I try to get LiveTV working on my Plex Server but I cannot find any channels
I have connected my Hauppauge WinTV-SoloHD USB Stick (officially supported) with my Ubuntu Plex Server. Plex finds my tuner correctly, but when I select CABLE and AUSTRIA in order to search for channels it shows me a dropdown list with cable TV providers where I need to pick one in order to start a search and my provider is unfortunately not listed there.
I already tried all providers listed and it cannot find any channels.
In the past I used MediaPortal TV Server and DVB Viewer without any issues with my USB TV-Card, so I know all the details like frequencies and QAM however it seems there is no place to enter them manually in Plex? Also it seems there is no option to just search for channels without selecting a predefined cable provider?
What can I do to make this work?
System:
Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Plex Version 1.16.2.1321
Hauppauge WinTV-SoloHD USB Stick
While we have EPG data for all of the countries listed above, the completeness and quality of the data can vary. Countries marked with a * above are likely to have higher quality EPG data today, but we are focused on improving EPG quality over time.
Note : We have EPG data for the above countries, but in some cases we may not have data for all providers (broadcast companies) in the country.
For countries that we don’t officially support, but that use a compatible tuner to receive their TV broadcasts, users can provide their own XMLTV guide data.
I read that, but I do not care if no EPG data is available as long as I can watch LiveTV. Also in Mediaportal I worked with XmlTV files.
Does this mean if Plex does not have EPG data for my provider I cannot watch LiveTV?!
An EPG is needed to use the Plex Live TV / DVR functionality.
users can provide their own XMLTV guide data.
You can raise this as a feature request to include your provider - giving as much details as you can. I do not know what would be involved in adding a new provider
So in my case my country is supported but not my provider. My provider is a small regional one only spanning 3-4 towns in the area.
When it is mentioned “users can provide their own XMLTV guide data” how can this be provided? Somewhere in Plex or does this mean one should provide this to the Plex developers?
In MediaPortal all tv providers are stored in XML files, so usually I just create a new XML file with my regional provider with QAM and frequency information and then I can select it from the MediaPortal GUI and search for channels, I assume this is not possible in Plex?
Note : We have EPG data for the above countries, but in some cases we may not have data for all providers (broadcast companies) in the country
The support aticle i provided a link to does have a link to use of XMLTV just below the text i quoted from that article
For countries that we don’t officially support, but that use a compatible tuner to receive their TV broadcasts, users can provide their own XMLTV guide data.
Its done in the DVR setup. Instead of using that provider drop-down, there should be a choice to provide your own XML file. You can use an actual URL or a path to a local file.
That unfortunately does not work because I cannot get past step #5 in this guide. https://support.plex.tv/articles/using-an-xmltv-guide/
In the guide it finds channels and then you can continue with the XMLTV Setup in step #6, this makes sense because xmltv only provides EPG data and will not help in any way finding channels.
But I cannot find any channels as my provider is not listed in PLEX.
This whole setup process imho makes no sense, if Plex would support my provider it would find channels and would have an EPG out of the box, there would be no point in using XMLTV at this point then.
For countries that we don’t officially support, but that use a compatible tuner to receive their TV broadcasts, users can provide their own XMLTV guide data.
This is just not true then, because nobody can use XMLTV in this scenario as nobody can get past step #5 in the setup process?
I got the channel search working, it now found 162 channels. I am not really sure what action fixed it (or it fixed itself).
The last thing I tried before it was working was following this guide from Hauppauge and suddenly the GUI showed me a list of channels even before I pressed the “Scan Channels” button.
I mapped 58 channels to EPG channels, I had todo most of the mapping manually as PLEX mapped them wrong. I assume it’s because of my missing local provider information.
If any dev reads this, it would be great if the EPG dropdown has a search function, regex mapping or that the entries do not start with the channel number so that you can find entries while typing, took me like 30min to map everything correctly and finding my channels in a dropdown with >300 entries.
