Continuing EPG issues

General Discussions Plex Features
1

I am continuing to have continual issues with EPG data. Yesterday Plex was once again not recording TV programs that were scheduled. When I checked the schedule this morning, it shows episodes of daily newscasts scheduled to be recorded for next week, but does not show any of the episodes for this week. I know they are being broadcast because I’m watching them live via my HDHomeRun box right now, but they are now showing up in the Plex EPG.

This issue needs to become a much higher priority for the Plex team; before work on new features continues (in my opinion). This has been an ongoing issue for several months. Without reliable EPG data, Plex as a DVR solution is useless. The noise and frustration level in this household is getting pretty high, as people sit down to watch the news or their favorite shows, only to find that they didn’t get recorded because the EPG data is missing or incomplete. I don’t have time to babysit Plex and continually attempt manual refreshes of EPG data in hopes that it might eventually get all of the data it needs. This issue needs some serious attention given to it until it is consistently reliable. It is a key component to the DVR functionality. If the issue is the EPG provider, then you need to find a way to work with them to correct the issue, or devise some other way of getting the information.

I realize that DVR functionality is still listed as Beta, but this is a key component to the DVR functionality. At present, I wouldn’t consider it to be anything beyond experimental, as it simply doesn’t have the consistent reliability to be considered anything more. The frustration level is high, and the Plex team doesn’t seem to be on-board with the issues. I appreciate that this is a volunteer effort, but that doesn’t mean you get to stick your heads in the sand or close yourselves in a room somewhere and work on your pet project. If you’re going to add functionality, you need to work together as a team to make that functionality work, and for something as major as DVR capability, you need to set new features aside until you get this figured out. Just my $0.02 worth.

Windows 10 Professional; Plex 1.7.2.3878

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The DVR was great until the 1.7.x update. Now I have to re-think my OTA DVR plans going forward. I’ll have to get the family used to the unorthodox GUI of the HDHomeRun DVR I guess. No DVR problems there, though. See my other post about the constant buffering with this release. I really want to believe it’s an artifact of the file format change. It’s a show-stopper (as if the EPG wasn’t).

3

I’m having the buffering issues as well, although I’m not sure it started with 1.7, or that it is even the server side of the equation. When the issue started, I rolled back the server and the issue continued, so it may be as much related to the client side of the equation as the server side. Either way, it didn’t used to be an issue; now it’s broken and it needs to be fixed.