+1 All the other external solutions introduce a lot of overhead when Plex already has my library, it would be amazing to be able to set these up inside Plex.
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I had the same idea lol. BUT PLEX MAKE THIS HAPPEN!
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+1, add it already
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And Lon.TV just created a short into or tutorial for this.
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ErsatzTV works really well but the only big downside it that it has to emulate an HDHomerun device so all the video playback has to channel through the live TV mechanism in Plex resulting in a lot of delays and frequent non starting of playback.
Iâve tried all the alternatives and ErsatzTV is definitely the best but its not going to replace native playback at all.
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Is this related to the speed of the server hardware?
I have it running on a M2 Mac mini with nothing else fighting for resources so I donât think so.
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This is interesting, however Iâd love to see what plex could do from within the plex
Server aaannnddd be able to share channels Iâve created with family and friends Iâve shared my library with that would be a game changer !!!
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I donât use the existing live channels. But if I had MY channels mixed in there, I might have reason to go in there.
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Exactly why I want it within Plex and not needing something like Ersatz, which stutters all the time, while Plex doesnât. If I could create my own channels and set plex to launch into the Live TV, with only the channels I create, then my daughter can watch TV and I know that she wonât be watching inappropriate stuff or content trying to teach stuff counter to my attempted upbringing of her.
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So 2015 this was requested
@McWanke any updates ?
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try setting all the channels to use HLS Direct vs profiles. this fixed most of my stuttering issues. i then use HLS Streaming for channels that have weird media w/odd codecs, resolutions, etc and a 1080p QSV ffmpeg profile.
We have talked about doing this but it isnât a current development target this year.
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Thatâs a shame, we live in hope .
Cheers for the update
Just adding my vote and reply here as this feature would be amazing to have.
Agree that it would be amazing.
I am curious if anyone in this thread has thought through how this might work. We often get feedback from server owners about people that start watching something like a playlist and forget about it or walk away and want to shut down that stream to conserve server resources. For a feature like this how do you all envision this working? Would it run all the time? Would it need to calculate position but only transcode/process/stream if someone is actively watching? What settings would you expect to see for this type of feature?
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Ideally in my mind it would perform in two ways, with the option to toggle said channel either way.
You pick a show (or set of shows) and it makes a channel in your guide. You can toggle that channel to be continuous or on demand. Continuous is the server just keeps track of the episodes but doesnât actually stream anything, but pulls up S04E13 at 23:15 into a show when requested. On demand is it remembers where you left off at in that channel (similar to a playlist.)
I would like to be able to insert filler/commercials as well into some channels. If you can spend a few minutes looking into ErsatzTV and how they handle it, that would be the desired way to me. ErsatzTV works, but it transcodes everything that should just direct play in Plex and why I was really hoping that Plex could implement something like this.
This is fantastic. To be clear - I am running a little bit of a personal experiment with this conversation. It has been a personal goal to find ways to engage on features like this before we get into full on design/development mode. Thank you for coming along and giving some feedback here.
With that being said, for anyone coming along and checking this out let me be clear that this is purely for conversation and feedback only. We havenât even started scoping out this as a feature yet and while I hope that we can use this as an example around getting more collaboration going much earlier in the process. Also - please donât take any of this as any form of commitment towards any of the ideas expressed here (even my own). Apologies for taking up this space, but wanted to make sure the expectations were clear here.
Now letâs get into the fun stuff. First I am very interested in the commercials aspect here. I am assuming that us (plex) being interested in inserting a commercial here and there would receive some negative pushback - is this a valid assumption? But commercials are an interesting topic. I see that the service you mentioned allows for creation of a smart collection (assuming for shorter video clips) that are used for commercials. Do you see this wholly on the server owner to setup and maintain?
Also for commercials is it more important to start them on a time schedule (at the top of the hour) or to fill every possible second using your âcommercialsâ and if the start time has to be shortened or lengthened due to commercial length that is ok? Or would you cut commercials off? Or would you have something like a static image that might show for the extra 18 seconds that the video + âcommercialsâ couldnât fill to round out a 30m block?
Another question around this one:
How would you see this working for multiple users? Would each user advance the timer? Or would you want the time marker on a per-user basis (meaning that we would have to track a marker for each user/managed user/shared library user on the server).
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I should have used the word filler rather than commercials. I have a library of tv commercials from 1950-2000âs (available from archive.org) that I use to pad time. People could use a static image, family videos, or whatever they choose. It should be the server owners choice of what content filler they wanted to watch on their channel guide.
Commercials would just be padding to fill out block schedules, and only on request.
I see this working just like the normal Plex VOD channels, if itâs a continuous channel, and someone turns into the program at 11:50 am, then it turns to whatever part of the show it would be on at that time server wide. It doesnât have to follow a block schedule, it just turns into whatever show and episode based on time of day, for everyone trying to watch that channel.
If the channel is set to on-demand, then the desired intent would be to play from where you left off at, but I can see how that might be more challenging with multiple users.
I think it would also be awesome if we had the ability to display on screen graphics or do what ErsatzTV has recently created and made a graphics engine, which can display information and metadata relating to content, something which fans of old MTV would love.
Having all kinds of options for server owners would really be neat and make Plex their own. I do recall there was a Hackathon which did include a similar experiment to this suggestion but that wouldâve been quite a few years ago.
