
Live TV on Plex - electriclove
https://www.plex.tv/blog/well-do-it-live/
======
willglynn
Ha, neat. I just got Plex DVR running a couple days ago.

I have both an OTA tuner and a CableCARD tuner. I don't really watch TV, but
Comcast did the thing where it's cheaper to buy TV than to not, and I figured
I'd rather have a CableCARD in a HDHomeRun box somewhere on my network instead
of a set-top box in my living room.

Plex found my 120-odd cable channels, found all my broadcast channels, and it
assembled a cohesive program guide with everything that I could conceivably
watch with cover art and program descriptions and everything. I didn't have to
register with any other services, or screw around with anything outside Plex
itself. It just works™; took maybe 15 minutes to go from "Plex" to "Plex is
recording stuff".

My favorite feature is something I hooked up yesterday -- automated commercial
removal via a postprocessing script that invokes
[https://github.com/erikkaashoek/Comskip](https://github.com/erikkaashoek/Comskip).

Net is that anyone in my household can say "I want to watch this show", Plex
will record it, strip ads, and make it available on any device, and it wasn't
even a pain to set up. I'm quite happy.

~~~
bonzini
How does Plex compare with Kodi?

~~~
willglynn
My best advice: try it and see.

Speaking for myself: I switched from Kodi to Plex after finding that Plex
requires considerably less effort to achieve greater functionality, and the
differences are things that I actually like. Your mileage may vary.

As an example, let's say I want to start watching something on a tablet and
finish watching it on a TV. This is something that Kodi and Plex can both do,
but let's consider the details.

Kodi needs a file server and a MySQL server, while Plex needs a Plex Media
Server. Thus, Kodi talks SMB/NFS + MySQL, while Plex talks HTTPS. If you want
to access your stuff remotely, Kodi needs a VPN and suffers from latency,
while Plex works fine with port forwarding.

Kodi needs you to configure sharing and database access on each install,
usually by editing config files. Plex needs you to log in with your Plex
account and point it to the Plex server(s) you want.

Kodi needs you to jailbreak, sideload, compile it yourself, or otherwise jump
through hoops if you want to watch on iOS. Plex is a download from the Apple
app store.

Kodi streams files to the device and plays them there. Plex does this by
default, but Plex Media Server can _also_ transcode media in realtime as
needed. This means Plex can stream a 20 mbps source file over the Internet to
a 1 mbps cellular connection. Plex can also transparently paper over device
limitations, using the server to transcode weird video codecs into something
that your device can actually play instead of just failing.

Plex Pass (the for-pay thing) can also take all this a few steps further with
Mobile Sync. The server transcodes e.g. a season of a TV show into a mobile-
friendly format/resolution/bitrate and copies it to a mobile device. Now you
can watch that stuff entirely offline, in addition to streaming whatever you
want over the Internet and streaming over your LAN, while still never losing
your spot in a series. Kodi… doesn't.

(My current experience with Plex DVR vs my past experience with MythTV
suggests I could write something similar for the DVR functions too.)

~~~
IanCal
As a contrast:

I generally just want to watch videos on my TV.

I have plex and kodi installed on my shield. Plex requires me to setup an
account to get videos from one app to another _on the same device_. It also
failed to launch and got stuck in a few loops before I found this out. Trying
to set it up just now it asked if I wanted to launch the server, but then
couldn't find it. Then when manually launching it from the internal settings
menu list of installed apps it said going to the next page would add
permissions for storage, but just brought up an error so again I had to go
into the internal settings menu list of installed apps and enable the
permissions myself. I have already ended up in a situation where it said the
server was there, running and connected, but showed me no library and I had to
force stop and restart the server. I've also so far not been able to find
basic settings like hiding the synopsis of unwatched media.

Last time I tried to set it up was on my NAS, and it consistently tried to re-
encode video files which would have played just fine when streaming.

Maybe my experience is rare, but kodi has pretty simply worked and played my
files without requiring me to setup anything online. My patience for managing
my media has dropped drastically over time.

------
Fogest
>To summarize, we’ve just made Plex an even more awesome choice for the
aspiring cord-cutter

I think it's a pretty neat feature for people who still find it hard to get
away from TV for reasons like the live channels (sports). They can still make
use of DVR features and watch stuff on Plex like they don't even have a tv
subscription. Except in this case they still get the big bill every month and
lovely commercials.

~~~
jonknee
Except sports channels are not over the air and thus won't work with this...

~~~
hendersoon
The Plex DVR works with cable too-- get a HDHomerun Prime and slot in a
cablecard.

Of course some cableTV providers (Time-Warner/Spectrum in particular) mark
every program with CCI 0x02 "copy-once" DRM, and very few DVRs other than TiVo
and Windows Media Center (RIP) allow you to record that due to standard cable
company evil.

~~~
WorldMaker
At this point you are more likely to get a response of "What's a cablecard?"
or "We don't support those anymore, we have our own great DVRs now" if you ask
for one from a cable company.

(I heard that's part of why Microsoft dropped CableCard support in Windows 10
because the cable companies decided to not-so-quietly kill it and have made it
almost impossible to get them if you don't already have one and have been
slowly dropping support even for those that already have them.)

~~~
ascagnel_
The cable companies can't kill it (the FCC requires them to be made
available), and Tivos are still somewhat popular. It's total install base is
also likely small enough that it's not worth the effort to kill it.

~~~
WorldMaker
The FCC hasn't really enforced it well, and under the current administration
isn't likely to enforce it at all. As I said, it's easy enough for them to
play dumb and act like such cards don't exist and Tivo is an inferior option
to their overpriced, nowadays "mandatory" DVR options. Who is going to take
them to court for playing dumb?

------
apozem
This is a great idea and an exciting feature, but I wish it came to a better
product. I've run into endless bugs with Chromecast streaming and library
management with Plex.

When I google solutions to these problems, I find threads up to two years old
and end with Plex staff 1) not responding, or 2) saying, "We'll fix it
eventually." And after two years they haven't!

That's not even counting how buggy or nonfunctional most channels are.

So glad I never bought the Plex Pass- wouldn't be right to give these people
any more money when their product is so unreliable.

~~~
elbrian
It seems a lot of people in this thread are blaming Plex for their own low-
quality hardware and/or lack of knowledge.

I have a >10tb collection in Plex and stream to a Nexus Player (among many
other devices, some over WAN) with zero issues. The biggest "issue" I've ever
faced is that sometimes I need to lower my playback quality to 720p when I'm
streaming over WiFi.

So glad I bought the lifetime Plex pass- I am happy to support the folks who
made such a reliable and lovely product.

Generally speaking, if you are having issues with a product that is almost
universally beloved by tens of thousands of paying customers, the issue is
most likely on your end.

edit: The downvoters are going wild in this thread. Anyone who advocates Plex
is being buried. For a moment I thought I was back on reddit!

~~~
squeaky-clean
> It seems a lot of people in this thread are blaming Plex for their own low-
> quality hardware and/or lack of knowledge.

Plex crashes constantly on my Roku. (This may no longer be true, as I haven't
touched it in a year because it crashes so much). That's not low quality
hardware, it's bad app.

I expect a dedicated hardware device for streaming videos that can stream
Netflix, Hulu, Sling, etc, to be able to stream Plex.

~~~
elbrian
>Plex crashes constantly on my Roku. (This may no longer be true, as I haven't
touched it in a year because it crashes so much). That's not low quality
hardware, it's bad app.

The crash could very well be caused by some kind of incompatibility or issue
with your server.

I'm sure that you've combed through your event logs on the server to verify
this isn't the case, though.

>I expect a dedicated hardware device for streaming videos that can stream
Netflix, Hulu, Sling, etc, to be able to stream Plex.

Why would you expect Plex, which plays back content served up by an
environment which you control and maintain, to have similar compatibility as
Netflix or Hulu, which plays back content served up by a multi-million dollar
CDN infrastructure?

That's like saying "I expect my self-hosted WordPress blog to have the same
level of reliability and usability as CNN.com" \-- it's unreasonable to put
the burden on WordPress/Plex when you are the one who manages the server that
the content is served from.

Again: it seems to me that the issue is on your end, and not Plex's, because
there are thousands of people who have no issues running Plex with Roku.

------
nodesocket
I just cancelled my TV service from Comcast Xfinity and switched to Google
Chromecast Ultra and YouTube TV[1]. So far so good, only missing History and
Discovery channels so far. Saved $50 a month.

[1] [https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/](https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/)

------
mosburger
I've been using an eyeTV on an old MacBook Pro for this functionality but the
support for it has gotten terrible since it was sold by Elgato to a Geniatech.
I'll have to check this out - too bad it's not compatible w/ the tuner I
already have.

------
AdmiralAsshat
The original title "#$%@ it! We’ll do it live!" is a reference to Bill
O'Reilly:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_HyZ5aW76c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_HyZ5aW76c)

~~~
publicfig
While I should clarify that I don't care in the slightest, I did find it
interesting that they decided to use a Bill O'Reilly quote to title the post,
given all of the controversy around him lately. Not that I think it is
offensive, I just think it's interesting to consider which companies would do
that and which ones wouldn't

~~~
nathan_f77
I no longer associate this with Bill O'Reilly, and I even forgot that it was
something he said. It just feels like a very common expression now.

------
avelis
This reminds me of Aereo TV. If Aereo TV would have went DVR only though. I
wonder if they could have attempted to stay around from their legal issues.

~~~
joshboles
I thought Aereo TV did have DVR.

I believe the main difference between them was that Aereo "hosted" the
antenna's themselves and sold you the stream, whereas Plex is a "set up
yourself" service.

------
gregmac
As first a MythTV, then SageTV and now NetFlix+Plex user, I have found the
evolution of this tech both fascinating and frustrating.

I started a dozen or so years ago with MythTV and a Hauppauge tuner card, in
an old PC directly connected to the (one) TV, and using an IR remote to
control it. Over time I added another dual tuner card, and had both cable and
OTA channels. MythTV had commercial skipping built in, and as I watched
basically 100% recorded content, this was the beginning of me never seeing
commercials.

Eventually I moved into a bigger house and got married, and we had two TVs. I
didn't have a space PC, nor did I want to have an entire PC dedicated to being
a client -- and at least at the time, using multiple MythTV clients with a
single server was a bit clunky. After seeing the nice setup at a friend's, I
jumped to SageTV and started using their media extender boxes (HD300)[1]. As a
SageTV client they were better in every way: cheaper, less power, zero
maintenance.

The HD300 remote even had programmable "TV power" and volume buttons, so since
that was the only device connected it was also the only remote I needed. This
feature has never been matched, and since moving away from SageTV I've always
had either two remotes or had to program a Logitech Harmony remote.

I even moved the SageTV server PC to a utility room, disconnecting it from the
TV and replaced it with an HD300.

SageTV still supported my tuner cards, and though not built-in, there were
plugins to do commercial skipping. At some point in there I had also switched
to a SiliconDust tuner to get digital channels.

Then, Google bought SageTV [2] and basically killed the core product.

It was around the same time my cable company was encrypting the last of all
their digital channels (so my tuner cards were not usable anymore) and I was
considering Netflix, so I started looking for a device to replace the HD300
that could still get SageTV content, but also Netflix, YouTube and whatever
else.

I went through a bunch of sub-par solutions: BluRay player, Roku box, some
other (pre-Android) streaming box and a Chromecast. I even resorted to low-
power mini-ITX PC running Windows -- but the only way to get NetFlix was to
use a keyboard and mouse. The Chromecast came close, but it was annoying to
_have_ to use a phone/laptop to view anything.

Everything just felt like it was getting worse and worse from my old SageTV
setup. SageTV couldn't handle NetFlix, and even the SageTV YouTube app broke
because YouTube's old API was finally discontinued.

We moved again, and had a child (and our TV viewing went down considerably),
so really just use a single TV now. I eventually settled on using an Nvidia
Shield (running AndroidTV), and it's better in basically every way except for
OTA/cable/DVR stuff -- and so we entirely dropped that. I stuck the Chromecast
on the other TV that we just use for the treadmill and can live with that.

There's a certain irony here. There's a lot more available on Digital OTA now
(getting around encrypted digital cable), and now the current software that
runs on modern hardware is able to do Live TV and DVR again... but is it
relevant?

For one, I've spent 12 years without commercials, so without the automatic
commercial skip even the DVR isn't that interesting to me. Secondly, I've
replaced all my old media sources and/or stopped caring about the ones I
couldn't replace.

It seems to me that DVR software, the client hardware and online media
software/services have all had their own peaks and valleys over the years, and
they've never all peaked at the same time.

The combination of HD300-style client hardware, with AndroidTV's online
content apps, SageTV's LiveTV/DVR/commercial skipping, and the unencrypted
digital cable of ~2010 would be my ideal -- I just don't ever see it happening
ever again.

[1] [http://www.geektonic.com/2010/08/sagetv-hd300-hd-theater-
gee...](http://www.geektonic.com/2010/08/sagetv-hd300-hd-theater-
geektonic.html) [2]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=google+buys+sagetv&tbm=nws](https://www.google.com/search?q=google+buys+sagetv&tbm=nws)

------
sergiotapia
Does anyone know where I can find a list of what channels I would be able to
get? Is it dependent on what state you're in?

~~~
rory096
It works with a TV tuner, so it's dependent on the channels broadcasting in
your area. You can use TVFool[0] to see estimated channel strength in your
specific location.

[0]
[http://tvfool.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29](http://tvfool.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29)

~~~
sergiotapia
Thank you

------
KiDD
I was considering PlexPass yesterday and today I am definitely getting
lifetime membership...

------
josep2
I wish it had support for Tablo!

------
bubbabojangles
I've been using a Ceton Infinitv tuner with WMC and ServerWMC for the last 5
years. I use Kodi as a PVR interface and my interface for TV shows/ Movies on
my file server. I don't see any advantage to Plex, you need to pay for the
service and it's a PIA to setup and configure. Once configured, don't plan on
using the computer you setup the Media server on as it is always busy/ bogged
down scanning files and transcoding video.

~~~
mikewhy
> you need to pay for the service

No, you don't. Source: I've had an account for years and am not paying
anything.

> it's a PIA to setup and configure.

You add folders to a TV and Movies collection once. With Kodi, you're doing it
N times, where N is the number of Kodi installs in your house.

> Once configured, don't plan on using the computer you setup the Media server
> on as it is always busy/ bogged down scanning files and transcoding video

As others have stated, this is not the case. My Plex server is an old Core2Duo
MacBook Pro that also runs virtual machines.

~~~
bubbabojangles
>No, you don't. Source: I've had an account for years and am not paying
anything.

From [https://www.plex.tv/blog/well-do-it-
live/](https://www.plex.tv/blog/well-do-it-live/) Remember, Plex Live TV and
DVR is a Plex Pass only feature, and is immediately available for Plex Pass
users. You can find out more info about Plex Live TV and DVR here as well.

>You add folders to a TV and Movies collection once. With Kodi, you're doing
it N times, where N is the number of Kodi installs in your house.

Never had any success in Plex detecting all my content properly. It's a luck
of the draw if you want your content tagged appropriately. I use a MySQL
database to store my media library, all I need to do is point Kodi in that
direction and everything is synchronized.

> As others have stated, this is not the case. My Plex server is an old
> Core2Duo MacBook Pro that also runs virtual machines.

You all must have a small media library

~~~
mikewhy
> Remember, Plex Live TV and DVR is a Plex Pass only feature

Apologies, but it didn't seem like you were talking about that single feature
when you said "you need to pay for the service".

> all I need to do is point Kodi in that direction

Which is great, but again, with Plex you don't even need to point. It just
finds the server on the network.

> Never had any success in Plex detecting all my content properly

That's definitely annoying. But I built a Plex Channel for my downloads, and
it names files according to what Plex expects.

> You all must have a small media library

~4TB of networked storage, but yeah, maybe that's small?

