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Live TV on Plex

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Re: Live TV on Plex

#71

Post by elbrian »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #68
elbrian wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Ple…

>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.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#72

Post by lukewink »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #68
elbrian wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Ple…

For what it's worth, I use Plex exclusively on the Roku, and I've never seen a crash before.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#73

Post by iaw »

lukewink wrote: post #72
squeaky-clean wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Ple…

For what it's worth, I use Plex exclusively on the Roku, and I've never seen a crash before.

I've had various issues with Plex on my two Roku devices. It's always been my fault though.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#74

Post by willglynn »

bonzini wrote: post #64
willglynn wrote: post #32

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 coh…

How does Plex compare with Kodi?

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.)

Re: Live TV on Plex

#75

Post by 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.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#76

Post by mikewhy »

bubbabojangles wrote: post #58
mikewhy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

>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/ 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…

> 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?

Re: Live TV on Plex

#77

Post by WorldMaker »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #38
WorldMaker wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 slo…

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.

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?

Re: Live TV on Plex

#78

Post by bubblethink »

apozem wrote: post #44

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…

I was kind of excited to try out the Plex Cloud feature (paid) that they rolled out recently, where they host plex in the cloud for you. It has been riddled with problems, and wouldn't really pass beta in standard parlance. It seems like the Plex Cloud is quite literally that. Instead of adapting Plex to work as a service, they just throw the standard plex server in a really weak VM.

Re: Live TV on Plex

#80

Post by joshuata »

bonzini wrote: post #64
willglynn wrote: post #32

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 coh…

How does Plex compare with Kodi?

It is important that Plex comes in two parts: the server and the player.

I would absolutely recommend Plex Media Server as a backend. It is very powerful and has great support by the community (see PlexPy). It makes it very easy to store all my media on my home NAS and watch it from any device, even outside of my house. There isn't really anything like this for Kodi that I have found.

For frontends, Plex Media Player is alright but you can also use Kodi with the Plex plugin. This is especially useful since there are no linux builds of Plex Media Player available. I don't really have a preference for one or the other.

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