I hope I have it in the right place. Now I have my server on my office desktop PC, and I’m running PLEX app on my Samsung Smart TV. Everything is going to plan (almost). Tonight my wife and I decided to watch the cross-over event of the FBI. I have turned on the recording on all 3 TV shows. Now the problems I had with it is on the first FBI, we decided to take a break 1/2 through the first FBI. Guess what? It wouldn’t pause. I actually had to get out of the whole thing and click on “start from the beginning” when we came back. So this is what I did and it took forever, as first off it wouldn’t fast forward, some error message saying “can’t play video”. I guess I won this battle, as I tried it several times until it started to work again. back to where it left off. Then we started to watch it again and found the place where we had left off and watched to the end. Then I drop out of that video and when to the next. Again, it ask if I wanted to start from the beginning or live TV. I chose to start from the beginning. I figure I was a good 15 mins into the recording and I wanted to fast-forward through the commercials. No dice, so again no time shift.
So what are the steps to time shift while watching a video? What equipment (TV or app) do I need to do it on?
Thanks
Dan
Based on 5 years of experience of problem after problem in this area with Plex, the only real solution is to switch to something else that works. Sorry, I’m not trying to be glib here. Depending on your server/client hardware and your technical knowledge/comfort, there are lots of choices out there, including Emby, Jellyfin and NextPVR. All the media server products have their own pecularities and strengths. But if Live TV/DVR are important to you, I don’t think you’re ever going to be happy with Plex. Whenever I went to the living room to watch TV with Plex (especially time shifting), my thought always was “how’s it not going to work today”. There was always a new and inventive way for it to mess up. Just not what you want when you just want to sit back and relax …
I’m sorry, but I’m sure others have come across this problem as well. And I haven’t been on PLEX for no more than 1 month or many 3 months at the most so yes I’m still learning. So what has been done about the time shifting (you know while watching a video or something you can pause, rewind, fast forward)?
Thanks
In my experience, you need a fast CPU to make this work reasonably. When you playback a show that is still recording, for some reason, Plex goes into transcode mode, which means it is trying to transcode your stream on-the-fly, rather than just playing back the existing MPEG-2 stream.
on-the-fly transcode uses a lot of CPU, and it is not very conducive to jumping back and forward in the stream. If you pause for too long, the transcode will be terminated and you have to start again from the beginning. If you jump forward a lot, and your processor can’t keep up, you will get stream errors. It seems like you experienced both these issues.
The transcode issue is probably not fixable unless you want to go out and buy the latest gen I7 processor. It should be possible to playback a stream while it is recording without having to transcode, so this is what Plex needs to fix, but I doubt it will happen anytime soon.
I also use NextPVR to record some of my content, but as the poster indicates, it has it’s own strengths and weaknesses. It does allow you play back without transcoding while recording, but you have to pay for most media-player clients to use it as a playback platform. There are other niggles, but I won’t go into them all.
One thing that works well for me is to record with NextPVR into a location that a Plex library can see, then you can simply play back with Plex, but you still can’t watch while you record.
I have decided, and am happy with just waiting for the show to finish before I start playback. If you do this with Plex, not only does it not transcode, but it also adds all the ad skip functionality for you, and it works really well.
Thank you Ballfam for that information. Speaking of CPUs, I have an I9-11900K which is really fast, but your the expert in the field of PLEX I’m not. Yes it does seem that I did experience both of these issues as you had mentioned. I guess I was asking for a lot and giving nothing in return sort of speaking. In fact, you mentioned wait until the program finishes and then watch it. If a live TV show comes on at 8:00, we usually don’t watch it until 9:00, and while we are watching that one, the other one is recording. So once that one is done, we usually wait about 1 min and then watch it.
Again, thank you for your answers.
Dan
Yup, that’s a fast CPU. I think you are pretty good for live playback, but you just have to be aware that you can’t pause for too long or skip back or forward too far or too quickly; if you see the spinning circle, stop hitting the jump forward or back for a few seconds until everything catches up. If you can live with those restrictions, you can probably make it work.
BTW: what OS do you have on the Plex server? I ran Windows for a number of years, and then switched to Linux, and I have found that Linux works more reliably and is more efficient with memory and CPU than Windows, especially when transcoding , where you are pounding the CPU.
I’m running Windows 11 Pro for my Plex server. I’ve been very happy with my Windows since Windows 95 or going back further to DOS 3.1. Yep, I’m sure Linux is good as I also have two Raspberry PIs running on my desktop as well. One is for my website and the other is for my NAS. No Plex server on them tho, but I might give it a try one of these days. But if you wondering why I have an I9, I also have an I7 both running Windows 11 Pro. I’m a programmer (website), and both these systems were put together by me, so yes, I know how to fix them as well. Trust me I’m not trying to show off my stuff to ya. What kind of system do you have? In my I9, I also have an 850-watt power supply, 32GB memory (upgrading to 64) this or next summer, and about a total of 16TB of hard drive space.
One day about two months ago, I got a high cable bill from Fubo.TV. They were great, and had everything I needed until they dump a Regional Sports Package Fee onto my bill. I’ve always had an antenna to where I could pick up ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX. So, for about 2 months I’m trying to learn (as I go) to learn everything about PLEX. I also have a HDHomeRun FLEX running the show for me.
Yes, before I stopped using Plex as my normal day-to-day media server, I used NextPVR to record into a Plex library and that worked great. I could even watch while recording quite reliably. It seems that @ballfam is saying that this approach no longer works. That’s a shame.
For about 3 years now, my normal day-to-day environment has been to have NextPVR record into a Jellyfin library folder and that continues to work fabulously, including for watching recordings still in progress (i.e. timeshifting).
@timla76 , my first post was not meant just to be a rant. Over the years, I have started 3 or 4 long running threads with hundred of responses detailing the problems with Live TV/DVR. I’m not saying that it is hopeless to keep using Plex. But the pattern is that Plex keeps breaking things and it takes FOREVER for them to pay attention, acknowledge and finally fix the new regressions.
An obvious example would be that on Android, they suddenly broke the “play from beginning” option for live recordings. It took Plex 11 months to fix this. You’d choose “play from beginning” and it would go live instead. This was incredibly annoying for sports events that you’d been looking forward to because you would suddenly see the current score on the screen which might be two hours into the game. And because skip ahead/backward keys were so unreliable, you’d often end up crashing the app trying to get back to the beginning.
Anyway, I hope you have better luck or that Plex has magically reformed itself – but I’m not optimistic about either.
No hard feelings there MovieWiz. I’m just a guy who’s trying new things (media server stuff) to find out if possible if I might be able to get what I’m looking for which is: #1: Record a TV show or shows that my wife and I watch. #2: Be able to watch said show either during or after the recording. #3: Take out all commercials (which I’m working on). Pausing said show for breaks and then start back where I left off. #1 is a no-brainer as that is checked off the bucket list. #2: Is almost complete as I can watch a TV show after the recording. But the part of #2 that isn’t complete is as for this example. Last night on CBS they had the FBI cross over. I was watching it through PLEX and recording it at the same time. I think I read someplace that you could start watching a show, pause it, come back, and pick it back off where it left off. As my initial message that was a failure. And #3 is almost complete. If I use MCEBuddy Custom Cuts, yea, no problem. But if leave it up to PLEX or to MCEBuddy failure.
That is why I’m happy for posting things on a board to get the information and help I need and maybe someone else who has or has a problem almost like mine.
So again, no worries.
As for my computer rig, I hope no one is offended.
Dan
A long standing “behaviour” (i.e. a bug) has been that Plex does not remember your position when you’ve been watching a live recording. The remembering works fine when you start watching after recording has finished.
On the other hand, if you use other software (say NextPVR) to record into your Plex or Jellyfin library, the server just sees the file as a video and will remember your playback progress just fine, even when recording still is in progress.
The one caveat of recording directly into the library with other software is that when you start playback, the server determines the length at that moment (and it’s still recording). So, the server can think that you’ve finished the video prematurely. So I just stop and restart the video whenever a commercial starts (only because that’s easy to remember). The server refreshes the video length when you restart. This oddity was quite acceptable to me, given all the instability problems I was having with Plex Live TV/DVR.
So with NextPVR, Jellyfin, and PLEX, which one is the best to use? The next problem that I didn’t mention is this. My TV is a Samsung using a different OS than the rest. If it was Andriod OS I would say let her rip, but with having a Samsung and because of the OS PLEX show up without any problems. Conquer that problem about the OS and I’ll be a happy camper.
Dan
I use both NextPVR and Plex for recording, but only Plex for playback. @MovieWiz I think what you are describing about watching while you record might still work, but at some point I added post-processing on my NextPVR recordings , so I only move it to a location Plex can see after it is done.
@timla76 As far as which one is better, they both have their strengths and weaknesses. I would generally lean towards NextPVR for recording, it is very stable, much more flexible, and the support on the forums from the original developers is very good; but I generally use Plex for playback because it is supported on more platforms (you probably won’t get a NextPVR client for your smart TV), and it has some really nice features for library maintenance; the meta-data also seems to be more accurate with Plex, and it detects more show names correctly. I also use Plex for some recording because I don’t want to set up comskip manually on my NextPVR server, so I need to tell Plex that I have some recording device so that it does that work for me.
So, NextPVR is probably better, but I’m not sure it’s enough better to make it worth going through the trouble of setting everything up again. Plus NextPVR does take a little more work to set up correctly, with more flexibility comes more complexity.
I really only use NextPVR to record. There is a web interface for watching which really only works well on computers. So I use Jellyfin for watching. There is a Samsung Tizen client for Jellyfin - just look for Tizen Builds For Jellyfin on the Github site. I installed it on my new Samsung TV about a month ago and I’ve been really happy with it.
Sounds like your server is a computer and you have HDHomeRun tuner. Jellyfin supports that directly. So you would have the option of using NextPVR (recording into a Jellyfin or Plex folder) or using the TV/DVR built into Jellyfin. Personally, I really like the stability and scheduling features of NextPVR. You can create keyword and query-like scheduling rules that are not tied to programs currently in the EPG. You also can record by channel/time when you want/need to. Scheduling can be very frustrating in Plex and its prime directive of “Absolutely, never, ever allow duplicates to record” can really be annoying when you have channels that don’t always tune perfectly. On channels that are iffy, there are often re-broadcasts of prime time shows overnight and I want to record both in case one doesn’t work – can’t do that with Plex.
Yeah, I concur. I really like that “record anything that has this name” feature of NextPVR and I use it all the time, it’s very useful when the EPG doesn’t give much lead-time (my one for U.K. TV only has 2 days), but playback on NextPVR is not that great, so I’m using Plex for that. I’m also using a virtual IPTV device on NextPVR with a VPN to record TV from all over the world, something that is totally out of the question with Plex. I have lived in several English speaking countries, and I like shows from a number of them.
Hey Balifam - Your post really caught my attention and I’m all ears now. So how are you able to watch any TV station from any place and record it? That in itself would be a wild trip to take. I beg of you to tell me how you do it.
Thanks
In addition to over the air channel, I also use IPTV in NextPVR. I thought you could do that in Plex using a 3rd party wrapper. I think it’s called Exteve. I see discussions about it in these forums all the time. I have not use Exteve myself though.
I’ll check Extive out, I’m always interested to find new tools, but I doubt it will be as good as the NextPVR IPTV, which has been virtually 100% reliable for me for several years.
@timla76 Many countries stream their free-to-air live broadcasts over the web, so you just need to suck up the stream and you are good to go. It takes some work to set up foreign IPTV recording, but here’s what you need:
- NextPVR or some other software that can record from IPTV
- An M3U playlist which contains the web address for m3u8 live broadcast streams for the country you are interested in
- An EPG (Electronic Programing Guide) which matches those streams
- Usually, a VPN which will allow you to pretend to be in that country, because most of these streams are geo-blocked
Note that you can only usually get free to air channels, but in some countries, that can be upwards of 40 different streams.
NextPVR has a web interface (just like Plex), and once you set everything up, you can just look at the EPG and tell it to record e.g. Every episode of “Australian Survivor”, which it then just records from the IPTV stream, ready for you to play back when want. I record mine into a location which Plex can see, and it automagically adds everything to my Plex library for me to enjoy when I want to watch TV.
This is one of the reasons why I use Linux; each network interface can only be in one country at any time, once you start the VPN, you will appear to be in e.g. the U.K., which is not what you want for most of the other traffic coming in to the system, so unless you have dedicated hardware for each NextPVR setup, you need to use VMs to virtualize the network interface. The Linux KVM (kernel virtual machine) is way more efficient than Microsoft’s VM implementation, plus, you don’t have to pay another Microsoft license for each VM. I run Plex on my main system, and then have a VM for each of my NextPVR setups, one for each country.
The NextPVR forum will help you set up IPTV, but it’s not too hard.
If you want to record from Australia or New Zealand, Matt Huisman has wrapped it all up an a neat M3U and EPG for you, just Google his name and you’ll find his site.
For UK and some Europe TV, look ip iptv-org on Github, you should also find South Africa there.
These are good places to start, but over the years I have build my own M3U playlists which I input to NextPVR, and for some countries, you may need to do this manually. The key is the EPG; if you can’t find a reliable EPG it becomes impossible to schedule recordings.
I just figure I could type in a URL and be off. I haven’t even touched the surface of PLEX yet, or in your option (they do count with me), isn’t worth it? I have to figure out how to get my Samsung TV to play nice with other OS as well. I’m working on all that as we speak. But for instance, when my father was stationed in Germany and I was too if you watch a TV show in Germany, isn’t the audio in German?
I only record from English speaking countries because I’m not proficient enough at any other language to enjoy watching the broadcast, but yes, if you record from Germany, it will most likely be in German, although some countries with a high proportion of English speakers as their second language may also contain an English audio stream.
For me, it is definitely worth it, my Wife was born in Australia, and I was born in the U.K. and I record several shows from both countries, and they make up close to 50% of our viewing (just an opinion, but the BBC in the UK makes way better quality programming than most of the U.S. FTA channels). I think it varies for everyone, if you are just going to record the odd show, it’s probably not worth the effort. However it’s a one-time deal, I set my NextPVR up several years ago, and now it just runs itself, I have to check that the VPN didn’t drop out once in a while and take care of watching the disk space, but it takes very little effort once it’s up and running.
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