Hey there!
I have been a longtime Plex user / Plex Pass subscriber. We’ve finally decided to cut the cord, and last night I set up Plex DVR w/ HD Homerun Connect. As a bit of background, my current setup is Plex running on FreeNAS. I have read-only shares mounted for my media.
In preparation for getting the DVR setup, I created a read-write share for Plex, and I gave the VM access to it. My client device is an Apple TV 4K. I plugged in my HDHomerun tuner + antenna, and I was pleased to see that Plex detected it instantly.
I was surprised to see that in setup, it didn’t ask me where I should put recorded content… I figured that maybe it would prompt me when I started recording a new item, but then I wondered what about just when I click pause on Live TV? If I’ve given Plex read-only access to TV Shows / Movies shares, then where would it put the paused content? I’m still not sure about this question.
Then I did some searching on the internet, and I saw that it puts things in my normal TV Shows / Movies library, but those were read only. Those are all very high quality blu ray / DVD rips so I wasn’t super keen on adding my casually recorded content there, but it made sense. I went to my TV Shows section, and I added a new folder path to the read–write section.
I went to the program guide, and I clicked an item to record. Cool - It just started to work. Wait a minute… I clicked a movie, not a TV Show. Where is that even going? My Movies library only has read-only access to a directory… Hmmm… I had already left the page.
I decided to go up to “Status” on the top right to kill the recording so I could investigate. Shows being recorded are not listed under there. How can I see what’s being recorded? It turns out you have to do this by going into the guide and hoping to find the show with a red dot.
I started recording a TV show, and when I clicked it, I was able to select my new folder location w/ read+write access. There was no option for setting that as default, though, and it made me nervous about trying to record something on my TV. Would it literally ask me to select a folder path on my TV screen? I tested playback on my computer via Plex Web, and it worked well.
I opened up the Apple TV plex app. There was no option to watch live TV… I restarted the app. I made sure I was on the most recent Plex server / plex app / Apple TV firmware versions. All up to date. I decided to pull the plug on the Apple TV and plug it back in. That did the trick. Now when I opened up Plex, Live TV was there.
Instead of a guide like I was expecting, i had a grid of what was currently on. I started watching a show, and I got “weak signal” errors from time to time. What signal is this? Home network signal? Antenna signal? It wasn’t clear.
I tried the Channels app on the app store, and it worked great. It gave me a guide like I expected, and I didn’t have signal issues.
Sorry for the long story. I thought it might be useful for a Plex employee to see how I would go through the flow. I think with a few tweaks to the UI initial setup could be a lot easier. In addition to that…
- Where does Plex DVR write to when it isn’t give write access to a share?
- There should be an option to have DVR Recordings separate from the other libraries.
- There should be an option to set a default folder path for recordings.
- The “Weak Signal” error should be more specific.
- The TVOS app needs to do a better job detecting whether or not Plex has Live TV capabilities.
I’m using Channels for TV now, and Plex for media. I’d rather switch it all back to Plex, but right now there are too many issues. Let me know if there is more feedback I can provide. While this post may seem like a complaint, it’s really just feedback. I love Plex, and I’ll continue to use it!