Hi,
Despite trying different things, my DVR recordings are very spotty in terms of their use.
I am using a HomeRun (dual-tuner) and my Plex Server is running on an Apple MacMini with an i7 Processor and 16G of RAM. FYI - This Mini is just dedicated to running Plex. Both the Home-Run and Plex Server are running the latest firmware/software.
My issues are I suspect that during recording, the home run loses tuner sync to Plex causing the issues I am seeing but not 100% sure. My antenna is outside about 30 feet high and I have amplifiers on the internal wiring to keep the signal strong. When I watch live TV, the signal is almost always excellent. I say maybe 3-4% of the time I get a brief pixelation.
So what happens is the recording never completes, i.e. a two hour program only records the first 45 seconds. In other cases, the video loops back every 3-4 seconds. Or it records most of the program, i.e. like 40min of a one hour program and then nothing. I get the error that the server has lost connection and re-try but upon further looking there is no more video to play.
The Plex Server and Home Run are both hard wired to a Gigabit network. I primarily use Amazon TV Sticks for viewing as they seem to have the most complete UI for the DVR implementation.
Could really use some pointers here as my experience so far has been really poor.
I have the same issue. Plex DVR only records 1 or 2 times before never recording again until the Plex server service is restarted. Plex’s recording schedule claims the tuners are recording throughout the day, but the HDHomeRun is not actually tuned to a channel, and no files are generated in .grab or elsewhere. When Plex is not recording, live TV on Plex also fails until the Plex server service is restarted. The HDHomeRun app tunes to channels just fine, even after Plex DVR stops working.
I have a HDHomeRun Extend (dual tuner) recording over an antenna. I’ve gone through multiple antennas to make sure it’s a perfect signal, and there’s rarely glitches at this point. The server PC is an Alienware R7 i5, 16GB of Ram on a wired 10 Gb network. I’m paying for a Plex Pass mainly for the DVR service, and right now it’s completely unusable. I’m not sure where to look in the logs, but I’m not finding any errors so far.
I too am having issues with DVR and live TV. From my Browser, Android or Roku, From the program guide, I select a live show, but says Playback error, unable to tune channel. If I open the HDHomeRun app, they play fine. Am I missing something?
It looks like I’m suffering from the [“100% Complete” recording bug](https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1513111/#Comment_1513111 ““100% Complete” recording bug”).
There is no fix so far.
1.6.1 seems to be the last functioning DVR version. I reverted to it, and Plex is recording reliably. 1.6.1 does not have the feature to remove commercials.
I am surprised the DVR / Live TV product is out of beta. I just replaced my Tablo with and HDHomeRun Quatro / Plex setup. I have been using Plex for years, but never with the DVR feature.
So far, the experience has been terrible. I am routinely getting the message that I am unable to tune to a live TV channel on the web interface and Roku. DVR recordings are impacted.
I attempted to get the logs, but interesting when this last happened, the CPU usage for PLEX went to 0% and no messages were written to any of the logs. The dashboard said it was unable to update. I had to kill the PLEX MS process and restart the application to get going again.
So much promise here, but this is terrible.
PLEX DVR has been unreliable. I have 2 Plex servers, one for viewing, one for recording. The viewing Plex is on a Synology DS 1815+ NAS, which stores all media EXCEPT the recorded programs. The recording Plex Server is on Ubuntu, 16.04LTS, AMD 1700x cpu (8 cores, 16 threads), 32GB RAM. A locally mounted 500GB SSD is used for recording. The problems appear to be mostly in transcoding and comskip. Wednesday night, Plex was recording 3 shows simultaneously, All seemed to be recorded OK (many files in the .grab folder) but the transcode process seemed to be hung: no changes to the file system in over 10 hours. I killed the PlexServer and restarted it. The .grab folder was cleaned up (I don’t now if that happened immediately or a scheduled overnight task did it). On Tuesday, 2 shows reported an error during post processing, Friday 2 shows reported an error during transcoding. For at least one of those shows, the show was truncated to 14 minutes. I can’t rely on Plex to do an adequate job of recording yet.
