I got the awesome announcement from Plex today about the “live TV” option. I first checked it out via my iOS app. I have both a an HDHomeRun and a Prime.
In the app I saw stuff related to DVR and was able to watch some seemingly pre-chosen “channels” but what I want to do is browse my channels as if I were sitting in front my my FIOS box and pick a channel from an EPG grid that shows all my available channels just LIKE if I were sitting in front of my TV, INCLUDING my local TV stations. I guess I was taking “Live TV or DVR hard” to mean I could essentially duplicate my existing channels for live viewing like I can currently record any of my non-encrypted FIOS channels with a CableCard.
Ultimately my plan is to really cut the cord and dispose of FIOS TV programming entirely, but this is the interim step. I want to be able to record or watch live anything I can get now, but do it via my Plex server and simple remote clients like Firesticks or similar so I can get rid of my cable boxes and do it via the 5 available tuners I already have via my two Silicon Dust tuners. In my mind I should be able to view and/or record up to 5 things simultaneously, 3 with CableCard and two without.
Am I misinterpreting what this update will do for me?
I think that’s how it should work. You should be able to view non-encrypted channels (as long as they’re enabled, and visible in the program guide). There isn’t a “grid” style guide, but you should be able to watch all the channels you have enabled for Plex DVR.
How would just go to a specific channel? Say…I want to watch whatever is on a specific channel right now. I can’t figure out to just go to a specific station.
I guess for “live TV” purposes I would expect that I’d have an EPG grid similar to when I’m watching my actual TV from Verizon. I can just pull up the EPG and scroll through stations until I see something I want to watch.
FTR, as a test I tried to search by station call letters and it didn’t find my local programming. It found some program with those letters in the name. You can search by category so you can pull up specific news programs but only by title and only by scrolling through thumbnails of dozens of news programs I don’t care about.
I guess I would expect any “live tv” feature to look like what most people see on their normal cable grid. Perhaps similar to NextPVR or the like. I could just scroll down a list of the channels programmed into my DVR (which represents what channels I can get in my setup) and click on it to watch whatever happens to be on.
Well, at least for me, I see the logo for the channel in the iOS app in the bottom right corner while on the “Watch Now” grid, and the channel name at the bottom. The fast channel switcher (from when you’re already watching TV shows the name of the channel too)
“Watch now grid”? I don’t have anything called “Watch Now”. If I am in the “Program Guide” of my iOS app I can of course see programs listed in multiple horizontal rows of thumbnails. That first row is called “On Right Now”. Is that what you mean?
However, they are not in station order and in fact don’t have an indication of what station they even are until I click on one of them and see the details. If this is the design I guess I’d like to see a row that I could scroll across that is in station order and contains all my available stations. If I scroll all the way to the side I get a total of 50 items that are “On Right Now”. However they seem to be random. They are not even the FIRST 50 in my numerically. They jump all over to even some foreign language stations that I don’t watch. If it was going to be only 50 I guess I would expect it to be the FIRST 50 stations at least and in order, but ideally I would prefer to see all available stations.
FTR; I’m not bitching. Plex DVR is awesome! Perhaps my suggestions are coming down the line already or perhaps I’m missing something…hence the thread here.
I don’t have that or don’t know how to get to it. Is that the iOS app? I am running app v4.12.1 and when I checked the app store I had no updates.
Woah…just now when I went into program guide I now see a screen with a “Watch Now” option. It is still thumbnails though, but…it IS in channel order! The options to change the view is greyed out though. All I can do is filter. I can’t change the view.
Hmmmm…progress!
Does anyone who has this working know if it integrates with live channels on Android TV. This is exactly the sort of EPG experience that the OP is looking for, and I’d like to know before I commit to buying any additional hardware to test how the whole DVR stuff works. If not, hopefully integration with Android Live Channels can be added in a future update?
@loueradun It’s certainly not an option at the moment. Live channels integration would be nice.
At my house I have 3 stations that are not found by the channel guide. I have no idea what they are, it would be nice if I could play them to see what they are. Currently unless it has a channel guide you can’t play them.
Possible dumb question: when will live TV be integrated into PMP?
Is it there and I have no idea how to get to it?
