I want to add the DVR strictly for use with Live TV. I do not want anyone, including the admin (myself), to be able to schedule or start recording anything.
Is this possible?
Only the admin can schedule recordings, other users won’t see this. There isn’t a way to turn this off for the Admin. Just use a shared account when viewing and you won’t get these options.
This actually brings up two other issues however for just “users”. In my house all devices are logged into Plex as the admin account because of two other failings (at least what I see as a failing)
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Users cannot delete content. This one makes it to where myself and the family member have to do a manual “I am done watching that you can delete it”. Some of us don’t have unlimited space.
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Users cannot watch Live TV (this one is best I can tell anyway. I see nowhere to give them such access).
1 - This is on purpose. Deleting stuff is an admin task and is intended only for the admin to perform. Allowing others to delete content poses a risk that they could delete everything without your permission.
2 - You can share Live TV with Plex Home members.
Thanks, I will check into #2 I had not tried adding anyone as a Home user like that. I was just adding in people, including my kids accounts, as guests.
As to #1. I posted a long time ago in another thread on this forum that this should be an option for admins to determine if someone can or cannot. Other users in that thread felt the same way. I have had a real DVR from my cable company and the behaviour of the device didn’t require special access to delete shows. This would be a nice feature request for someday. My personal thought in how it could be made really slick… For example let’s say the owner and two home users all schedule “Rick & Morty” to record (same episode). Plex would record the show only one time. Users that did not request the scheduled item maybe they see it or maybe they don’t this is a toss up. The owner and two users that did do a schedule can then watch it and as each user chooses “delete” later (again for those of us who don’t save everything we record) Plex would hide it from their profile as if it was really deleted. Once all users (or all users and the owner?) that originally scheduled it have chosen to delete, then it actually gets deleted from disk. No manual muss or fuss interaction between users and owner doing it like this.
btw, if only owners can schedule recordings, but you can give Home users have the ability to watch Live TV then I have this question
- If a Home user is using up a tuner watching Live TV and a scheduled recording is about to start, does the recording fail since no tuner is available or does it take away the tuner from the Home user?
My thought is if an owner can only schedule recordings than Plex should stop any Live TV being used at the time unless it is the owner doing the Live TV, yes? Otherwise what is the point of not allowing family members (most likely family members) to schedule their own recordings?
Thanks for all the info!
1 - Yes, it has been requested. Plex’s policy is to not alter your original files. The ability to delete was added as that was the most common “change” to a file someone would do. However, as this is very destructive and can have wide spread repercussions should someone do this in error/anger, Plex will unlikely extend this ability to other users outside of the admin.
3 - The tuner works on a first come first server. It doesn’t matter if it is the admin, a home user, or another user. I see your point on giving priority to recordings, but it’s not something that’s been implemented. I do not have any information if this is being considered.
So I added a Home user but when I log in as them they still have no access to watch Live TV. As well when logged in as the owner and I go to edit the libraries available to that Home user I see nothing about Live TV. Is this hiding elsewhere in the settings of the server? I’m looking about but can’t find anything.
Thanks John. Seeing your screenshot now I realized that this feature selection isn’t surfaced in the online interface but rather just the local console only.
I don’t know what that means. That screen shot is the settings page for when you share your media with someone. Once you’ve set this, the user will then have access from the clients.
I see what I did wrong now. Initially I thought it was the difference of accessing the server using https://127.0.0.1:xxxx (whatever assigned port number) versus using the https://app.plex.tv/desktop# URL. SO I meant local and web based.
Now however I see you get two sets of Restrictions for a user based on if you are viewing their profile form the “My Home” versus the “Friends” section. Seems the two should tie together once a user has accepted a Home invitation but that’s ok at least I understand why it was weird looking at first.
Thanks to you both for the help!
My Home versus Friends are listed separately so that you can remove a user from My Home without removing them as a Friend. Removing from My Friend will remove them entirely.
