The overarching patent that involves an interactive grid view is https://patents.google.com/patent/US5880768A/en.
Even this patent https://patents.google.com/patent/US8713595B2/en that Rovi is currently suing Comcast over (among other patents) is a continuation (actually a continuation of several other continuations) of the first. Both patents are now expired, and were when they filed the lawsuit. But their contention is that they had a licensing agreement with Comcast and that agreement lapsed during the time the patent was still in effect. They couldn’t come to another agreement and Comcast continued to use the alleged patented technology during that time so they had cause to sue.
I don’t think Plex is in any danger of patent infringement if they decided to implement a grid view.
Edit: There was an extension to the patent through 35 USC 154(b) that equated to approximately 2 years and a month, so it was still in force when they sued Comcast, isn’t now.
+1 Please add this. I’m guessing this will go ignored but please add a grid view. I do love the current view of whats on now. This is superior to a grid view for finding what is on now, but if you want to look ahead you are screwed unless you are looking for something specific.
+1 Please add this.
Without a timeline / epg type screen for programming the dvr it is easier to use other pvr devices that have the timeline/ epg screen and then ftp the files to the plex server.
Ok so after some more use I understand what they are doing. Regardless of patents, I do think their option is better for the most part. The grid view is what people are used to, but honestly it is not better. If you go to where it says shows, or movies, you get to browse everything upcoming grouped by Movie or Show Name, as well as filtered options if you are looking for something more specific. This is so much better than the grid view in my opinion and this is why. So let’s say you are using the traditional guide layout and looking to see what is on USA later today. You see they are doing a Monk marathon, so you have to keep scrolling right until its totally done would could be multiple pages. Then you get finished and want to see what is on TBS. You have a lot more button presses and scrolling with this method. Their method is simple. You want to know what shows are upcoming, so you view it in a Netflix-esque format. You see the show, tap on that show and get info, as well as all the upcoming episodes. This to me means less time wasted overall. This will take some convincing for my wife to accept, but ultimately I do see it as an improvement. I hope that once the lawsuits are done they will add a grid view, just for those stuck in the past, or that maybe do not like the Plex solution, but I do like this overall. One note to the developers that may or may not read this as we know…Please add a not interested option for shows. Right now I have approximately 1500 shows in my list, and there are many just on the front page that I do not ever want to watch. Thanks for a great product.
@Imacellist said:
Ok so after some more use I understand what they are doing. Regardless of patents, I do think their option is better for the most part. The grid view is what people are used to, but honestly it is not better. If you go to where it says shows, or movies, you get to browse everything upcoming grouped by Movie or Show Name, as well as filtered options if you are looking for something more specific. This is so much better than the grid view in my opinion and this is why. So let’s say you are using the traditional guide layout and looking to see what is on USA later today. You see they are doing a Monk marathon, so you have to keep scrolling right until its totally done would could be multiple pages. …
I kinda see your point, but I think you’re missing the basic idea. How can I see what is on at 8pm tonight? Normally, I would like to see all the shows at 8pm…then decide what to record. Plex currently does not offer me that option. I simply want to enter a day/time and see what is on. I have no way to do that today in Plex…so i continue to run a Windows 7 PC with Media Center to record shows…then use MCE buddy to rip out commercials and save final file.
I kinda see your point, but I think you’re missing the basic idea. How can I see what is on at 8pm tonight? Normally, I would like to see all the shows at 8pm…then decide what to record. Plex currently does not offer me that option. I simply want to enter a day/time and see what is on. I have no way to do that today in Plex…so i continue to run a Windows 7 PC with Media Center to record shows…then use MCE buddy to rip out commercials and save final file.
Ya I see your point. I guess it depends entirely on your use case. For me I don’t really care to know what is on at 8pm if I’m just trying to set recordings, I just want to easily search for shows that I want to record. If it is 8pm and I’m looking for shows to watch now, the current “watch now” works great. Again it all depends on use cases, and I hope that they do add the normal guide in the future to provide some choice.
@Imacellist said:
Ok so after some more use I understand what they are doing. Regardless of patents, I do think their option is better for the most part. The grid view is what people are used to, but honestly it is not better. If you go to where it says shows, or movies, you get to browse everything upcoming grouped by Movie or Show Name, as well as filtered options if you are looking for something more specific. This is so much better than the grid view in my opinion and this is why. So let’s say you are using the traditional guide layout and looking to see what is on USA later today. You see they are doing a Monk marathon, so you have to keep scrolling right until its totally done would could be multiple pages. …
I kinda see your point, but I think you’re missing the basic idea. How can I see what is on at 8pm tonight? Normally, I would like to see all the shows at 8pm…then decide what to record. Plex currently does not offer me that option. I simply want to enter a day/time and see what is on. I have no way to do that today in Plex…so i continue to run a Windows 7 PC with Media Center to record shows…then use MCE buddy to rip out commercials and save final file.
The alphabetical movie poster view is definitely a good option for browsing, but they really need the timeline too. As @tannerjim suggested there is sometimes a need to see what is airing in a certain time slot. Like when you want to know what is replacing your favorite show this week.
The main benefit of the timeline is that it narrows down your shows by date. When you have hundreds of shows in the list you really need a few different ways to narrow things down that doesn’t require you to know the names of shows. Perhaps a makeshift timeline could be to build a filter across the top that works similarly to a timeline.
Here is a mockup. Also, thinking about it after the fact, I’d like to have the channel number under each poster too.
It wouldn’t be as smooth as a free flowing timeline, but might be a good enough compromise.
I wonder if this would intrude on the feared patents.
@Imacellist said:
Ok so after some more use I understand what they are doing. Regardless of patents, I do think their option is better for the most part. The grid view is what people are used to, but honestly it is not better. If you go to where it says shows, or movies, you get to browse everything upcoming grouped by Movie or Show Name, as well as filtered options if you are looking for something more specific. This is so much better than the grid view in my opinion and this is why. So let’s say you are using the traditional guide layout and looking to see what is on USA later today. You see they are doing a Monk marathon, so you have to keep scrolling right until its totally done would could be multiple pages. …
I kinda see your point, but I think you’re missing the basic idea. How can I see what is on at 8pm tonight? Normally, I would like to see all the shows at 8pm…then decide what to record. Plex currently does not offer me that option. I simply want to enter a day/time and see what is on. I have no way to do that today in Plex…so i continue to run a Windows 7 PC with Media Center to record shows…then use MCE buddy to rip out commercials and save final file.
The alphabetical movie poster view is definitely a good option for browsing, but they really need the timeline too. As @tannerjim suggested there is sometimes a need to see what is airing in a certain time slot. Like when you want to know what is replacing your favorite show this week.
The main benefit of the timeline is that it narrows down your shows by date. When you have hundreds of shows in the list you really need a few different ways to narrow things down that doesn’t require you to know the names of shows. Perhaps a makeshift timeline could be to build a filter across the top that works similarly to a timeline.
Here is a mockup. Also, thinking about it after the fact, I’d like to have the channel number under each poster too.
It wouldn’t be as smooth as a free flowing timeline, but might be a good enough compromise.
I wonder if this would intrude on the feared patents.
I like this mockup and it’s far and away better than what is currently available. I think both this and a grid view would work well together and give the user a choice based on what they want to do.
For me the current system seems to work fine for TV shows and movies. But for sports, having a grid view would be so helpful. It is really common for me to have problems finding the game I want to record in the guide. If I search by team name, it sometimes comes up, sometimes doesn’t. If it doesn’t then have to search by “college football” and then dig through all of the episodes to find it. Sometimes the game I want just isn’t there in the episodes, in which case there is no way to set it to record. That’s when my handy trusty Windows Media Center comes to the rescue and I find the game every time in it’s handy guide. When the game is listed as an episode in Plex, I then have to click on the episode and select record, then show advanced, then limit to channel, and then limit to airtime (I’m glad I found out about limiting it to channel and airtime as I otherwise found out that Plex will inexplicably record some other crazy viewing of the game at 2:00am the next day on some obscure channel rather than the actual live broadcast - and its not for lack of tuners as I have more than I’ve ever used at once). I also add in padding of an extra hour or so after the game in case it runs overtime. The only problem with adding in the padding is that I then can’t watch the game until at least one hour (or however much padding I added) after the game. Technically I had thought I was supposed to be able to time shift and go in and watch a recording while it was being recorded, but what I have found is that iOS it will only let me skip back to whenever I pulled the game up on my phone rather than the beginning of the recording, and on my Nvidia Shield TV the Plex app just immediately crashes when I try to pull up a live game that is recording. If I am not recording the game then the shield will stream the game just fine and I can pause it (I’m always running the latest server on my Windows 10 machine).
Having a grid would be handy as I could then select the show AFTER the game (because I have no idea what that show is) and record that instead of having to add padding. Then I could start watching the game sooner than the end time + padding. Even better just make time shifting work on Plex Sometimes if I feel very adventurous I’ll search for what the after-show is on some website that has one of these antiquated guide things, and then I try to search for that show and narrow it down to the correct channel and time through advanced recording, and set that up to record. Then I watch the game, and then I have to hunt around again for whatever that show was called as I setup the recording the week before and now can’t remember between all the games I set to record, heh. The most painful is when Plex just sometimes doesn’t record even when I politely gave it the all the loving I could.
In short, my system for recording games is: I always record the game on Windows Media Center. Works every time It has a guide that I can set manual recordings, never crashes, has great fast forward and time shift works perfect, I can add as much time to the end of the game as I want and still watch it while it records. And it even remembers where I was in my recording when I go to a different room to watch on a different TV (Plex often won’t remember where I am in a game).
The only thing I’m using Plex for now as far as recording sports now is if I know I’m going to want to watch the game outside the house, as Windows Media Center doesn’t work for that (I’ve tried several options, and have got Windows Media Center to work outside the house, but the picture quality usually isn’t great and doesn’t work nearly as well as Plex). But if I’m watching on Plex I always have to wait until the game is done to watch, at least until time shifting is fixed. Or I have to stream it live on Plex, which also seems to work well. I just don’t like watching commercials and my ideal is to start a football game one hour late so I can skip them all and finish the game the same time as everyone else that is watching it live.
And unrelated, please update the Xbox one plex app, it is very old and slow I’m getting the Xbox One X and would love if you could please bitstream Dolby Atmos.
Thanks @allerun for sharing that update in this thread. A grid-style view of the EPG is in the works and that update goes over the main reason why this capability hasn’t landed yet.
@Allerun Excellent. Good update to this thread. Now if we could just get the top level category view, everything would be right with the world of Plex.
I’m super happy to see this come as well. It’s even more important with LiveTV then with DVR.
I know I often just want to watch a specific channel and not so much a particular show. Think CNN, Fox News, MSNBC for example. Right now it’s a real pain the in the but to find what’s currently on one of those channels since the “show” could be classified under NEWS or TV Shows and unless you know what’s on (the problem) you can’t easily just tune to that channel.
Luckily on my main TV I use the Shield TV which has LIVE CHANNELS installed and that works like a conventional TV Show grid but is even better. Live Channels also allows you to add other sources to the grid besides just your tuner which is very powerful as well. For example you can add Pluto TV as well as a couple of other ITPV sources. This is great if you have OTA or limited cable channels. Pluto has for example MSNBC, The Young Turks, and a bunch of sports channels which can really help augment a limited OTA experience. Live Channels can be setup as a DVR as well (if you want).
If Plex could work as easily as Live Channels that would be awesome. Would be very cool to be able to integrate IPTV “tuners” as well. Being able to record IPTV channels in Plex would be awesome. Having a software only “tuner” would allow the product to be used by everyone without the need to purchase any hardware which would also help TV cord cutters.
Adding live streams from internet sources would be awesome. Especially if we could then record them. Although I can imagine it might be a problem getting a guide mapped to them. Twit.tv comes to mind as an example.
Even without a guide mapping it would be better than nothing and not any worse than the VCR days when we had to look up shows in the Sunday paper and then set the VCR to the proper start-end time.
@kamererhouse said:
Even without a guide mapping it would be better than nothing and not any worse than the VCR days when we had to look up shows in the Sunday paper and then set the VCR to the proper start-end time.
Check out Pluto TV - Drop In. Watch Free. as one example. Clearly has an EPG that could be incorporated. It’s an aggregation of other sources but it works really well and has a few useful channels that anyone with limited cable or OTA wouldn’t have.
Pluto TV is just one of a few reliable IPTV type software “tuners” that could be added. Then you could also have an on demand PPV type service using something like https://tubitv.com/ as a software “tuner” that could be incorporated into the DVR/Live TV.
Heck just have a server with no content but these two sources would give you instant content and with the ability to record them. Tubitv integration could make every Plex server as powerful as Netflix out of the box. The real power would be in being able to combine your local library with it’s online library or being able to search them in a combined search.
On demand content is a different story. There’s probably no way to justify recording on-demand content like Netflix in any way that’s not copyright infringement. The primary argument in favor of recording live TV is for time shifting purposes.
From a search and browsing perspective though I would love to see library integration from services like Google Play, Vudu, Amazon, etc. for products that have been purchased. Especially if it could be buffered for offline playback, which Google Play and Vudu have systems for. Seems like such a thing should be possible if the plugin worked as a traffic manager for the DRM between Google Play and Plex.
Why can’t you justify it? You’re just making a copy so you can watch it later. tubitv.com for example inserts ads into the stream so they make money on the download/stream. This wouldn’t be any different then the Plex users who currently use Playon/PlayLater to record online streaming content or use a browser download addon to do the same. Would just be a lot cooler to have it built in.
Once a stream is started as long as it’s not DRMed and uses a standard stream type that can be captured what difference does it make to Plex if it’s an online TV channel or something that is kicked off? In one case it’s probably switching a stream that’s constantly being broadcast and start recording and in the other you kick off the stream. But not much difference in actual implementation. One stops recording at a specific time and the other stops recording when the stream is complete.
I think the main reason is that it’s already available to watch later, hence the on demand label.
I haven’t tried Tubitv.com so maybe it’s different than I’m imagining, but if it’s true on demand like Netflix, then I would think Plex doesn’t want to take the heat for creating what’s essentially a content ripper. They don’t want to enable someone to subscribe to Tubitv.com for a month and record 500 shows, then cancel and watch those shows for the next year, or whatever.
A feature to record live streaming shows has a glint of honorable intent behind it at least since you are alleviating a much more likely and believable scheduling conflict.
Sometimes if I feel very adventurous I’ll search for what the after-show is on some website that has one of these antiquated guide things, and then I try to search for that show and narrow it down to the correct channel and time through advanced recording, and set that up to record. Then I watch the game, and then I have to hunt around again for whatever that show was called as I setup the recording the week before and now can’t remember between all the games I set to record, heh. The most painful is when Plex just sometimes doesn’t record even when I politely gave it the all the loving I could.
