So, i’ve been generating my own guide.xml off WebGrab++. I edited the scraper .ini to generate things as I need them, and, like I said before, if I identify ANYTHING THAT’S NOT A MOVIE as a TV Show (news swhos, tv series, informercial programs), plex then identifies those as TV Show, lists them as TV Shows and uses the categories (whatever they are) as identifiers for them in the “sort by category” in the browse menu:
This menu will not populate if Plex doesn’t see any “TV Shows” on the XML.
If this menu is populated, it will then understand what you put on DVR Settings as alternate Categories for the shows you want:
https://imgur.com/j6DjX6U
https://imgur.com/a/or72l6E
https://imgur.com/a/G84AtcG
In these pictures, I added the tag “Informativo” as an alias for “News”, which then Plex identifies as a news (by the “News” filter) and the entry category tags on the XML generated by WebGrab++ are only “Informativo” and “Jornalismo”, meaning that the aliases do work (as long as the show is identified as a “TV Show” by plex).
Edit: Here is the XML entry for this particular show:
<programme start="20200313115000 -0300" stop="20200313133000 -0300" channel="8.1">
<title lang="pt">Balanço Geral - Local</title>
<sub-title lang="pt">Balanço Geral - Local</sub-title>
<desc lang="pt">O programa, que transita entre o jornalismo e o entretenimento, mostra reportagens exclusivas, denúncias, prestação de serviço e assuntos que mexem com o dia a dia da comunidade - como problemas nos bairros, segurança e saúde pública.</desc>
<category lang="pt">Jornalismo</category>
<category lang="pt">Informativo</category>
<episode-num system="original-air-date">2020-03-13 11:50:00</episode-num>
<video>
<aspect>16:9</aspect>
<quality>HDTV</quality>
</video>
<previously-shown />
</programme>
And, again, the only way that you can make plex understand that an entry on a XML file is a “TV Show” as opposed as a “Movie” is by adding an <episode-num> tag, but it has to be in either the “xmltv_ns” or the “original-air-date” system (there are others but plex doesn’t understand them). I personally gave things that are not sequential (there’s no season or episode information of a daily news show, for instance) the original-air-date system because i think it makes them look better on the Plex interface (otherwise It shows a blank space where episode information is needed). The downside is that these original air dates need to be unique for every entry, otherwise they all get lumped together as a single show.
And also, since they’re all properly identified, they will show on Plex’s “What’s On” page with “Sports on Later”, “Movies on Later” and “News on Later”
