Note: This applies to all server/TV client versions (Android TV, LG, Roku, etc)
I think this may be something overlooked in the UI:
- Schedule a recording for a show (1PM-2PM)
- Set that recording to go past the end for 60 minutes
- At 2:30PM, try to watch the show.
- … Uhhh …
As the show is still recording, you can’t go to the Guide to watch it, because you can’t go “backwards” in the guide to select it (pressing left goes to the left menu instead of backwards in the guide). You can’t go to TV Shows (the library where the recording ends up) because it is still actively recording for 60 minutes past the end time so it won’t end up there until after 3PM.
Is this even possible in the UI as it exists today?
Thanks!
I totally agree w/this issue and it is a basic scenario which boggles my mind it has not been covered yet.
Another one… record a show like a football game, end it 30 mins late, say from 12-3:30pm. Recording is set to delete and remove commercials when it is done.
You start watching the show and pause the show frequently to go do other stuff. You are basically time-shifting with the pause/play button. You still watch the show on/off throughout the afternoon and are in the 4th quarter and coming up on 3:30pm. Once I cross 3:30pm, I hit the ‘Skip Forward’ button over a commercial and then get the dreaded ‘Playback error’! The show can’t be found anywhere in the DVR lib and you can’t watch the rest of the game - what???. You have to wait for the delete and remove commercial process to run before anything shows up in the DVR lib.
The logic is not that heard… when something is being recorded with DVR and there are current active streams connected (either in pause mode or playing), do NOT alter or change the source of the stream. Background process anything you need to and drop the delete/removed commercial version in the DVR lib only after it is done ( currrent streams should stay connected to source material). The DVR lib should always have either a) the unaltered version or b) the removed version once it is ready. The lib should never be missing an event while there is background processing going on.
Come on Plex, this is basic DVR 101 and people use this feature a lot to start shows late but still watch them close to the original recording time (standard method to time shift off the commercials).
Please fix this. It is a PAIN during football season and you can’t use the DVR for a game and watch it at the same time - you either need to watch it live or wait until the game is over and the processing is done. argh!
Football is exactly the problem I have as well. Sitting here waiting for commercial scanning on a 1PM EST game as we speak.
I hadn’t realized there was so much delay from commercial scanning, either. I’ll be turning that off for these from now on. And until the first issue is covered, I’ll start recording the show “after” the game when possible instead of extending the recording. It’s a lame way to work around it, but better than nothing I guess.
Same here. I recently picked up an HD Homerun to be able to “record” football games (mostly) and watch them time-shifted, after my kids go to bed. I am now three weeks into this and it hasn’t worked ONCE correctly. Each time, the game is spoiled for me by showing me the ending.
Can someone explain how this is supposed to work? From what I can gather, you can try to tune in during the broadcast and get the option (as I did tonight) to “Start from the beginning” or “Watch Live,” which is great. I chose to start from beginning. It worked. It even offered to Skip the intro. Great. But after the game began, as soon as it hit a commercial break (I asked for it to mark but not delete them), it did NOT offer to skip them. So I tried skipping forward with the remote. INSTEAD, it “skipped” me to LIVE and I saw the score as the game was ending. WTF?
Then, I tried going back and the recording was no longer available, since the following program was now on the guide and (as was mentioned above) you can’t go “left” and select the game again.
SO, it was NOT selectable on the guide,
choosing the continuation (following program) only offers a short rewind to the top of THAT,
and the main recording is nowhere to be found. NOT IN TV SHOWS, not anywhere.
This is maddening. Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks.
Commercial/intro marking/deletion only occurs when the program has finished recording
There are a few things happening under the covers when you record a show. Segments from the tuner are captured in the Transcoder directory and concurrently concatenated into a file in the .grab directory for later post processing before moving to final location. If the tuner is to be shared or you are trying to watch the recording a relay is spun up for the client. For maximum stability your transcoder directory should not be a RAM disk which could run out of space or start trimming files that may be needed especially if you start skipping around during the program.
The tuner sharing, timeshifting and remote play of live tv require additional resources that are difficult to quantify. Normally, it either works or doesn’t. For long programs like sports, I can think of a not recommended, probably problematic, unsupported way to view the show while the recording is in progress.
This was a regular failing that I had as well (Windows Plex Server). There was simply no way to a watch a recording in progress during the “extra time”. I don’t automatically transcode or remove commercials. So the failing is not related to those sorts of complications.
The end result is that you have to wait for the recording to completely finish before you can watch it – a deficiency that almost no one is ok with.
I can’t demonstrate the bug as I have given up on the Plex DVR in disgust, uninstalled the DVR and gone back to a much more reliable/powerful free alternative. This deficiency was one of the many reasons for this.
Also, another behaviour that I remember was that if you were watching the in-progress recording, the stream would fail when recording of the “extra time” started, no matter where you were in the recording that you were watching. At that point, there was no way to restart (for the same reason explained in the first post on this thread) and you would have to wait for the “extra time” recording to complete before you could continue watching the program. This was an extremely annoying thing if you were watching a live event that you were very interested in.
Thanks, Tiebierius. At least I know what the limitations are. As others have said, they seem pretty unacceptable, considering how DVRs are expected to operate and what users assume they can do.
After I posted that comment, I waited for the extra time to finish, and sure enough, the recording WAS listed and I was able to watch all of it. Unfortunately, due to what I described earlier, the result of the game was spoiled for me, so there was no point in doing so.
This is pretty disappointing, as I was very much looking for Plex to be able to provide me this service, and thought that having paid for a PlexPass would do it. I’m also getting significant buffering on a consistent basis while either watching Live TV or a recorded program. I thought the whole point of having hardware transcoding on the HD Homerun was to avoid that, and yet, it’s still apparently a drawback. Is there a way to set it for “easiest” processing, in order to avoid buffering? I can’t imagine this is how this arrangement was intended to operate.
Buffering while watching Live TV I would look at the server first, recorded program makes the WiFi/network the suspect.
What are your systems specs? The Extend has selectable modes for compression, they should be set via Plex and the DVR setup, not on the device itself.
Thanks for the info Tiebierius, though it still seems like core lacking capability for a DVR.
The expected behavior with an example of a 90 min scheduled recording:
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Anytime during the 90 min recording, a new client can initiate to watch a recording in progress.
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The client can watch anywhere in that 90 mins, from beginning to end, and take as long as they need (they can hit pause for 4 hours in the middle and still resume). Basically, you keep that backing-stream valid (or you switch to final) for that client.
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From the DVR lib for TV Shows, you should see a recording in progress as soon as it starts and someone should be able to start watching it from there.
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As soon as the show ends, someone can also go to TV shows and immediately start the show.
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The remove/skip commercial can be a secondary background task that when finished only NEW clients pick it up. Existing running clients maintain orig content.
This should be considered MVP for a DVR solution. Removing/Skipping commercials should not be rolled out if it breaks #1-#4 above.
Please address this as it is brutal for sports!
@MovieWiz - PM me the DVR you ended up using, I am curious to see what you picked
