Plex DVR is great for background activities.
However a common use-case is watching a live sporting event, starting an hour late so that one can keep a long buffer in front to skip commercials.
The plex DVR has long had several fatal flaws that make this experience risky/tedious:
- All DVR shows/events enter a black-hole and cannot be found/played/seen at the end of the program guide’s end-time (until some time later). This means the user cannot see or begin playing this sporting event between the official end-time and the additional added-recording time plus the server’s processing time. For example, an NFL game is scheduled to record with +45 minutes added to the end. The game is nowhere to be found once the game was scheduled to end plus 45-minutes added record-time plus the ~15 minutes of commercial skipping, etc. One reason is the UI does not allow one to go backwards in the program guide to see the game that ended say, 1 hour ago and begin playing it. This is made worse if the delayed live game gets stuck (as is often the case), and the user happens to be in that black-hole time. Game over.
- The player (several devices do this) often gets stuck for some reason at a particular time. Pressing +30-second skip buttons simply return to this one “stuck” time, and won’t skip forward like usual. This happens at least once every 1–2 games. The work-around is to restart the game and FFW back to the desired time. Worst case: this happens during the above-mentioned black-hole time, and the game is inaccessible for another hour or so.
