The family just want a product that works, I have no trust in Plex to provide such a product currently. Whether it takes 1 min or 30mins to submit logs it doesn’t change the fact that Plex TV and DVR is riddled with bugs unlikely to be fixed anytime soon.
Especially when the user base experiencing issues refuses to help them in any way.
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I think you’re being a bit disingenious here, as evidenced by the vast majority of people in this thread, Plex DVR is working almost perfectly, with the exception of a few minor issues in some cases.
However I can sympathise with wanting a solution that just works, and I understand that you don’t want to wait around for fixes - which is perfectly fine, but don’t pretend that Plex is riddled with bugs and that the developers don’t care.
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But this is not open source. I have used Channels DVR for 8 months now but I just can’t rely on Plex to provide a stable system, I’ve tried Plex TV and DVR numerous times but always feel it’s a beta product and end up ditching it again.
I didn’t say they don’t care please don’t make that assumption. I may work in IT and face software problems daily but explain that to family who’s recording just failed again for whatever reason. Maybe s STB isn’t so bad after all.
I had 2 recordings out of 3 give issues in the past 24hrs trying to play back. I’ve had to spend 3+hrs tonight converting Plex TS recordings to MP4 just to get them to work. I shouldn’t have to do this with a commercial product.
The Channels app will work in any country where an HDHomeRun is available. Guide data and image availability varies depending on your location and TV provider, but we currently have known coverage for the following countries:
- USA
- Canada
- UK
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Denmark
- Czech Republic
- Germany
- Italy
- France
- Spain
Many other countries in the EU are also supported.
We’re working on multi-lineup support now.
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One thing to keep in mind when comparing tune times between the Channels app and Plex (and someone fact check me if I’m wrong, but the last time I used Channels this was the case) and that is that Channels is a direct tune from tuner to client, meaning you have no buffer for live tv. So unless you’ve chosen to record that program there is no rewind/replay functionality. Plex on the other hand passes all channel tunes through the server and begins building a buffer immediately, because of this we will always be somewhat slower than a direct tuner-to-client implementation.
It’s mostly a philosophical decision, but because of this it’s a little bit of an apples and oranges comparison. That being said we’re always looking for ways to improve the experience and ideas are still being kicked around.
Thanks to everybody that’s helped out and sent logs in our quest to chase down some of these remaining issues. @SimonCraddock I’d love to get logs from you if possible as we’re really not hearing too many reports of lagging tune times outside of some older Roku/Fire devices, and web which has not yet been worked. Nor are we hearing any reports of people having to manually convert recordings to make them playable. Something seems very wrong here. I understand you said your home time has been limited… but you’ve also posted 15 times in the last day alone. Maybe 1 post could include logs? 
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Posted earlier but echoing the same requests. I would greatly prefer to use Plex for all of my media and give you my money but LiveTV/DVR usability needs to at least match Channels.
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Tuning is at least 50% faster in Channels. I understand transcoding delays, but if there is no transcoding then it should not be delayed. In my tests all my streams say ‘Direct’ but are still 2x slower to load in Plex compared to Channels. If this could be fixed & allowed on MPEG2 compatible Roku models (as it seems Plex is already doing) that would be a major advantage over Channels who will not develop Roku apps.
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I’m hesitant to use Plex commercial skip as it is destructive so if there are ever issues (which looking at other forum topics it looks like there are) it will ruin recordings. Channels has non destructive skip that is usually spot on but on the rare chance it is broken you can just manually time shift
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This is incorrect. Channels has a live TV buffer that works with the faster tuning.
Thanks for the fact check @cabner2005 I was wondering if that had changed. So in Channels if you’re tuned to a channel for some period of time it will have an extended buffer on the server? (not just 10 or 15 minutes stored to device). If you hit record in Channels when you’ve been tuned to a channel for an extended period of time will it save whatever has been buffered for that program to the recording?
I actually left a Channels live show paused yesterday for several hours on accident and it worked fine storing the buffer on the computer I run the DVR software on.
These new improvements seem great in principle. However for me UK live tv is very unstable, which is frustrating as its a pay for service. (I should point out I am using 4k fire tv sticks) I cannot watch live HD tv at all, it just freezes. Being able to have more control options in settings would be great e.g force transcode the live tv stream to something more favourable like mp4 h.264. It would be great to have recordings in this format anyway rather than having to optimise the recordings.
I also found lately that the epg is not that accurate and maybe as a result recordings miss starts/ends. If a program is wrapped around say a news update then the file seems to overwrite itself and so you don’t get ‘part 1’ as ‘part 2’ has overwritten it
It would be great if on demand services such as BBC I player could be incorporated into live tv. For example if a recording messes up you could then download the missing episode.
If you’re having issues with specific Android versions, please create a separate thread for that, including the app version number. There are a number of improvements in 7.29, 7.30, and 7.31
Channels DVR is limited to four countries, so not an alternative for most:
- USA
- Canada
- UK
- Denmark
You actually don’t need the server to rewind after tuning to a channel. The buffer is stored directly to the device. I use Apple TV only.
When using the server to have DVR functionality it works the same I think. Only difference is of course you have options to record.
If you are watching a show and 15 minutes into it, and you decide to record, it will only start recording from that point on.
I think all the buffering is done directly on the device. At least with my Apple TV’s.
I was playing with plex dvr again tonight.
We really need these features.
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pop ups to skip commercials. Toss out the idea of removing commercials and just let it flag so we can skip instead.
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drop down menu bugs on the Apple TV app. Sometimes you can slide to the right and most the time it locks you from sliding. It’s a bug related to viewing the guide with a small active picturing playing the channel, I think.
With our DVR, when you start recording, it captures the whole buffer, not just from that point, as the stream has gone through the server already, and it has all the data. We’ll look into those other issues you reported.
And I’m certain that’s why we have 3-5 second wait time before it starts playing.
I assume there is nothing more that can be done to speed up channel changing? Perhaps having a buffer stored to the client device?
Then again, channels has a feature to allow tuner sharing. It’s still fairly fast loading and I assume this would require the server to do this work??? If that’s the case channels dvr is still loading up a couple seconds faster…
Your best bet to compare is to load up channels dvr yourself and look at it.
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There might be further things we could do to improve tune times, but I’m not 100% sure. Channel changing and tune times should take about the same time, if they’re not, let us know (it’s basically just starting another tune and switching to that one), buffering on device wouldn’t help with that, and would negate our ability to record an entire buffer. 
