Nearly 4 months on from the initial beta. Lets just say I have given up months ago. Now we are at Beta 5. Have spent many hours and tried to relay issues on the forum. However my initial issues are still prevalent:
Perth AU Timezone is at +8. The Eastern States of Australia are 3 hours in front.
Why does everything I look at in the program guide want to start 3 hours in front?.
XML Import on has been broken for many months.
This seems to be any issue solely with Windows platforms as I’ve discovered and mentioned earlier on the forums. This function on Linux (at least Ubuntu) seems functional.
Where does this leave me?:
I guess in the same situation as all the other users in the UK, New Zealand, Australia and many other regions. The GraceNote metadata is rubbish. Please fix the XML import data function which may allow many of us to import a guide. At least we have half a chance to help one another to record a complete episode or movie or something (anything!).
Resorted to KODI, Ras PI, TVheadend, and the excellent work you guys are doing with the new KODI addon in Beta. No Problems with XMLTV import or OTA EPG’s. They appear to know where I am and what channel I’m watching.
Why the hell are you guys paying Gracenote for this crap. I didn’t mind paying for a lifetime membership because the rest of your software is VERY VERY GOOD.
To pay Gracenote for services rendered is insulting.
The IceTV one is now available. Go to https://www.icetv.com.au/plex set up as a user and try a free 1 month. The need to cut and paste and so forth will improve as will incremental guide updates to pick up the multiple late changes that our Australian Networks frustratingly continue to do on a daily basis, and sometimes not until late in the day.
Not too many people are going to want to pay for EPG data when they’re supposed to be getting that in their Plex Pass already. Plex need to fix the issues with the suppliers they have and/or at least make sensible workarounds (xmltv import, manual recording) available as options to people. As it stands being completely unable to record a show with a functioning set of hardware simply due to the lack of correct EPG data is somewhat ridiculous.
That’s an argument I hear all the time but the man in the street doesn’t realise the complexity of aggregating the TV channels throughout Australia. Unlike "the rest of the world, well the USA, UK and W Europe anyway, we have little legislation to stop multiple broadcast changes, especially late in the day, mainly by the commercial networks. Let alone the DVR problems of shows running late so as to overlap the competing networks. IceTV aggregates 376 separate channels throughout Australia with a hands-on team to curate the EPG metadata right up to about 5:30pm every day to catch late changes, missing repeat flags and so on. Each one of those channels may have some of their own unique shows and variations but all need managing almost up to the beginning of prime time broadcast. So it’s very unlikely it will ever be both free and accurate. Plex can’t swallow the cost of running that operation within the Plex Pass price and Gracenote don’t have a local team working hands-on to get all those fiddly changes that make accurate recording possible. And, as this forum has shown, inaccurate EPGs make the DVR useless. We have a free one month trial and we will adjust our subscription price down to allow for the fact that our “Smart Recording” cloud/app software is not available. But for a couple of months, until we get to understand the Plex business, you’ll not overspend more than the price of couple of cups of coffee. My only proviso is that right now Plex is only doing one EPG fetch per day so inaccuracies will exist but they are working on fixing that.
For those that don’t read through all the above (!) I should add that right now only one EPG download per day is being carried out so late changes will be missed. That will be fixed
Yes getting an up-to-the-minute accurate guide is difficult, but I’d be quite happy with an electronic version of the published schedule. I’ve dealt with last minute changes and overruns etc in that situation with MythTV for years and while it’s not ideal it’s better than not being able to record anything at all because the interface simply doesn’t let you. As a ‘premium’ service that does track last minute schedule changes then yes there may be a market for things like IceTV. Plex should be providing usable basic schedule information and/or manual workarounds as part of Plex Pass though.
That said I should be clear that I would potentially pay for a premium service such as IceTV, it’s just that it shouldn’t be necessary for basic operation. I’ve signed up for the trial and so far it looks pretty good!
All valid points…but if for us in Oz and NZ etc. if we can’t semi-reliably execute the core use case of recording free to air TV. Well then the product is not really an option. Agree the EPG situation in Oz is tricky, but other products and platforms have significantly less issues. So it is achievable.
It seems freepg doesn’t flag repeats properly at the moment, which is a major pain as long as Plex DVR doesn’t allow you to cancel individual recordings without cancelling an entire series. For shows that repeat a lot during the week you end up with multiple files that you have to manually clean up. IceTV handles this a lot better than the Gracenote data too.
While you can use the IceTV link posted earlier, there is still some work ongoing with that to improve it (and the metadata you see for shows and movies). Once it’s all been completed, I’d expect there’ll be an announcement of some kind in the forums.
A lot of the issues in Australia do sit with the TV networks, and there’s not much Plex, or Gracenote can do about that. They’ve been moving things around for years, and I don’t see it changing any time soon.
I’ve personally moved over to using IceTV and have been trialling it, and I’ve found it much better. If any Aussies are interested in trialling it, please DM me. Particularly if you’re in regional Australia.
In regard to the EPG refreshes, there is work going on to increase the refreshes to happen several times a day, and not just once, particularly for us Aussies. Plex have put a lot of work into getting it working for Australia, so please hang in there.
Hi Dave and thanks for the kind words about IceTV. At IceTV we work hard to keep on top of all those daily changes in schedules. And there are tens and tens of them spread across the whole country, all needing cross checking. And then they can change again!! Right up until about 5:30 pm when prime time has to have been finalised so the viewers have any clue as to what is on. It’s a job of much hand curation and I can’t see it being automated any time soon. If Gracenote ever get better we’ll even consider taking a feed from them and hand curating the late changes. But I don’t see that happening soon as it’s such a moving target across hundreds of local channels, though capitals are easier they are also quirky wrt sport and so forth, plus time zones. If Plex can increase their EPG fetches to include a last one at between 5:30pm and about 6:15pm (to manage our server loads) we’ll be as near to spot on as we believe it is ever possible to be.
