I reinstall the DVR every 6 to 8 weeks to monitor the progress towards having a professional product. I was really quite surprised at the regressions when I did that today.
After 27 months, in the guide, you still insist that Prime Time starts at 5:00 rather than 8:00, even though you would be hard-pressed to find a user that thinks that makes sense.
After 27 months, you can still only select the next 7 days in the guide grid even though there is two weeks of EPG data. Apparently, the 2nd week “is a secret”.
But I was just appalled today when I tried to watch a recording in progress on my FireTV stick. I have to admit that I was able to select between watch live or watch from start – something that was not a given not long ago. However, with either option, the only navigation options were pause and play. The progress bar was disabled and the skip ahead/back buttons don’t work. This is unbelievably below the standard of something called a DVR.
Elan, we have paid for a product that just doesn’t work in even a basic way. And the huge problems have been constant for the last 27 months. Even other free products are more versatile and far more robust. We have heard multiple promises that the DVR will be improved but we just haven’t seen any progress in basic functionality for over two years. Even annoyances like the two I mentioned which should be really easy to fix are not addressed – and it’s pretty hard to defend the idea that prime time starts at 5:00 or that the 2nd week of the guide should be kept a secret.
Anyway, I have uninstalled the DVR again and gone back to NextPVR. I will continue to tell anyone that will listen to stay away from Plex DVR. On the other hand, I would be very pleased to see some major improvements when I try again in about 6 weeks.
Progress bar and skipping work fine for me on a Fire Stick 4K. Live tv works perfectly. You really aught to relax a bit man, why so angry about prime time and what is airing 2 weeks from now? That seems like a pretty minor detail
Canuck, what seems like a detail to you can be really important to some one else, depending on what they are doing. The guide grid really sucks if you’re trying to review what will be on in prime time for the next couple of weeks if you’re going to be away. First you have to select the day, then the time frame. So you select Prime Time. It goes to to 5:00. Now you have to scroll right 6 times just to see prime time. That’s day 1. Now repeat that for the next 6 days. Now you get to day 8 and the only way to see it is to select day 7 and then scroll right 48 times. It’s idiotic and there is not another DVR out there (free or otherwise) that makes it so hard to use the guide grid. And it would be easy to fix.
I have a Fire TV Stick Lite. Plex works perfectly for playing library content. But watching a recording in progress just doesn’t work at all at the moment.
This has been my experience for 27 months. Anytime I install the Live TV/DVR feature there is always at least one huge problem that makes it unusable. Either the EPG is not updating or is filled with crappy inaccurate info. Or maybe the Android client does not work. Or the Fire TV client does not work. Or you can’t get shows to schedule properly. There is always something major wrong that makes using Plex DVR a frustrating exercise. It doesn’t take much searching in the forums to see that many many users feel this way.
Plex, I did about an hour of testing on this and found the problems are with the Android app across the board, TV interface and mobile – not just FireTV. If you play the live TV with Maximum Quality settings (the default), the player is basically non-functional with play/pause being the only controls that work. I you change the quality settings so that transcoding is occurring, then the player behaves normally again.
This is odd because when I play back the recording after it is completed, I can play with max quality and the 5.1 surround sound passes through to the receiver as expected/desired. It’s direct stream rather than direct play, presumably because the 1080i needs to be deinterlaced on the server – not a criticism – just an observation.
So it appears that if I want to watch anything while it is recording, I have to force transcoding which means that the 5.1 AC3 gets converted to AAC stereo (i.e. I lose my surround sound).
This just isn’t ok. The kinds of shows that I watch live tend to be singing competition shows like The Voice or the Masked Singer where I really want the sound quality.
I really would like to be able to use the Plex DVR but there’s just always something wrong like this. So I will continue to use my NextPVR and record into my Plex Library. I can still watch while it’s still recording – the difference is that I can direct stream and I get my surround sound.
I really get the impression that Live TV/DVR is just a giant separate kludge into your over all Plex program and that this is why it is so unreliable.
Plex, I’m extremely critical of your Live TV/DVR and I honestly feel that my comments are fair. But I honestly do want it work. I just don’t want to feel like a beta tester all the time.
I doubt that anyone will care but I’m using the Android 8.11 across the board (latest FireTV stick Lite, latest Fire Tablet and a generic android TV box HK1Max) and latest Windows PMS 1.21.1.3876.
