UK user here with Plex on Proxmox LXC on NUC 11, Synology DS1821+ for storage and HDHomeRun Quattro for OTA digital UK TV (so 50Hz playback).
I’ve come back to Plex DVR after a year away on the superior (in many ways) Channels DVR. Push has come to shove and there’s enough about Channels DVR to prevent me from renewing the expensive yearly subscription, for now. I also bought a lifetime Plex pass a few years ago purely for the DVR product so it pains me to see that although some things have improved, some of the core functionality that anyone who has used a DVR before would expect just doesn’t work properly. Most of the flaws in Plex DVR I outline below are accomplished by Channels DVR without any fuss…
Time shifting:
The most very basic feature that I expect from a DVR is the ability to time shift a recording in progress.
Not only does Plex make this a chore, having to find the channel the recording is on either by scrolling slowly down the guide or hoping the channel is already on the recent channel list - not to mention having to remember what the channel you’re recording is in the first place - there are a number of caveats (or bugs I would say) before this can happen…
I’ve found that when a recording is on a single channel AND you have not recorded the preceding programme this works OKish, the prompt comes up to start the recording from the beginning and away I go.
If I have recorded the preceding programme, I find that it wants to start from the beginning of THAT programme.
As I discovered last night not only had I recorded the previous programme, but I was also recording another channel at the same time, so using only 2 of my 4 tuners (not that this should matter when trying to watch an in-progress recording). In this instance no option was given to me on the Android app on my phone, it just started a live play of the channel that was doing the recording!
I tried this a few times and gave up. I couldn’t even use the other botched workaround of waiting the 10 seconds or so for the search bar to allow movement as there was not option to search backwards on the bar to the beginning of the programme (I say “botched workaround” as I don’t really want to be having spoilers of the show midway through anyway).
This morning Plex has a lovely tick next to this recording that I tried to time shift back to the start from about 20 minutes of a 40-minute programme indicating the Plex decrees that I have already watched it. I tried this out on another show, a sports programme lasting 4 hours - I started the show half an hour after the airing started, fast forwarded through some adverts and then had to go out around 2 hours into the recording - I was around 5 minutes behind live at this point but when I tried to resume the show hours after the recording again Plex thought I had completed the viewing. I can only conclude this is because Plex marked that I had already watched 95% of a “2 hour” show even though the entire recording was 4 hours. It’s just not good enough I’m afraid.
Why on earth can’t recordings be started from the “DVR Schedule” tab before they have finished recording? This would be a clear way for users to time shift recording and would fall in line with the operability of just about any other DVR product, whether hardware or software like Plex.
I work from home so have a lot of time to go through recorded programmes, a lot of which I might have on as background noise, sports, news, documentaries, that kind of thing so another issue related to this is that sometimes I might start an in-progress recording on my phone app and then I want to get into the kitchen to make my lunch. What I expect to happen is that I stop the viewing on the phone and then, when I’ve again navigated my way through the unnecessarily complicated method to playback this in progress show, be able to start from where I left off - but no, the only options are to start from the beginning again or watch live (and that’s if I get that option at all as detailed above). It’s the same if I decide to stop watching and try to resume the in-progress recording on the same device! So I’m left to faff around fast forwarding from the beginning again, trying to remember the exact point I was at - it’s not great is it?
Again, I’ll repeat, these are all the basic features of a DVR so why after all this time are they not possible, or made excruciatingly difficult to accomplish. Made all the more painful when I keep seeing bloat added to the Plex product (I assume to monetize it) while this core functionality is ignored.
I did expect better after a year away, especially after the DVR debacle from a few years ago (and why can’t I set the guide to update more regularly - there is no scope to pull short notice programme changes from the OTA guide here in the UK because the only option now is to pull the guide at 2AM.), but my advice to anyone thinking of splashing out on a Plex Pass for the DVR feature like I did is to think twice and read about the myriad issues that are reported here and elsewhere, some of which span back many years, that never seem to get fixed.
This is just my main bugbear, but there are so many little niggly bugs with the DVR it would just be nice to know whether the glaringly obvious issues I’ve highlighted above are even acknowledged and whether there is any intention to “fix” these and if not, why not?
Another thing that is just unbearable is some 1080i content is not being deinterlaced resulting in a juddery horrible picture - why is this? I never had problems with the same content on Channels and if I play the file back manually in Kodi then it is fine. The clients I use (mostly Shield TV) do support deinterlacing video.
At the risk of repeating myself, a lot of what I’m reporting as not working properly are very basic features one would expect of a DVR (and especially a network software DVR) and it seems strange that I cannot resume a programme I am watching on another device just because it is a recording in progress - this is a basic feature of Plex itself and works perfectly well on my other stored media.
Some of these issues have been present for years so are these just all things Plex don’t care about?
