Editing channel list / Program Guide

General Discussions Plex Features
1

There’s a discussion thread on this topic on /r/PleX: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/6i9aad/plex_dvr_adding_missing_channels/

In essence:

  • TV tuner (in this case HDHomeRun) shows named channels which are being received
  • Plex doesn’t find guide/program information for these channels, so it doesn’t let you include/select them

I understand the program guide revolves around TV Shows as the main concept, rather than channels. Is there any way we can manually edit the channel list or program guide? I seem to recall a reference to an XMLTV file, but I can’t find one in the usual places for PMS.

Any help would be much appreciated!

2

When you first setup your DVR you have the option of using an XMLTV source.

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3

Yes, thank you. But I believe XMLTV files are just to populate the channel list? Or can they be used to “force” Plex to activate channels that don’t have program info?

Sorry, I just can’t seem to find much documentation on how I would create or use an XMLTV file. I’d be grateful for any pointers.

4

I have never used an XMLTV file myself. As I understand when using a XMLTV source you are using a third party source that your guide data is downloaded from. For example, IceTV for Australian TV. They provide the XMLTV guide data for their subscribers to use with Plex DVR.

5

Thanks for the tip; I managed to go a bit further with the XMLTV approach by using ZAP2XML and then providing the edited XMLTV file to Plex after removing and re-adding my DVR. It didn’t seem to work as well as the automatic setup, as I couldn’t get it to download program data after the channel line-up had been added.

However, I did find a workaround that lets me view the channels at least, which was to find a block of channels in the guide for my area that I don’t get reception for on my antenna (in my case, 67.1-67.4), and I just assigned them to the channels with no program info. So they show always-incorrect program info, but I can select them to view live.

A nice bonus is that because I had a block of unused channels, they are all together at the end of my list, which makes them easy to identify/navigate to for the most part.

For more information about XMLTV, there’s a site at http://wiki.xmltv.org. Thanks again @johnm_ColaSC for your help.