My pet peeve is that when you set the event to record extra time like we often do with sports, it’s impossible to begin playback during that extra time. The play icon on the guide item is removed when the regularly scheduled time is over and there is no other way to begin playback. I thought that the whole idea of a DVR was to be able to watch stuff when we wanted. I can only conclude that Plex doesn’t care because they won’t respond to posts about this issue.
I constantly see posts about people not being able to get sports programs into the DVR schedule. Apparently, there is always something already in the library that looks like the sports event they are trying to record. So it is considered a duplicate and won’t record.
So it appears that we often can’t get the sports programs that we want to record and we are prevented from watching the successful recordings when we want.
Are there people that have a relatively satisfactory experience recording sports with Plex? Do you watch live or do you watch much later after the recording has completed? If you’re watching live and your wifi glitches during the “extra” time and the stream stops, are you happy about having to wait for the recording to completely finish before being able to play again?
To me, there appears to be a huge disconnect between how Live TV/DVR actually works and how people would naturally expect a DVR to work. Is it just me?
I’d recommend looking into Channels DVR or Emby. Channels is a bit pricy with their subscription in comparison (and I don’t like that they don’t offer lifetime licenses), but it’s an excellent system if you record a lot. Emby is cheaper and also rock solid, but IIRC Channels does offer a few extra bells and whistles.
According to their website, it seems that Channels DVR only supports HDHomeRun and I have a Hauppauge QuadHD tuner that I am really happy with. So I haven’t pursued Channels DVR as an option.
But the inability of Plex DVR to do basic things and the regular instability of the Android App for over a year now has forced me to rely on other DVR and Media Library software – both that happen to be free. And the commitment to acknowledge and fix serious bugs quickly is really impressive by the alternatives that I’m using. The contrast to Plex’s behaviour is stark, and I mean really stark.
And I know people may just label me as a complainer. But I’ve tried to report bugs through this forum (often bugs that are really easy to reproduce that don’t require logs) and it always ends in frustration, often with no response from Plex whatsoever. The inability to start playback on live recordings in “extra” time (mentioned in my initial post) is but one example. A fundamental expected behaviour of a DVR is broken and Plex just doesn’t care – and it’s been like that for almost 3 years now that I know about.
