So few months ago, signed up for the lifetime plex pass only to find out, plex pass gives you nothing more than the free version does. So I looked forward to live tv through plex, doesn’t exist UNLESS you have a tv tuner of some kind, So i went and bought an HDHomeRun Prime to test it out, plex didn’t work with the prime for some reason, but NPVR and Mediaportal 2 did, so i return the hdhomerun.
So i was cleaning out my back room and found an old hauppauge wintv hvr-1800, it works great with Mediaportal 2 and well I deleted NPVR cuz it just sucked and Plex does show the card, but after a long 30+ minute scan, it finds nothing, not a single channel on cable or antenna setting, Mediaportal 2 has multiple setting for QAM and it only works on standard, so i am not sure if plex will ever work for live tv or not.
So right now i am feeling extremely cheated by plex seeing as how it doesn’t do the live tv as described and it looks like the live tv option was the only reason to pay for it, so now im out the money for the plex pass and nothing to show for it. I do not feel like going store to store hoping to find a tv tuner that actually works with the plex program and amazon is going to get sick of me sooner or later and seeing as how these tv tuner cards run no less than $100 for a handful of channels that i get normally just by plugging the wire into the tv, plus some, the tv tuner doesn’t get as many channels as cable from wall to tv.
OK 1 more thing, to top it off, people keep saying cord cutting, how is it cutting cords when in order to use the hdhomerun prime it requires a cable card from spectrum which costs about $80 a month… and even with the cable card i still got less channels than if i just plug from wall to tv.
so what good is plex pass othjer than live tv that doesn’t work?
Literally the first sentence says: “Depending on where you live (and how awesome your antennae is), Plex makes it easy…” So, yeah, you need an antenna. Any amount of research would have told you that.
Most people I assume get Plexpass for the Mobile Sync feature Some for Plex Cloud (which is still beta and very much a work in progress). You also get to use Plex Home - multiple users and parental controls.
So, yeah. Plexpass is good for many things, INCLUDING SUPPORTING THE DEVELOPERS OF A PLATFORM YOU USE A LOT, on top of LiveTV which does work if you have the right hardware. and the right hardware is mentioned clearly in the support documents.
I am all about supporting people who make programs like this, done so for many years, but its a little deceptive calling it cord cutting when you need an $80 cable subscription to use the tv tuner, really cutting the cord would mean just plugging the wire straight into the tv as i mentioned or even going with hulu or netflix.
For me though, when i tried the hdhomerun prime, even though it is listed as a supported device, it did not work at all with plex. The program the hdhomerun came with worked, NPVR worked… kinda, Mediaportal 2 worked great, plex didn’t work with it at all though, maybe just my luck.
This is what plex finds when i go to live tv and dvr settings
So plex does find the tv tuner, not why it wouldn’t support it though, hopefully they get all the bugs worked out in the future.
I am using Plex DVR with no cable subscription. I have an antenna mounted in my attic and several HDHR devices on my network connected to the antenna. It is still a users decision if they will truly cut the cord and only use OTA programming. Plex provides the user the option of using either OTA or Cable TV tuners for DVR.
As far as the Prime tuner not working for you several months ago it could be that your Cable company use Copy-Once (DRM) on channels, other users on the forum have mentioned their displeasure of finding out that their cable company applied Copy-Once to almost all channels in their are. If your cable company is doing the same thing then Plex will not work with those channels. There are other users that are using Plex to record Cable TV channels using a Prime and Cable Card from their Cable company.
I don’t know whether the Hauppauge tuner will work with your Cable TV service or not. You might be running into the same issue with DRM protected channels or just encrypted channels and the tuner not having a cable card to be able to decrypt the channels.
When I had the HDhomerun prime, without the cable card i got i think it was 62 channels or so that the hauppauge and NPVR programs showed, with the cable card i got like 76 channel, now if ya take out all the repeat channels, such as HD channels that are duplicates of SD channels and the 24+ Spanish channels i can’t understand, i probably had a total of 15 channels, although this is without a subscription to cable and with a sub to cable with the cable card would have cost me $90+ after taxes per month to watch, although i am sure i would have a bunch more than 15 channels.
Now just plugging the wire from the wall to my TV, i get way more than 15 channels and even some the cable card did not show, such as syfy and chiller. Now oddly enough it would have been cheaper staying subbed to cable, with a HD DVR and service provided by spectrum, it would have cost me about $50 a month they said.
Just hoping Plex updates to actually more then a handful of tuners soon.
My Plex DVR Configuration when I add my Prime with no cable card to the DVR gets less channels than my OTA as you described. With Spectrum from what I understand the number of channels Plex could work with will depend on whether you were originally in a Time Warner or Charter area. Charter tended to DRM most of the channels were Time Warner only applied DRM to some channels.
As far as handling additional tuners Plex did add a Community Supported tuner thread. The thread is pinned at the top of the DVR & Live TV forum. You may want to check out that area to see if your particular tuner is supported. https://forums.plex.tv/categories/community-tuners.
@johnm_ColaSC said:
My Plex DVR Configuration when I add my Prime with no cable card to the DVR gets less channels than my OTA as you described. With Spectrum from what I understand the number of channels Plex could work with will depend on whether you were originally in a Time Warner or Charter area. Charter tended to DRM most of the channels were Time Warner only applied DRM to some channels.
As far as handling additional tuners Plex did add a Community Supported tuner thread. The thread is pinned at the top of the DVR & Live TV forum. You may want to check out that area to see if your particular tuner is supported. https://forums.plex.tv/categories/community-tuners.
Nah my tuner isn’t supported even though plex finds it, not sure why it won’t find any channels and since hdhomerun didn’t work with plex when i tried it, i just don’t want to buy tuner after tuner trying to find one that does work.
The only reason I want the tuner card atm is to record Lethal Weapon, which I do get woot, maybe i will get lucky and plex will actually start supporting more then a handful of tuners.
He is the what I would suggest. Tell us who you have for cable. There will most likely be someone here in the forums in your area using a Prime with your cable provider. They can tell you roughly how many channels you will get.
Then you can determine if this is worth it or not. If worth it, pick up another HDHomeRun Prime and we can help you get it setup and working with Plex. This tuner is supported and will work. If not we can help you make it work!
Sounds an awful lot to me like the OP is trying to get channels from the cable company for free using clearQAM. Like many have already said, most cable companies now encrypt their QAM channels so they are no longer clearQAM. Clear meaning without encryption.
The reason the rest of the tuners he has tried don’t work in Plex is because, again, he is still trying to use clearQAM capturing when there is no longer clearQAM on his cable line. Sounds very much like he has yet tried to stick up an antenna and tried to capture ATSC signals into Plex. That is why he is not getting ANY channels in Plex.
It is completely user error in this instance and he needs to stop trying to steal cable TV from his cable company and just stick up an antenna to capture ‘Lethal Weapon’ as it is a FOX show that is broadcast completely for free over the air in his area.
