profile=%s&weight=%s' % (config['tvhURL'], c['uuid'], config['streamProfile'],int(config['tvhWeight']))
#            lineup.append({'GuideNumber': str(c['number']),
#                           'GuideName': c['name'],
#                           'URL': url
#                           })

    lineup.append({'GuideNumber': 0,
                   'GuideName': 'PBS',
                   'URL': 'http://localhost'
                   })

    return jsonify(lineup)