Thanks for these links…I’m going to head over to EMBY and see if it’s worth jumping ship and paying them some money…will.mean having to buy a hdhomerun I think as I’ve only got the hauppage dual tuner at moment
The usual price for Plex subscription is $3.99. The $7.99 price you mention is the full smart recording features for compatible PVR’s. it also includes the EPG.
Maybe they are afraid of being taken to court? Channel 9 took IceTV to court over “copyright infringement” of it’s TV schedule data in 2009.
Anybody know if you the Ice TV Plex subscription will work like the current Plex including recording
tv series and now I just have to pay a fee. Or should I just pay Silicone Dust DVR subscription for recording and use Plex just to watch recorded shows that have been recorded via Silicone Dust DVR? Starting to get a bit confused, any help would be appreciated
Yep, that. The difference will be the content accuracy will be better than gracenote.
Channel 9 lost that case. Plex also said they are currently just doing pass through of the data, not creating or altering it.
I would expect Gracenote to be the defendant using your example.
Following closely as this renders my plex close to useless as this was the main purpose for purchasing a lifetime pass.
Also discussion here:
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I have not seen where it is possible to add the IceTV or alternative free service in the setup, downloading the latest server public versions. So haven’t been able to try out adding free services.
There also doesn’t seem to be any comments or customer engagement from @Plex since the email went out on this topic.
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Other than them saying “we won’t lose epg in Australia” above.
@Loughlan did you mean before the latest email (June12) or did they reply afterwards?
Yeah. First I heard of this situation was the email 12th June.
Specifically purchased lifetime plex pass, a Syno NAS, Tuners, and appleTVs for this solution where I am no longer required to pay ongoing to timeshift/record Free To Air tv.
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Yes this is a disappointment, Yet Australian TV in general is dismal. After sport and a couple drama shows it’s all reality or reruns.
I too bought a lifetime pass and HDHomerun for the few shows I like so could strip the ads and enjoy the content.
Emby no solution as it requires subscription, so no financial advantage.
Back to Freeview Plus available on my LG TV or via my Desktop with Freeview FV or ipads with their app
I have now settled with
Registered and added the Registered Link Address to Plex DVR setup and it works for my needs. Updates twice daily and after playing with my Channel selection for my area, I have a suitable EPG. Not as pretty as previously but effective.
From there FAQ Page:
In most cases the freepg.tv feeds contain most of the important FTA (Free To Air) channels you’d want to watch and record from*.
There’s a few omisions though (depending on what region you are in) - currently known missing channels are ‘Imparja’ (broadcast in regional SA, NT, WA) - and some of the community/shopping channels we can’t source data for (Aspire, iShopTV, 44 Adelaide, 31 Brisbane). Maybe someone will provide these for us one day, however right now you’ll need to work out some other way to get those ones. Please view the regional listing page to see what channels are (and aren’t) provided.
Yes the IceTV EPG guide is an expensive monthly subscription for those who simply are using the Plex DVR feature for their mobile devices for Live TV. The OTA guide was an available option for those still using EyeTv3 app and supported devices but the Plex integration with a player moved myself to a homeRUN DVR.
There is a good easy to use free EPG covering Australia freEPG.tv that works well. A small donation of your choice will help them out on server hosting fees.
Note that the most recent version of Plex server 1.16.1.1246 seems to kill the DVR settings - I have had to roll back to Version 1.16.0.1226 to reinstate functionality.
–edit corrected roll back version
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I was a long time MythTV user, with shepherd. Purchased Plex pass for PVR function which turns out to be a huge disappointment having come from Myth - unreliable, can’t watch in-progress recording, sod-all scheduling options (though I still love other aspects of Plex). I’m running Plex on Windows but Shepherd seems to work ok via Windows Subsystem for Linux. I’m yet to see what Plex makes of the data as shepherd is still downloading - I’ll try to remember to post here if anything unusual comes up.
Some brief notes below in case anyone else on Windows wants to give it a go (
WSL: Install WSL | Microsoft Learn
Shepherd: Installation · ShephedProject/shepherd Wiki · GitHub
Set timezone
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
Shepherd first run as root
$ sudo perl ./shepherd
Grant yourself access without further sudo
$ sudo chown <username>:<username> -R .shepherd
Check for / installed missing dependencies
$ .shepherd/shepherd --check
$ sudo apt-get install libobject-tiny-perl
Configure timezone option
./shepherd --component-set augment_timezone:timeoffset=Auto
Run it within WSL
$ .shepherd/shepherd --output /mnt/d/Plex/Shepherd/shepherd.xmltv
OR run from Windows (ie: scheduled task)
C:\Users\x>wsl /home/linuxusername/.shepherd/shepherd --output /mnt/d/Plex/Shepherd/shepherd.xmltv
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I’m extremely frustrated with this change, if you’re unhappy as I am, I have written a detailed post here about it
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I have had a bit of of a play loading in the freepg.tv xml feed. The guide has loaded well, however a lot of the shows are classed as movies and not TV shows, cannot do the series recording and also seems to make it go to the movies library not the dedicated DVR library in my case. If anyone has a way to work around these issues please post. 
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Shepherd setup described in my previous post works, though like bridgee I get some miscategorisations - haven’t checked yet whether they’re coming from the xmltv file or Plex’s “enhanced program data” feature…
Checked xmltv file from Shepherd and categories look correct so I’m tipping it’s Plex “enhanced guide” behind the miscategorisation. eg: Plex lists “Al Jazeera News” as a movie despite entry below from shepherd. I’ll disable enhanced guide to see if that helps…
<programme start="20190623063000" stop="20190623073000" channel="sbs.free.au">
<title lang="en">Al Jazeera News</title>
<desc lang="en">News, business, sport and weather from the world's first English-speaking news channel from the Middle East.</desc>
<category lang="en">News</category>
<category lang="en">International</category>
<category lang="en">News and Business</category>
<rating>
<value>G</value>
</rating>
</programme>
Similar formatting from freepg, so points to a bug in Plex.
I disabled the enhanced guide with no luck. I have also added the various categories for news i.e “News and Business” in the DVR setup with no luck.
Next step sign up for a month test subscription with ICETV. That seems to work fine it appears that the classification of ICETV works with Plex. All the shows are classified correctly, not sure why the free services with the right xml formats are not read correctly. Maybe someone @Plex can shed some light for us.
For anyone interested in shepherd xmltv on windows, I’ve edited my post above to address a timezone issue - instructions given should work fine now (just adapt for path names etc).
