Plex Series Recording accross multiple channels fails, only lowest channel number succeeds

[kf699]

Server Version#: 1.32.5.7349
Player Version#: 4.108.0
Tuner Make/Model: HDHomeRun Flex 4K
Tuner Make/Model: Happauge WinTV-quadHD
Guide/Lineup name: Local OTA
Using XMLTV?: NO
Channel number/Name: ANY

I’m new to Plex DVR. I’ve been a cord cutter since the 80’s.

I’ve used PVR DVR OTA and Satellite and Cable for decades, and if I think about it, ever since VCR was available.

Anybody remember ReplayTV? RIP ReplayTV you were ahead of your time. MCE Anyone? What fun! Worked Perfectly! I was blessed by the best…

Now it’s your turn Plex.

I’m running Plex Server on Windows 10. I have HD Home Run 4 tuner, and Happauge WinTV-quadHD. So 8 tuners available.

I have a second Plex Server running on Windows 11. It can access the same 8 tuners. For some reason unknown to me, my USB Happauge 2 tuner isn’t available to Plex. I guess it isn’t supported. It wants to be…

My Plex issue surfaced while recording NFL Preseason football games.

Now it’s a bigger problem. The regular NFL Season has started.

I first noticed that whenever I scheduled an NFL game on channel 12.1 (West Palm Beach), it would record on 4.1 (Miami) instead.
That’s important to note that the lower channel number recorded. Keep that in mind as this complaint evolves.

I’m wondering if anyone can confirm that the logic in Plex is to record the lowest channel number if two exist with the same name?

Since I really wanted the 12.1, I disabled 4.1 and I can no longer watch additional Miami local market CBS content.

That sacrifice addressed the issue, but I’d like some way to record the exact channel I want, without having to disable content of the lower numbered channel. These are both CBS, but two different markets and I like being able to watch local shows. Can’t watch that now.

Please Fix??

I know in Plex Show Schedule advanced settings you can sometimes pick the channel to record, but it either did not work or the channel I wanted wasn’t available in the drop down choices list. Something buggery was happening when I tried.

I will pay a little more attention to this going forwards if I must, but I’m pretty sure it’s Plex Programming God’s job to fix it.

Now the bigger issue. I tried scheduling all my “NFL Football” by finding the game, selecting to record all games, while making sure to select the channel I wanted to record in advanced settings. Something was buggering up my every attempt to create “NFL Football” on different channels. I moved all of them to the top of the Recording Priority list. It would appear to succeed but then the DVR Schedule would be wrong appearing to record the lower numbered channel TWICE. I hadn’t realized that “lowest channel will record” was a thing yet.

So when that appeared to fail and would be eating up my hard drive space and tuners, I gave up on that and I settled for a single “NFL Football” series recording, with ANY channel ANY time. I add at least 60 mins to the end of every game in order to capture OT games.

Then the DVR Schedule seemed correct with all games showing to record and I hoped for the best.

So Thursday Night went fine. Sunday Night was okay. Those games were solo, no other games on at the same time.

Sunday afternoon did not go well at all. There are simultaneous Sunday afternoon games on 12.1 (CBS) and 29.1 (Fox) - 4 different games.

The higher channel number 29.1 would not record. I could view live, press record and it looked like it started to record, but then the Plex Programming Gods decided to eliminate the same named “NFL Football” and zapped the recording from existence. In other words, I had NO WAY to record. Simply out of luck with that, I viewed what I could of the live games on 29.1, but really missed them both. SOL. First time in decades I’ve had to miss any OTA NFL Football game. Now I’ll have to make do with YouTube NFL Highlights. But I shouldn’t have to.

Plex, that’s supposed to be your job to have my back. Not mine to find workarounds for your failed recordings.

I have noticed additional options like following the teams, but I haven’t tried any of that.

If anyone has a better way to record simultaneous, same named recordings on different channels please share. 

For Plex folks, please give me some reasonable work around or fix the issue if I've identified it accurately.

Suggestions - Allow us to edit the name of the recording.
- Allow us to override or modify the “duplicate recordings logic”.
- Fix the same lowest channel bug in the drop down list that seems to have a mind of its own
- Allow us to do manual recordings, where we select any channel and time, rinse and repeat

Wish List so far - Place the recording in the TV Shows as soon as it starts recording so we don’t have to go to the guide.
- Also, make the recording restartable from where I last watched it work properly every time

Thanks!

[kf699]

Plex Channel Selection struck again Monday night. It chose the lower numbered channel 10.1 ABC (sometimes weak signal) over my pick 25.1 (ABC) The recording wasn’t okay, and I was unable to watch the game. Until Plex, I hadn’t missed a single OTA NFL Game. Now three NFL Games missed!

I disabled 10.1 ABC now too…

[pl_5309]

Don’t disable channels.

Instead of setting up one “NFL Football” scheduled recording you setup one for each of the teams you want to cover, then use the advanced option to limit to channel.

Unless you are using all Newer HD Homerun’s, you can easily have conflicts trying to use multiple Plex servers against the same tuners. Plex servers just don’t talk to each other that way and they can’t use USB tuners attached to another PC.

In almost all cases if you try to timeshift a recording in progress you run the risk of crashing the transcoder and losing the recording.

[kf699]

Thanks Tiebierius,

I’m going to try selecting a channel for each again, this time paying close attention to exactly what goes wrong when I do it. I could have sworn that it worked in appearance only at first, but then there was no way to select the proper channel when a conflicted time slot same name “NFL Football” was recording. Plex picked the lower numbered channel and I could not edit it. It was some buggery voodoo going on with that. The channel I originally picked was gone, and what resulted was a dupicate recording of the same channel. I didn’t do that, Plex did it and I lacked any control over it. Very frustrating, so I just changed to ANY channel ANY time mode and that didn’t work so well.

For the time being, I’m leaving those alternate CBS ABC NBC and FOX channels disabled to keep troubleshooting as simple as possible at least for a week or two until I get control of the weekend NFL games.

As far as I know, my HD Home Run Flex 4K is one of the newest available. My 2nd Plex Server DVR Schedule doesn’t conflict show names or time slots. I appreciate your comment about that.

I’ll report back here.

[kf699]

Ok. So I might have it worked out. At least the DVR Schedule looks right… Won’t know till Tuesday if all games record. I’ll report back then.

I disabled all the alternate CBS ABC NBC and FOX channels.

I CAN NOT set up an ALL EVENTS recording that is specific to any channel I want. If I do, then that buggers up every other Game, and it sets the channel and time to what I specified and there is no way to modify. This is what the buggery voodoo was all about that I experienced and wrote about in my first post.

My other brain cell lit up. I tried setting up the recording using THIS EVENT and that seems to have worked! It’s a PITY and a PITA to have to go in each week and schedule every game individually.

Plex programming Gods, please fix!!

[pl_5309]

Pretty sure I left out a step, if you search “NFL Football” when you select record the “RECORD” is greyed out.

But if you first select a specific episode from the list you can then set up a team recording. This will allow automatic recording of events not currently in the guide.

If you are trying to record ALL NFL games and have some control you would have to setup scheduled recording for each NFL team.

[kf699]

Thanks Tiebierius, I might try that and eventually build up to all the teams, but at some point there would be a conflict that Plex logic would have to work out.

Speaking of that, the most recent update addressed a same named recording (series recording) issue. I’m now on 1.32.6.7468

I don’t know if it was that, or the selecting “This Event” “Time” and “Channel” but all my NFL Games did record this weekend as hoped for.

I may try allowing the alternate feeds of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX for one of the channels next to see if my channel selection will allow me to successfully record the higher number channel. I would hope so anyway so I can have that local content available again.