Live TV on Plex • Hacker News Board

Re: Live TV on Plex

#21

Post by hendersoon » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #3

Fogest wrote: post #2

>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.

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

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.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#22

Post by hendersoon » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #19

hendersoon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the addition of liveTV trick-play essentially makes Plex a full-featured DVR. And since you can buy a reasonably priced lifetime subscription, it's a much better deal than competitors like TabloTV or TiVo.

A live DVR for a handful of broadcast networks... So it's nothing like an actual DVR like TiVo.

As I posted elsewhere, it works with cable TV too, if you get a HDHomerun Prime with a cablecard, but with a bunch of caveats due to enforced DRM.

Also Plex DVR is a true DVR-- it will actually record those programs to disk, not just watch them live with trick play. It couldn't do live TV before, that's what was just added.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#23

Post by Fogest » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

colek42 wrote: post #6

Fogest wrote: post #2

>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.

I don't think a cable subscriber is the intended customer here. Most of the cable providers encrypt everything now. I think this is more aimed at OTA.

From my understanding it can work with cable subscribers using the right box

Re: Live TV on Plex

#24

Post by hendersoon » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 3:45 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #20

hendersoon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the addition of liveTV trick-play essentially makes Plex a full-featured DVR. And since you can buy a reasonably priced lifetime subscription, it's a much better deal than competitors like TabloTV or TiVo.

TiVo is clearly the major competition here. TiVo has really good UI engineers and pretty good hardware, but their subscription prices are relatively high. In open source land, MythTV already does everything better except UI and install/setup. Those are very large exceptions to random consumers.

Yes, and there's also Kodi with its various PVR plugins, which is actually a pretty great and completely customizable UI. But that's a bit of a pain to configure too.

Plex offers everything in a single package, with two distinct advantages. First, it's client/server and will stream your programs anywhere over the internet. And second, it has great fully supported apps for every platform under the sun-- and if you don't like the apps its web UI is fabulous too! But, not open-source or free.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#25

Post by stinkytaco » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 3:45 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #17

rockdiesel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP is not talking about dedicated sports channels. They are talking about OTA channels that play sporting events. ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox all broadcast live sporting events of some sort.

OP said it was for people who "find it hard to get away from TV for reasons like the live channels (sports)"... To me that doesn't mean the free over the air channels that occasionally show sports. But hey, that's me.

Sports is probably the only reason I bothered to mount an OTA antenna in my attic. I don't get cable or satellite, nor do I watch any TV shows, but the quality of HD sports with an OTA antenna is great, and it's live.

I can't imagine I'm the only one. Sports is pretty much the only thing I can't get from iTunes or streaming.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#26

Post by jayrox » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

bubbabojangles wrote: post #18

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 transcodin…

> 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.

This part is incorrect. Plex only needs to transcode at the time the media is being played and really only scans when changes to the media directory are detected and/or on a schedule you define.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#27

Post by hendersoon » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

bubbabojangles wrote: post #18

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 transcodin…

Windows Media Center is a discontinued product. Best case scenario, it'll be supported until 2023 when Windows 8.1 ends extended support. But I'd be pretty surprised if MS is still sending guide data that long. More likely, one day you'll turn it on and discover it doesn't work any more.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#28

Post by elbrian » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

bubbabojangles wrote: post #18

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 transcodin…

>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.

This is such a bogus statement. The impact that Plex has on your computer is directly tied to the processing power of said computer.

I run Plex with a >10tb media collection on my >2 year old desktop, and I am able to play games such as PUBG, DayZ, Arma 3, Overwatch, etc with absolutely no hindrance.

This is my build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/QVKMrH

edit: I'd also argue that Plex has a vastly superior interface, as well as metadata handling, compared to Kodi. Kodi is basically "the poor man's Plex."

Re: Live TV on Plex

#29

Post by jpollock » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

colek42 wrote: post #6

Fogest wrote: post #2

>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.

I don't think a cable subscriber is the intended customer here. Most of the cable providers encrypt everything now. I think this is more aimed at OTA.

It will work with an HDHomeRun Prime[1], a cableCard tuner[2]. So, as long as your cable company supports cableCard, then you should be able to get it to work.

[1] https://www.plex.tv/features/live-tv-dvr/

[2] https://www.silicondust.com/product/hdhomerun-prime/

Re: Live TV on Plex

#30

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

hendersoon wrote: post #21

jonknee wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.)