I am in the UK. I have recently decided to move away from Sky, which has really become just another content-aggregator, and create my own system for recording and reviewing broadcast material. However, I’m rapidly finding that Plex, which appeared to do what I want, does not appear to, so I’m asking whether I have misunderstood and need to activate something else, or Plex is not for me.
I am using a fast Synology NAS, and Plex has satisfactorily found my own material and indexed it. I am going to use BBC material as an example, but my question relates to all broadcast material. I’m not interested in the US-heavy Plex channels.
I have downloaded the BBC iplayer, and can watch old material on that via Plex on a firestick. However, I can neither find live broadcast channels via Plex nor see any way of recording what is being broadcast. I’d welcome advice.
That doesn’t sound right. Plex has nothing to do with iPlayer.
Plex might provide some ad-supported streaming channels exclusively on the British market via its “Plex Channels” media source. But these cannot be recorded and might only represent a fraction of what you know from the BBC.
If you are after receiving, watching and recording live TV transmissions over the air, you need a TV tuner device and connect that to your network and your Plex server.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/features/live-tv-dvr/
Thank you for your impressively rapid reply. I have several sources of BBC content; online, via satellite or through Fire sticks. It’s getting Plex to see these that seems to be the stumbling block. I have been through the ‘community supported tuners’ list but the file it points to appears to be full and can’t be accessed. plex approved tuners community list - Google Sheets
Plex does not support any online streaming channels, except its own.
Plex has no official support for satellite TV reception.
I am unclear how content from a Firestick can get into Plex.
Ah. So my suspicion that Plex may not be the right solution for my needs is well founded, then.
Just for clarity - there are NO satellite receivers that can send data to Plex to record? I have very poor to non-existent terrestrial services here so an antenna solution is not going to work.
There might be. But all of this is not officially supported.
With lots of tinkering you might be able to make it work. But even acquiring the necessary electronic program guide data may prove challenging.
Many thanks for your continued support today. I’ll go and have a think. It would be nice, because the other features of Plex are very impressive. It takes a lot of work and time to get a system to install and run as smoothly as mine did, and that is often not appreciated.
