I’ve been using eyeTV for over 10 years, and was curious about some aspects of Plex Live TV and DVR. I want to make the switch and dump eyeTV, but before I make the investment of a supported tuner, I’d like to understand some aspects.
Can you watch a recording from the beginning before it’s done recording?
For example, I’ll setup a recording for a football game, then begin watching it about 45 minutes after it started. I’ll begin watching from the beginning of the recording, then fast forward through commercials, or pause as needed for breaks. At some point, I get to live, then watch live from then on. Is this possible with Plex? Or do you need to wait until the recording is complete until you can watch it?
Can you edit and export the recordings?
Currently, with eyeTV, I manually remove the commercials of some shows, then either place in a Plex Library, or add to iTunes. Is this possible with Plex? If not fully, to what extent is this possible?
Does Plex Live TV offer all of the typical Live TV time-shifting tools?
Such as pause, fast-forward, and rewind? Or is this only possible with shows that have been fully recorded?
How beneficial is getting a tuner with a built-in hardware decoder?
My understanding is that this depends upon the capability of the computer running PMS. If it’s a newer computer typically capable of transcoding, then a hardware decoder might not be necessary. Is it worth the extra cost to get a tuner with a hardware decoder? I’m on the cusp of getting a new computer for PMS. I’m currently using a 2009 mac Mini, and I’m completely baffled that it gives me no issues during multiple transcoding streams. I would imagine, however, that transcoding DVR content (usually MPEG-2) will likely require much more processing power.
good questions, I can’t answer them all, but I can give you my experience with hdhomerun quatro
have not tried it (don’t watch tv real time)
yes. plex will save the show/movie to the library/path of your choosing. It can also automatically remove commercials, this is post-processed after the recording, and takes a fair amount of cpu/hard drive resources.
yes. you can watch live tv, then start recording part way through, or you can rewind back to the point where you started watching it. The UI/video responsiveness is entirely dependent on the power of both your server and client.
as you have commented, that depends on your existing hardware. if you are considering the hdhomerun devices, you can choose between either hardware transcoding with 2 tuners, or server based transcoding (either during or post recording) and 4 tuners.
I have the 4 tuner model, and while I wish it had hardware 264 encoding, more tuners were more important to me.
I would simply suggest, for future proofing, 4 tuners is better than 2 tuners and hardware assist. You can upgrade your plex server (which benefits all of plex functionality) if your current server is too slow for on the fly/post-processing.
Otherwise, you could buy multiple devices, with 2 tuners & hardware transcoding.
You could always buy one of each device type, try them out, and take back the one you don’t like or least useful.
out of curiosity, I am doing a short experiment within the half hour or so.
I suspect it that it functions in this manner;
your scheduled recording utilizes a dedicated tuner stream from start to finish.
you can record or view as many simultaneous streams as you have available tuners.
while a show is recording, you can watch that show, it will be as a separate stream and utilize its own tuner.
thus, if you start watching a show that is already recording, you are using 2 separate tuner streams to do so.
this means your viewing stream only starts from the time period that you started watching (not from the beginning of the recorded stream).
you won’t be able to rewind to the start of the show while it is recording, you will have to wait until the recording completes and any post-processing time it takes (ie the optional commercial removal or any user specified post-processing scripts).
so if you want to both record a show and watch it from the beginning without waiting until the end, then you will want to start watching and pause it until you are ready.
from what I can tell, plex does not store video segments unless you activate the record (either scheduled or start record while watching). ie you can’t start watching then switch away or off, and come back unless you pause (no idea how long it will pause before time out) or record.
tuner1 = scheduled recording from 12 to 1
tuner2 = live stream (of same or different channel), that can be paused/rewind/etc, but the buffer is only temporary (unless you hit record while watching) and will stop if changed or stopped.
If you start a show that has recording in progress, it will ask you if you want to watch live (separate stream) or start from beginning (watch recording), at least on IOS client.
plex web doesn’t prompt, but appears to automatically start viewing the recording (at live point), where you can rewind to beginning or wherever the recording started.
I will add that FF or RW during a recording live broadcast royally sucks with Plex at this time. At least using the Roku app. You have to watch the recording after it completes.
