Plex Live TV/DVR Constantly Preventing Me From Recording Programs I Want To Record

Live TV & DVR
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I know I’m probably naive but I thought one of the primary functions of a DVR was to allow you to record the programs you want to record. As many Plex users are aware, it is very common for users to set a program to record only to have it not appear in the DVR schedule. Plex will decide that it looks like something we already have and simply refuse to schedule it. There is no easy way to override this.

Plex attempts to gaslight us by saying that it’s a guide issue and that we simply need to get the EPG corrected – like that’s a practical way for anyone to get something to record. Also, it may not be an EPG issue at all. There can be extremely valid reasons to record something that may look like a duplicate. But Plex doesn’t care – IT SHALL NOT BE DONE. I’ve probably used close to 10 DVRs over the years (hardware and software) and I’ve never seen one that so actively goes out of its way to prevent recording from happening.

Lets take two simple real life examples (ignoring all the sports events and Saturday Night Live programs that people report about not being able to record every week).

Olympics - I want to record it all. Sports is a fluid thing and while something might be indicated in the EPG that it will be a re-airing, real life (such as weather) can change things and it won’t be reflected in the EPG.

News - I want to record the 11:00 news on CTV every night. It is often rebroadcast in the early morning around 6am or 7am but not every day. The 11:00 news is usually delayed at least once a week because of sports (usually football) going overtime. So the news recorded at 11:00 can be mostly (if not all) football. So I’d like to record both the news at 11:00 and the rebroadcast in the early morning (which exists most days). This is a perfectly normal thing that you would want to do with a DVR. But I can’t do that in Plex. Not a problem in NextPVR, Jellyfin or Emby.

And remember, I’m not just talking about series recording here trying to prevent duplicates (with no way to allow duplicates). Even, if you set every airing to record individually, Plex will still prevent the duplicates. Again, I stress, this is a Plex only problem. This is not normal (and obviously not desireable) behaviour for any DVR. It’s a bug – a flaw – whatever you want to call it.

And, yes, multiple feature requests have existed for years to correct this problem. But, honestly, should we even have to do a feature request to get the Plex DVR to be a DVR?

Plex has had more than 4 years to improve this situation and they have chosen not to. Anyone buying DVR software is not expecting the software to actively prevent them from recording programs they want to record. To me, this rises to the level of being a “not fit for the purpose intended” type of problem and refunds should be possible for people that unknowingly paid money for something that is not really a DVR.

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I’m able to do that with my Plex DVR. I record many dozens of news programs from many different channels. I set it to record new and repeats. And to keep the last three episodes. My Plex DVR will record the first airing at night. As well as a repeat airing in the early morning. It’s been working very well for me.

For the Olympics I’ve only recorded the Opening Ceremony so far. But I have that set to record new and repeat airings and to keep all episodes. But only from one of the UHD channels airing the Olympics. I’ll see how that works this weekend. But the scheduled recordings that show up in the list seem correct.

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Unfortunately, I’m trying to record the NBC coverage and it doesn’t matter whether I use a series recording (new and repeats) or individual recordings, it is simply impossible to get all the airings into the DVR schedule. The duplicate/repeat airings will have the red dot on the guide (indicating that there is a recording rule) but the duplicate will not be in the DVR schedule. It should not be impossible to record all the airings of the Olympics – the broadcasts can change in real time for a variety of reasons. A DVR simply should not decide YOU SHALL NOT RECORD THIS. I have never encountered such idiotic behaviour in any other DVR.

As an example, it is impossible to record the 12:30am to 3:30am airing tomorrow if you have scheduled everything before that.

This is a long standing well known problem that has existed for well over 3 years.

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This would be one workable solution:

And Plex, I know this is a pain because it would involve changing the UI for all of the clients that can manage recordings. So start with this in PlexWeb. Everyone has access to that and at least there would be a way for us to record the things that we want when we would otherwise have no options (in Plex) when the software says “NOPE, NOT RECORDING THAT”.

Of course, you could keep taking our money and continue forcing us to use something else when Plex does not work in a rational manner.

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Still can’t even set a recurring recording rule to record the daily CTV National News. The 11:00pm broadcast is often delayed an extremely variable amount due to live programs (e.g. sports or awards shows) running over. There is a rebroadcast in the early morning at either 5:30 or 6:30.

If I just select a normal series recording, it will record at 11:00 and I will miss the news once or twice a week due to sports running over. If I select by time, say 6:30, I will miss the 5:30 broadcasts since you can’t specify two recording rules for the same show/series.

I just want to record and watch the news everyday and the best way to make sure I can do that is to record both broadcasts every day. There’s just no way to make that happen in Plex. And I can’t choose to just record all the early morning broadcasts because there is no way to specify a rule to record at 5:30 or 6:30am. So I have to specifically set a recording every day and select a specific time.

For a product that we pay money for, it just shouldn’t be this hard to do basic things. I just want to record the news and Plex is useless for this …

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Plex, you almost never respond to posts about scheduling problems like this. You offered no help whatsoever to a number of people that were frustrated by Plex during the Olympics. Should we just assume that you don’t care? Should we assume that we will continue to be regularly prevented from recording the programs we want to record?

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Yes, you should definitely assume that. They’ve given no reason not to make that the primary assumption. This product is a dumpster fire.

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still a problem

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Just set it to keep a certain number of episodes. That is what I do with my dozens of news recordings each day. I have them set to only keep 2, 3, or five episodes. Then it just deletes the older ones.

At least with everything except for two. For some reason my ABC and NBC National news recordings won’t honor my keep 3 episode selection. While my dozens of other news shows do respect the number of episodes I have selected to keep.

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You’re not understanding the issue. The 11:00pm airing and 5:30 or 6:30 am re-airing have the same season/episode numbers. When I set a recording rule for either airing, both get the red dot on the guide item but only one goes in the DVR schedule because Plex actively prevents duplicates. There is no way to override that and I want to record both airings for the various reasons that I’ve stated multiple times.

The only way to get both airings to record would be to get up in the middle of the night, move the first recording out of the library folder, rescan the library and then update the DVR. Then the second airing would record at 5:30 am.

I want both airings to record but under Plex’s software prime directive, IT SHALL NOT BE DONE. Duplicates are just not allowed. No other DVR (software and hardware) goes out of its way so thoroughly to prevent you from recording duplicates. Now, you’ve said that you’ve gotten duplicates to record – but that must be because the airings don’t have the same season/episode information in the guide so that Plex does not consider them to be duplicates.

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Create a post processing script that renames the file right after the recording is finished. You can specify this script in the DVR settings menu. Set the library to automatically re-scan when changes are detected.

I have a feeling this will work to record duplicates.

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Scheduling recordings continues to be a big problem. There just isn’t enough flexibility to record what we want to record. If something is in the guide, we should be able to record it – period. This is the overwhelmingly primary use of a DVR.

While I appreciate that the previous suggestion could possibly work, a lot of things would need to go right and in the right order and that typically just doesn’t happen with Plex Live TV/DVR. So I am not inclined to spend time creating a custom solution every time there’s something that won’t record – especially when this is a problem unique to Plex – even free alternatives to Plex Live TV/DVR don’t have the scheduling limitations that Plex has.

I really wish Plex would give this issue some attention.

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