Live TV/DVR - No Way To Initiate Playback Of Live Recording During "Extra/Padding" Time

Live TV & DVR
1

Server Version#: 1.23.4.4805 (Windows)
Player Version#: Plex For Windows 1.33.0.2444-a220eae4
Tuner Make/Model: Hauppauge QuadHD
Guide/Lineup name:
Using XMLTV?: No
Channel number/Name:

Plex, PLEASE, PLEASE respond.

Let’s say I’m recording a live sports event from 2:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon. As it might go extra long, I pad with 90 minutes on the end. So the recording will actually go from 2:00 until 6:30.

Between 2:00 and 5:00, the play icon appears on the program in the guide. If you press it, you get the normal options to play from the beginning or play live. This all seems to work fine (at least in Plex For Windows). Seems like there have been many on again/off again problems in Android, but that’s not what this is about.

At 5:00, the regularly scheduled time in the guide is over. The play icon disappears from the program’s item in the guide. The program will record for another 90 minutes but there’s absolutely no way to begin playback. The UI for this is missing.

With the DVR, we’re not supposed to have to wait until recording is completed before we can watch. This is just a basic expected behaviour of any DVR.

Obviously, this is a problem if I happen to get home just after 5:00. Even worse, suppose I have friends over to “watch the big game” and I happen to stop playback around 5:02 to get drinks or food and try to start playback again at say 5:10. I can’t.

I’ve seen this issue mentioned several times in the forums and I have never seen a response from Plex. Am I missing something? Is there a flyover somewhere that I just have not noticed? Could you please acknowledge the issue or tell me what I’m doing wrong.

To me, this has been a long standing problem (many months, if not years). Assuming that I am not deluded here, there are 2 obvious ways that this could be resolved:

  1. Don’t remove the play icon from the program’s item in the guide until recording has completed.

or

  1. Allow users to initiate playback of active recordings from the DVR Schedule page. To me, this was always the more natural place to play active recordings anyway. And it avoids having to write all kinds of complicated code to make the play icon appear correctly on the guide.

I believe this is a design issue that affects all clients and I verified the issue several months ago on a few different clients. Only looked at Plex For Windows today.

Please, Plex, respond to this. The Olympics are coming and this is exactly the type of program where this will matter a lot.

3 Likes
2

Well, scratch the first idea I had above. The TV Guide in the Android/FireTV apps does not allow you to go backwards in time like Plex For Windows does. So once the scheduled time for the program in the guide is over, there is no way to see the live program anymore. So no way to start playback from the guide item.

The only other idea that I have is add the live recording items to the library while they are still recording. But that really sounds like it would be a gigantic kludge in the code that goes against everything about how the library works (especially since the live recordings are hidden away in the .grab folder).

That leaves us with my 2nd solution in my original post. We should be able to initiate playback of live recordings from DVR schedule.

Plex, if you come up with another idea, then great. But we really should be able to playback live recordings at anytime. Having to wait for the program to finish is just not acceptable.

3

I agree, that seems the most natural, intuitive way to handle this, particularly since you can initiate playback of already-recorded items from there. Other users have lamented the fact they they have to track down the airing in the guide to begin playback of in-progress recordings, so there may (or may not) be a separate feature suggestion for that already.

[Edit]
This is the closest feature request I found with quick search; the title doesn’t, but the description mentions in-progress recordings:

And here’s an interesting one which suggests a “recording in-progress” hub (I don’t know how I feel about that one):

1 Like
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Still wishing Plex would comment. The idea of being able to play live recordings is certainly promoted as something we can do. But for live events (such as sports) where extra recording time is scheduled, it really seems that we have to wait for the recording to finish since there is no UI to initiate playback during that “extra” recording time.

Plex, could you please comment. It would be really good to know if I am missing something or if this is a known problem. Since playback of living recordings is a basic expected feature of a DVR, would definitely like to know if/when this will be fixed.

5

still waiting

1 Like
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This is one of the primary reasons I’ve switched to Channels DVR. I keep checking to see if Plex has fixed all or any of the DVR quality issues, but I think they have completely switched to focusing on all those commercial streaming services. (Which are pretty awful, to be honest).

2 Likes
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Really, being able to go to your DVR schedule and initiate playback of an in progress recording is the most basic of functionality.

Plex, can you please comment ?

8

I honestly want to try it. Do they properly deinterlace 1080i to 60fps, instead of throwing out half of the reconstructed frames to (presumably) cater to people with crappy hardware?

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Please, I’d like to keep focus on the issue. Plex, it appears to me that the playback UI is removed before recording has completed when there is extra time specified. Could you please respond to the issue. It’s a big deal for people recording sports.

10

This is a real problem for sports. Why is not possible to get some sort of answer from Plex?

11

Because there is no way of formally raising an issue with Plex.

You have to post here and pray they look and take notice.

Crazy crazy. :angry::angry::angry:

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Ok, I just don’t get it Plex. All that was necessary here was a simple “We are aware of the problem”. But no, you ignore the post for 4 weeks and everyone that gets frustrated with trying to use Plex DVR to record sports hears a giant “We don’t give a crap!!” from Plex. I just don’t understand this behaviour on any level.

@Elan, I just don’t know what else to do here. Perhaps you would help to get some sort of response, even if it is just a confirmation of the problem.

1 Like
13

I “reported” this in the other big thread in January. Not surprising that it looks like nothing has changed.

14

Thanks. I knew I had seen comments about this particular issue before but couldn’t find it. So I posted specifically on this issue so that people might find it more easily. Of course, I had also hoped that the thread would get resolved in some way with at least some sort of response from Plex. You know, so that the forum actually accomplishes what it it’s supposed to. I guess I’m just naive. Thanks again @cncb.

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Plex, when people take the time to try to explain longstanding valid problems, particularly about Live TV/DVR and you continually just ignore us, you really shouldn’t be surprised when the posts go so negative.

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Please note that the thread containing a previous report of this problem by @cncb was closed by @DaveBinM without comment on this issue because the thread had devolved into multiple issues. Now when I report the specific problem in a dedicated thread, it is still ignored.

Anyway, there is a clear bug where the playback interface for the recording is removed before the recording has completed. And after all this time, we still don’t know if Plex knows about or cares about the problem.

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Sports. Fix please.

1 Like
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https://forums.plex.tv/t/dvr-currently-recording-listing

Up vote please, maybe this will be addressed as a new feature rather than if raised as a bug / design issue.

19

To me, this is just a bug. The playback UI for the in-progress recording is removed before the recording has completed. If they just left the play icon on the guide item until the recording finished, it would be fine.

Alternatively, there is already a listing of in-progress recordings – the DVR schedule. A playback UI could be added there as well.

To me, the suggested feature section is just a place where good ideas go to die. It just gives Plex cover for the fact that problems with basic functionality are never fixed.

I wish you luck with the feature suggestion but given that plex won’t even acknowledge the problem, I don’t have high hopes that making a feature suggestion is going to make much difference.

I don’t have any votes left myself because we only have 5 votes forever and like I said, the feature suggestion section has turned mostly into a bug list because people are reporting bugs there because they don’t know how else to get Plex to do their jobs.

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Please also note that an almost identical feature suggestion was made over 2 years ago.