Plex DVR: Becoming even smarter – the next level.
Cutting the cord is an excellent and modern idea. Recording OTA programs is just fitting in nicely in the concept of managing local and remote media.
But becoming the one-stop recording solution in any Plex household is a challenging task since there is no single road to achieve this goal.
Recording TV series and movies by simply managing those recordings just as you manage your local and remote media is a perfect foundation. People want that. Full stop.
Then why talking about a „next level“?
Because DVR is not just about recording. People like the idea and they tend to get used to ideas that they like. Before you can say „cut the cord“, they want to use that idea in a variety of ways to fulfil their individual needs.
Most important and basic rule which can be used as demand #1: They do not want any such service to eat up their precious time.
The second most important and basic rule which is demand #2: Record what I want, do not drop recordings.
Not meeting any of the above demands makes users not wanting to use the tools you offer.
But of course, there are a plethora of further challenges and needs which only pop up as „follow-up“ wishes if people are using the tools. They want to use the tools their way.
This is not surprising, because it is the same for any user of any kind of software or service.
The hard bit is: the service provider should meet as many of these individual needs and wishes as possible to provide the best service.
OTA DVR – it is like catching butterflies.
OTA DVR is like catching butterflies. You need to find the „butterflies“, you need to catch them and you need to pin them down. And of course, there is also the next more beautiful butterfly to catch. But if you miss to find or to catch a precious butterfly, it may take weeks or even years to find the same kind of butterfly again.
The outside look is: Well, there are hundreds of butterflies and they all look the same. Just sit and wait.
Plex DVR is following that principle already:
- you have an EPG to find the butterflies you are interested in.
- you just tell Plex DVR service which kind of butterfly you are interested in and Plex automagically catches them for you.
- If a butterfly gets missed, Plex makes sure that you can have it next time.
- You can manage your butterfly collection in libraries.
Does it make a good job? There is only one answer to this: yes.
Does it make a perfect job… well, there is only one answer to this: no.
The challenges of DVR
(a) The EPG - These is no such thing as a perfect Electronic Program Guide (EPG). The main goal of any DVR service would be to provide the perfect real time electronic program guide for any program channel for any user anywhere in the world. This is not achievable. But the goal is to come as close as possible to this. Hard task.
(b) Managing the recording schedule. The shortcoming of bringing the recording business to the users is: their number of tuners is limited and may not cover all recording wishes. Therefore, recording conflict management is a crucial part for those users who use the recording service extensively.
(c ) Version management. This is even more important in real life. There’s nothing more cumbersome than finding „less than perfect“ recordings when you expect to find „a precious butterfly“ (ie. watch a recording).
(d) Long-term recording strategies versus short-term recording needs. Frequent users often setup a number of TV shows for recording and they do or don’t care about recording schedules. They just let Plex handle it. But from time to time, priorities are shifting when a user really wants to make sure to not miss that single recording.
(e) Integrating recordings into collections: users have different kind of strategies for setting up libraries. There are users who want to keep it simple: one library for movies and/or one for TV shows. Then there are users who have a more complex need of how they want their media to be presented. Maybe different libraries for different kind of household members, or different libraries for different kind of types of TV shows and/or movies. Or even different kind of libraries for different kind of metadata grabbing. Plex is good for any kind of these needs. What is common for most of those use cases: people who want to keep media, to own media files usually care for the media. Recorded TV shows and/or movies is usually imperfect media. It may contain commercial breaks, it may contain non-related content at the beginning and/or at the end of the recording. For some users, it is okay to just watch and forget. Others want to keep recordings, or they want to make their own collection and have it complete and perfect (their precious butterflies).
Plex offers solutions to all of these challenges. But more often than not, it falls short of making sure that the above-mentioned important demands #1 and #2 are covered and – at the same time – giving the user full control if they want to.
I just want to list a few things that could be handled differently before getting a closer and yet structured look into all of the challenges and what they may mean for users:
- Report EPG bugs/failures to the data provider
o Status: users are asked to go to PMS forum and report these to Plex
o In a perfect world: data provider should deliver next to perfect data.
o Goal: Since there’s nothing like that, give the users a really simple way of reporting in the moment they spot and EPG „bug“ or inconsistency from within their user interface. - Make sure that reported and corrected EPG flaws get to the users‘ EPG just in time to help the user
o Status: EPG has fixed update schedules, the user can go to DVR settings to get a full new EPG
o In a perfect world: real-time EPG. Nobody needs to take care of anything.
o Goal: If a user finds an EPG flaw and reports it, it is important enough for the user to make sure it gets fixed before the reported EPG item’s recording is missed, dropped, or has the wrong metadata. Plex DVR should know about reported items of the user’s EPG and make sure it gets an update just in time to be of any use for all users who have the same item in their EPG. - Give the user full control and easy access to conflict management in the recording management.
o Status: the order in which movies and/or TV shows are set up for a recording are the indicator of priority of recording. Users can change the recording priority by changing the order of TV shows and/or movies in the recording list. Conflicts are mentioned at the time of setting up recordings with the option to prioritize the recording you just set up.
o There is no such thing as conflict management. The user is not in full control.
o Goal: give the user knowledge about conflicts and let the user decide if Plex should take case or if the user wants to have the final say over how to solve individual recording conflicts. - Emergency recordings. Tell Plex to record that one item even if h*ll is freezing.
o Status: There is no such thing as telling Plex that this single recording has TOP priority
o Goal: make it easy for any user to tell Plex about a single recording or a single TV show be guaranteed – everything that may get in the way of recording that item or that TV show is stopped, delayed or postponed. The user gets easy access to all measures taken by Plex and gets an easy way of thinking twice. - Get the user in the saddle for version management of recordings.
o Status: the user can set up recordings and allow for resolution-based upgrades of recordings. Plex also seems to have some kind of internal version management based on recording length and/or partial recording flag.
o In a perfect world: the DVR service judges the recording to find out if it records the complete item (ie. including the beginning and the end of that movie/episode), if resolution is as good as possible and giving it a non-destructive final cut with a perfect start/end and without commercials if the user wishes so
o Goal: come as close as possible to the perfect world while at the same time allowing for duplicate recordings, easy season/episode numbering realignment in case of EPG inconsistencies. - Get the user more control if recurring episode recordings should happen if a user watches or deletes an episode.
o Status: If the user decides to delete the recording of a certain episode while having the TV show set up for being recorded, another airing of the same episode gets recorded.
o In a perfect word: Plex knows automagically if the user wants any deleted recording to be rerecorded.
o Since Plex can only guess by judging watch status or finding out if the user collects that TV show and has a copy of that episode elsewhere, a fully automatic handling by Plex can only cover a subset of use cases. Plex simply does not know the reason of why a user deletes recordings (not enough disk space, imperfect recording, wrong recording, moved the recording to another library or PMS, watch-once-and-forget…). Just ask the user when that user deletes recordings from a recording library if the user wants future recordings of that movie or episode. Also have a way of seeing a list of all such decisions and enable the user to revoke that decision. - Allow the user to set up recordings which are not currently visible in the user’s EPG schedule.
o Status: You cannot set up a recording of a movie or tv show that is currently not airing according to the EPG data. Internally, the recording is set up based upon EPG data ID (or Plex ID). Therefore, unknown IDs cannot be marked for recording.
o Goal: allow a new layer of recording. Let the user command Plex to find any future movie or TV show and mark that for recording automatically – based of keywords. If the user wants to record any „Denzel Washington“ movie, just let him/her. If a user wants to record any documentary TV show including the words „murder“ or „crime“… give the user the opportunity to set that up once. Such a keyword-based recording layer would also „survive“ EPG glitches like a TV show named slightly differently on different channels – or even comple EPG provider changes initiated by Plex. - Allow for „perfect recordings“ to be moved to other libraries on the same or a different PMS
o Status: if the users separates recording libraries from collection libraries (for whatever reason, for example to keep those collection libraries nice and clean), it possible to transfer the recording file to another location and to re-do all analyzing steps within the new library.
o In a perfect world: the user sets up a number of collection libraries for a DVR library. Once the user marks a certain recording as „perfect/collectable“ (find a better term), Plex automatically archives the perfect movie or episode to one of the collection libraries, automatically finding the library which already holds that TV show, for example.
o Goal: the user should have the option to either create a perfect file from within Plex DVR library (cutting all commercials and have a clean start/end, marking intros as chapter, f.e.) and then transport that file into another library – or have a way to transport a recording including all analysis data as well as metadata to a different library, directly from within Plex web UI. - Allow the user to „know it better“
o Status: recordings are based on EPG data. EPG data is not always accurate.
o Give the user a way of extending the recording of a certain item even while it is already scheduled and/or being actually recorded.
o Make also sure that the user has the option to completely overrule EPG: If the user wants to record a certain channel from 5:29am to 7:36am on a certain date, then Plex may not try to know it better than the user. Even if it means to not being able to grab metadata, to sort it into libraries properly… if a user is setting up incomplete recordings because on flawed time and duration information, it is all the user’s fault, and every user would see it this way. If Plex disallows the user knowing things better, it is all Plex’s fault.
Getting all info and easy access
If you really read the above suggestions and find some or all of them useful, there is most apparent thing to start with is a DVR dashboard. Many of the suggestions above are about easy access to information and easy access to certain tools like recording conflict management, info on EPG data changes, info on new recordings, duplicates, etc…
The more suggestions Plex decides to implement, the more apparent the need of such a dashboard becomes.
I will layout possible dashboard items when I come around defining suggestions for individual „smart DVR behavior“.
EPG – user reports from within EPG schedule
Plex decided long ago to have the forum as a communication tool with its users. There is not so much wrong with that. But when it comes to reporting EPG fails/inconsistencies, it is a cumbersome procedure.
Users need to know about the forum and the threads where they should report EPG glitches. Plex needs certain info on certain reports (like country, postal code, chosen EPG plan, affected channel, affected EPG item, type of glitch, description, and maybe more info.
For the user, reporting experience is a total mess. You need to go to the forum, find the thread, write a message, check if Plexie wants more info, report these, may or may not get an acknowledgement, most usually never hear about the status of the fix.
Does it get easier than that? Of course. Allow an PMS admin setting if direct EPG reports are possible for any DVR user. The PMS holds all the info which Plex needs to have proper reports. A right click on a channel or a movie/TV show item or certain episode airing then offers a „report channel problem“ or „report EPG data problem“ item if the admin option is enabled. The user gets a warning which data is collected if the user decides to report a problem and is asked about the type of problem as well as any further user info that Plex needs. PMS could even report back if other users have also reported a problem on this channel/or airing…
The EPG item reported then gets a flag as „inconsistency reported“ so that the user does not need to report twice and the PMS DVR service knows that this is a reported problem and that the PMS should get an update for that channel/show/movie/episode/airing before it actually happens.
It can still be the case that the problem does not get fixed in time or that not all problems get reported. But the user has the advantage of easy reporting, Plex has the advantage of more accurate reports and if PMS takes care about EPG update handling of reported items, chances are good that it’s „report and forget“.
The DVR dashboard could hold a slot with all reports in the order of when airings will happen. Maybe even a fix could be announced here.
Recording schedule conflict management
By now, recording conflicts are handled on a per-show/movie basis considering the number of maximum tuners and the recording times of any recording and known future airings of affected movies/episodes. Plex DVR tries to find the least problematic conflict management according to show/movie recording priority order.
While there is nothing wrong with that, it offers limited control for the user. If a conflict is seen during recording setup, you can have a little bit of choice. Later on, you have to manually find recording schedule conflicts and if you want to have a say, you need to manipulate the TV show recording priority or delete a recording.
Instead, it would be smarter to give the user an overview about conflicts/missed future recordings in the DVR dashboard and allow the user to leave the TV show recording priority the same but handle each recording conflict on a per-conflict level if the user wants to.
If the user has a number of tuners available and wants to have a conflict handled a certain user-defined way, there could be a button which offers a popup window containing a time-based tile view of the affected recordings only so that the user sees the overlaps and can click on those recordings he wants to be done according to the user’s individual preference. The user should also have the opportunity to let Plex handle it automatically again, if the user chooses so for an individual conflict.
If a user sets up additional recordings, deletes recording schedules or re-manages times, then there could be an icon in the dashboard indicating that the user-initiated conflict handling may or may not need attention.
Emergency recordings
A small feature is currently missing to Plex DVR service which is not part of the user’s every day routine, but can make the difference between „Plex saved my day“ and „Where the beep is that recording that was scheduled yesterday?“.
I call that feature „Do not disturb“. A certain airing is scheduled. It is important to the user. He does not care about priorities and update schedules and such. He just wants to make sure that this recording is done without excuses. No overruling, no EPG data loss, no last minute EPG update over-ruled that recording. Just record that. Period.
While such a feature can be probably best activated for an airing in the EPG schedule or in the recording schedule or in both, the Plex DVR dashboard should have info on all emergency recordings and the success status. And Plex better reports a detailed non-success status on why such a recording did not happen (channel did not tune with number of tries and time stamps, for example). It may suggest alternate re-airings for emergency recordings that did not happen.
Why? Because there is nothing more important to both Plex DVR and the user than these recordings.
Handling inaccurate EPG data for season and episode numbers
DVR libraries that get populated by recordings have special conditions. First of all, the user that writes to such a library is a Plex service and I’ve seen cases, where the real user cannot delete files or folders created by Plex DVR, especially when only accessing such a folder via network share.
In addition, file names of recordings are not chosen by the user but automatically set in a certain way which may or may not be fully identical to what the real user would name such a file.
Recording a lot of TV show episodes myself via Plex DVR, I’ve seen all kind of information missing in such a file name – depending on the data which is provided by EPG. If season and or episode information is missing, the date is shown instead and used for both season and episode. If season/episode info from EPG is inaccurate, there is no way for the user, to re-set this info via UI (for example, by googling the title of an episode and then set season and episode info manually.
Such a feature should be possible – Plex DVR service has created the file in the first place and it should be used to rename it. By now, this cannot happen, because there is no way in the UI to manipulate season and episode info.
Of course, copying that file elsewhere where the user is allowed to rename it, then copying it back (if the user has write access) is a possible workaround. But the suggested method would make life easier for the user, because in that way, Plex could also keep all other metadata, including watched status, recording date, etc.…
Version handling in recording libraries
Please allow a per show/movie option to enable multiple recordings regardless of length or resolution and please allow for recording date/time info in the play version dialog of the players.
To give you an impression of what I mean. I am recording a certain TV show right now which airs the same episode multiple times a week (do not ask). I do not want to record each duplicate airing of that episode. For other shows, I have back-to-back airings of multiple episodes (prime time with a lot of commercials) and then again, the re-airing of the same episodes with less commercials (resulting in an overall not so long episode). I would prefer to record duplicates for these shows, because the channel is not very good in starting on time with these back-to-back recordings. Often, the second TV show starts a couple of minutes earlier than my recording. Therefore, the start of an episode might be missing. But the re-airing does not get recorded since the recording went well for Plex.
Let the user allow for duplicate recordings and let him sort out which one to keep or to drop.
Ask the user if he wants to „record future re-airings of the same episode“ when deleting a recording
Plex cannot know the reason why a user deletes a recording. It can be that the episode numbering was false, and the user has a duplicate and wants a re-recording of the correct episode/season. Or he does not want or like the recording because of technical or personal reason and therefore is or is not interested in a new recording. Or the user moves a good recording to another library where the recording is safe from overwriting/deleting or just fits well into his main collection. Whatever… It is not Plex to decide whether a future airing of that episode should happen or not.
Therefore, add a checkbox to the confirmation dialog if the user deletes a recording (!), if future airings of that should be recorded or not.
This can result in less recording schedule conflicts, in less disk space being used, in less recording management being necessary for the user. Default setting of that checkbox can be „yes, record future airings of that episode“ (which is the behavior right now). Therefore, the standard user would not have to do more than usual. But the plagued user could avoid unwanted re-recordings.
In the DVR dashboard, the user could find a button that shows a list of avoided episode recordings with an easy way to delete each individual entry in that list.
Keyword-based recording layer: set it up once and forget about it
If Plex changes its EPG provider, then all users must reconfigure all of their recordings. If the EPG data provider changes some ID, then recordings are missed. If two different channels name the same TV show slightly different, they may appear as different TV shows which may result in missed recordings. Recordings of an item that - by the time of recording configuration – is not available in the user’s EPG is currently simply not possible.
To give you an idea: From the 120 TV shows I want to be recorded, only a subset of 50 or so were reappearing in the EPG schedule since the latest EPG provider change. I am checking the EPG every 10 days or so for the rest of these shows. And this is not the first time I had to do so. Unbearable. Simple as that.
Life could so much easier. Just let Plex search for these shows. Give the user the opportunity to set up keyword-based searches for automatic or manual approvement for recording. Make it easy and comfortable. Make it independent from EPG data provider and from PMS version.
Let me set up to automatically approve als movies with „Denzel Washington“ in either cast or description.
Let me set up to record all +crime +documentaries OR dokumentation with „murder“ in its title or description
Plex scans for these shows after each EPG data update and either automatically approves them and adds them to the list of recorded TV shows or asks the user in the DVR dashboard for approval.
Offer an export and import of these rules and it can even survive a new PMS setup.
Set up once and forget about it. Truly smart.
Good job done even better: Plex recording analysis for commercials and for intro detection.
If I want to watch-n-delete a recording, Plex DVR does a perfect job. It may detect commercials, it may detect intro. This is all I am asking for. Thank you very much.
If I want to keep that recording, I want a perfect file kept in the perfect place according to my individual library structure.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have an option where my PMS offers to use the analysis already done for a final cut of that recording? Which I then can „take home“ (ie. move to another library or another PMS). If the analysis is less than perfect, I can choose to not use the „create final cut“ option and somehow transport the analysis data to another PMS or to another library (or do the final cut by myself). Plex could offer a menu to „archive the recording“ and offer all accessible PMS and libraries (or even find the TV show library/libraries in which already that individual TV show is present).
Sounds complex… you bet. Sound nice… I think so. Would be helpful if recording library is not archive library.
Extend recording duration
When did your favorite TV lately show get a late start due to „special news“ or overtime of a sports event? Or when did the last sport event you recorded have overtime minutes not covered by the regular recording setup?
What you need in this case is an easy way to extend recording time for X minutes. Maybe multiple times X minutes. Even if recording is actually being done.
Please create a right click menu item on any recording in the schedule or EPG that simply adds another 5 minutes to the recording end time. Usable multiple times.
Manually record a certain channel on a certain date with starting time and ending time
Classic VHS or Beta recording usage. Old school and definitely nothing you want as a standard. That would mean not only one but many steps backwards.
But on the other hand, EPG does not provide useful content for all available channels. Heck, I a user wants to record something, please find a way… even if it means going back to basics and calling it an unspecified channel XYZ recording without metadata. The user will be fine with that.
Will I use that often… no! Did I wish for the option being available in the past? Oh yes, sir!
You see, there is lots of room for further improvement to the very good DVR service. Let us start…
And yes… I am aware that there are feature requests for a subset of suggestions presented here. But I wanted to show you a bigger picture thought from the user endpoint as well as from product quality endpoint.
Please like my post if you want to see things happen described within this article.
. Would love to be able to do that again on Plex.