I know I’m adding to a plethora of complaints about how the DVR functionality has been broken (for an alarmingly long time) but I really just wanted to shift the paradigm and focus on how I wished it would work. This is not a feature request, but rather an explanation of how I wished the current functionality would be organized and where I think it is having issues for me personally.
Don’t Cross the Streams
In addition to playback during recording recently totally breaking I have also previously noticed some odd behavior when I stop and start playback of a recording in progress. It was almost like PMS would start a new stream every time and then my HD Homerun was out of tuners and then the whole thing would just become unresponsive and attempts to either play the recording or any live tv would just fail. Ideally, PMS would be careful to release any streams that are no longer being watched and not start a new stream when watching live tv channel that is currently being recorded (just play the recording from the latest point)
Recordings are Content Too
There’s other things that I don’t like… like how recordings are just lumped under live tv, treat it like a first class citizen and let them have their own screen where you can see past current and future recordings. This has caused me problems when I record a show (a sporting event) and set a large post-padding, then try to start watching after the show officially ends but while it is still recording due to the post padding. During this time I can’t access it through the EPG but it doesn’t show up under Shows yet. It’s still there, I just can’t access it in any way.
Give me Comshift = Comskip and Timeshift
This is the holy grail for me as I primarily use the DVR for sports content. I did see some comments from the devs that ultimately the idea is to have Comskip be non-destructive and (possibly) auto-skip. I think that would be the ideal functionality. I like to let the recording run for an hour or so and then catch up by skipping through the commercials. In theory, by using non-destructive ComSkip that starts shortly after the recording starts and auto-skips commercials (but allows you to rewind if the detection is off) you can achieve timeshift commercial sport watching nirvana.
Live TV and Recordings for All users
It seems that only admins can set recordings but any users you grant access to LiveTV can watch live TV and recordings. This is confusing. If it doesn’t come with the LiveTV permission at least let me set a separate permission for a user to set new recordings (and edit existing ones).
So, this is my attempt to at least just put forth my expectations and hopes for the future. Hopefully this is useful to the programming team. Ultimately Plex is a beautiful platform that has suffered from some broken features and lack of clear organization on the DVR front. I’m sticking with it because I’m hopeful it will get fixed but if I have to choose in the future I’d ultimately have to choose functionality over a pretty interface. I’m really hoping I don’t get to that point.
I just upgraded to version 1.16.2.1297 and see the User Restriction panel on Users’ setting has an option to allow “Allow Live TV and DVR access” which is one of the things I was asking for. I’d love for my main living room tv to be permanently logged in as a non-admin user. This will go a long way to make that work.
Removing commercial is also an option now on FreeBSD which is exciting… will have to strategically test that out but with it being destructive need to find a time when there’s nothing mission critical recording. I hope the non-destructive commercial marking is on the roadmap (sounded like it was) and that it can start detecting commercials while recording is still in progress.
Appreciate the ongoing work and the product overall. Keep up the good work.
I’ve been using the Plex DVR for a few months now, finally attempting to wean us off of Windows Media Center. I bought a brand new Synology server with hardware acceleration, NVidia Shield for playback, and everything is connected (besides phones) on a 1gbps Ethernet.
From a functionality and UI standpoint, here are the things I miss:
Simple UI with shows grouped under folders. and ability to sort multiple ways (I don’t care about ‘what’s up next’ etc.)
Click on a show - you see the episode details (not more…go to show…)
12 hour skip button (maybe that’s available) and one touch recording from the remote
Rich, reliable channel guide available through third party (EPG123)
Excellent, non-destructive commercial skip options which runs in background (comskip with DVRMS toolbox)
Ability to start watching shows at any time after recording has started, while commercial skip is running
Reliable 30 second skip forward / back
Ability to cancel a single episode without cancelling the whole series.
I think the new Plex app is an improvement on a PC, but my dream scenario would be the UI/functionality of WMC for DVR combined with the other benefits of Plex.
WMC has utterly spoiled me for 15 years (started using it back when it was “Windows XP Media Center Edition”. I think it’s one of the most robust, reliable products Microsoft ever made.
That said, I do wish I could move on to a DVR that works on my Apple TVs. I’m really rooting for Plex to be that replacement, but it has a long way to go.
The live TV experience is what needs the most work. One absolutely killer feature of WMC (granted, in conjunction with DVRMSToolbox) is non-destructive commercial marking and automatic skipping while watching timeshifted LIVE tv. It’s ideal for sports. You can tune into a game an hour after it starts and commercials will get skipped automatically. Eventually you catch up to the live broadcast, usually near the end of the game–such a huge time saver, while still getting to watch it while it’s occurring. I’ve gotten so used to having the ability to do this that switching to a DVR without it would feel like a huge step backwards.
Even with post-processing for commercial detection, it needs an option to do it non-destructively. As good as ComSkip is, it is not infallible and regularly makes mistakes. With WMC I can simply disable the autoskip and rewind back to be able to watch the portion that was incorrectly tagged. Not to mention that this method doesn’t require a transcoding step, which saps resources. I know this can be cobbled together with scripts and MCEBuddy, but it makes sense for Plex built this in. It ought to be the default mode for commercial skipping, with destructive commercial cutting as an option for those who prefer that for whatever reason.
One other thing–It would be wonderful to have a more streamlined way to bring up the guide while watching something and be able to easily get back to the show you were previously watching. WMC has again spoiled me there. They made the guide background semi transparent, so you can still keep semi-track of what’s going on with your current show while you check the guide.
I would really encourage the Plex devs to take an in-depth look at WMC’s interface and ape as much of it as possible. It’s really close to a perfect ecosystem for recording and watching TV.
