I’m testing out the Plex DVR as a replacement for my MythTV setup. One big feature that is missing and causing me a bit of grief is the ability to have 2 active TCP connections to each tuner (the hdhomerun supports 2 active connections to each tuner). This allowed MythTV to either record overlapping shows on the same channel (when each show is configured to start early and go late), or actually record a subchannel show at the same time as a primary channel show on the same channel frequency.
With Plex DVR, overlapping shows on the same channel will tie up two tuners and cause conflicts which did not exist with MythTV. This can be a bit of a show stopper for people transitioning from other computer based DVR setups. Are there plans to support multiple channel streams in a future release?
Here is a real world example of how MythTV would have handled the following schedule with my HDHomerun Connect:
Blue Bloods: Channel 22.1
Days: Channel 8.1
Modern Marvels: Channel 8.4
12:00: Open a connection to tuner 1, tune to channel 22, and start recording 22.1
12:59: Open a connection to tuner 2, tune to channel 8, and start recording 8.1
1:00: Close the connection to tuner 1 and wrap up the 12:00 recording.
1:00: Open a second connection to tuner 2 and start recording 8.4
1:00: Open a connection to tuner 1 and start recording 22.1 (no conflict)
2:00: Close the second connection to tuner 2 and wrap up the 1:00 recording
2:00: Close the connection to tuner 1 and wrap up the 1:00 recording
2:00: Open a second connection to tuner 2 and start recording 8.4
2:00: Open a connection to tuner 1 and start recording 22.1 (no conflict)
2:01: Close the first connection to tuner 2 and wrap upthe 12:59 recording
Some shows need a little padding (e.g. the show jumps right into critical content or ends on cliff hangers at the last possible moment, the stations do schedule time shifting, or we want a bit more buffer for hand-editing commercials out). It would be nice to not have to drop back to other DVR methods during some of these critical periods.
I may be a bit naive in how I described the functionality (may be leveraging the ability to receive an unfiltered stream vs having the hdhomerun feed different parts via multiple connections), but the following might help describe the multirec functionality I’m looking for. If this isn’t already planned, I can create a feature request for voting and better tracking purposes.
Thanks SunCat, was wondering the same myself, and I too have a MythBox I’d like to entirely replace with Plex.
It’s particularly useful in Oz where large padding (10/30 min) is necessary to deal with the ridiculous random early/late scheduling the commercial channels do.
On a slightly positive note: It appears that the current software will handle an overlap between shows on the same (sub)channel. While experimenting a bit more with how the scheduler handles small overlap conflicts, I found that I did get duplicate content between back-to-back broadcasts of a show.
On a negative note: The scheduler completely botched the handling of a conflict between channels for a show that was only in conflict for the last, extended minute:
The conflict above would never have existed if the software could handle recording 8.1 and 8.4 off of one tuner’s output.
Did anything get progressed with this? I’ve moved from DVBLink which supported multiple recordings on the same multiplex. The link to your post to vote this is dead though.
My feature request was rudely shut down for being a duplicate (since I wasn’t “wizard” enough to get their old crappy search feature to pull up the old request before posting my own). The original request should be:
