Playing with Plex DVR

Chat with other TGB members about whatever is on your mind.
Ed 

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#21

Post by Ed  » Mon May 25, 2020 2:09 am

I've been using Plex for 7 years now, 2 for also as a DVR. For all its faults, I found Plex is the slower feature/fix rollout but more stable (for what it's worth) and user intuitive of the two, between Emby's throwing spaghetti at the wall approach. Emby was more open to customization and 'glam' (Title Artwork, Motion Backdrops), but that came at apparent sacrificed stability.

Where Plex really shines over all others is transcoding and library sharing and broad device compatibility.

I don't use commercial skip. Even in WMC, I just skipped them manually.

adam1991

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#22

Post by adam1991 » Wed May 27, 2020 2:02 pm

So yeah, Plex is using Rovi. Yuk. Gary, are you interested in another project? I guess I could replace WMC with Plex and run it on the same Win7 hardware; that would let me continue to use EPG123. But if it's easy enough, I'd love to see EPG123 for my Intel Synology NAS. If I can get an XMLTV file, Plex will happily use it.

Space

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#23

Post by Space » Wed May 27, 2020 3:24 pm

Schedules Direct data can only be used with non-commercial software (unless an exception is made for once commercial software that is defunct).

Plex is not on the approved list, so anything Gary would make could not use Schedules Direct data.

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#24

Post by jachin99 » Wed May 27, 2020 3:44 pm

I think Emby gets around this by importing a xmltv file rather than using SD directly. If plex supports xmltv then its the same concept.

Space

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#25

Post by Space » Wed May 27, 2020 5:02 pm

I'm pretty sure that is not allowed by the subscription agreement and jeopardizes the contract Schedules Direct has with Gracenote.

The purpose of Schedules Direct is to support FREE applications, not commercial ones.

adam1991

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#26

Post by adam1991 » Wed May 27, 2020 6:29 pm

yeah, that's a sticky wicket, isn't it.

It's difficult to plan for situations like Plex, where buying a lifetime Plex Pass gives you access to DVR plus a whole bunch of other things. You're not buying DVR per se.

So even keeping my Windows box alive just to run EPG123 and create an XMLTV file is in limbo.

But wait: we all bought, paid for, a copy of Windows 7. It happened to include WMC, and many of us happen to use it. And you couldn't get WMC *without* paying for a copy of Win7.

By your reasoning, Space, this whole EPG123 for WMC is a blatant violation of the SD subscription agreement and should be stopped immediately. In fact, I'm all in for that. Just stop it all right now, pull the software, and SD should pull approval for EPG123 right away, as its intended purpose from the beginning was to serve guide data to people who use paid DVR software.

I will contact SD right now about this.

Oh, wait a minute:
2. RESTRICTIONS ON USE.
Without limiting the generality of Section 1, You shall not, without Company's prior written consent, which consent may be granted or denied in Company's sole discretion, (i) redistribute or republish Licensed Data in any media now known or hereafter developed, in original or in modified form (including, without limitation, translations, changes in formatting, alterations to meta-data content, or variations in the arrangement of Licensed Data); (ii) assign, rent, lease, grant a security interest in, re-license, sublicense, or otherwise transfer any rights to Licensed Data; (iii) remove or alter any trademark, logo, copyright or other proprietary notice, legend, symbol or label contained in Licensed Data; (iv) publish Licensed Data or its derivative on a website or any other server connected to the Internet; (v) access Licensed Data via software which is not included in the approved software list available at http://www.schedulesdirect.org/approvedsoftware, which list may be updated by Company from time to time in Company's sole discretion ("Approved Software List"); (vi) make or archive copies of Licensed Data; and (vii) engage in any act that, directly or indirectly, would jeopardize, limit, or interfere in any manner with the operation of Company's Licensed Data service.

3. DELIVERY.
(a) Software. Company or Supplier shall deliver Licensed Data to You via one of the open source or "freeware" client-side software products included on the Approved Software List. Any attempt to access Licensed Data via software not included on the Approved Software List will constitute a breach of this Agreement. In the event such a breach occurs, Company has the right to cancel Your User Account (defined below) and to terminate this Agreement immediately, with no further liability or obligation to You. Company's approval of a software product for use with Licensed Data does not (i) constitute an endorsement of the software; (ii) guarantee that the software product will work with Licensed Data or be error-free; (iii) guarantee the software's reliability or safety in any way; or (iv) grant or purport to grant You any right or license in the software. In no event shall Company be liable to You in any way, including any general, special, incidental, consequential or punitive damages or lost-profit damages, arising out of Your use of a software product included on the Approved Software List.

(b) Licensed Data. Company or Supplier may at any time and in its sole discretion change the formatting of Licensed Data (including, without limitation, meta-data) for any reason, including, without limitation, technical requirements.g

(c) Compliance and Costs. You acknowledge and agree that, while accessing Licensed Data, You are subject to and shall comply with all applicable laws, rules, and regulations, and any additional posted guidelines, rules, terms, and conditions, including, without limitation, any guidelines, rules, terms, and conditions imposed by applicable third parties, such as Internet access providers. You are solely responsible for any broadband, telephone line or any other connection charges You may incur when connecting to Company's services.
Where does it say that:
Schedules Direct data can only be used with non-commercial software
?????

Please look at the user agreement and quote, verbatim, the portion that says what you claim it does.

I'll wait.

adam1991

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#27

Post by adam1991 » Wed May 27, 2020 6:37 pm

Space wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:02 pm I'm pretty sure that is not allowed by the subscription agreement and jeopardizes the contract Schedules Direct has with Gracenote.

The purpose of Schedules Direct is to support FREE applications, not commercial ones.
you misread, in the worst way.

The purpose of SD is to support FREE and OPEN SOURCE applications used to scrape its data. EPG123, for example, cannot be payware of any kind.

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garyan2

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#28

Post by garyan2 » Wed May 27, 2020 6:49 pm

Schedules Direct got a specific exception for WMC from Gracenote since it is no longer supported and can be considered abandonware.

Both emby and Plex can accept XMLTV files. When Plex was using Gracenote as a source, I ensured the XMLTV generated by EPG123 would work with them... they had a lot of problems in this area but I found a work around for the big ones. Once Plex moved over to Rovi, I no longer entertained the idea of doing more for them.

Emby currently will also support Schedules Direct natively, but that was only supposed to be available for a limited time (now going on 18 months?) to allow the then current users to transition over to the Emby Guide which is provided by Gracenote. Their implementation of the Gracenote data is quite good and there would be no real reason to have EPG123 provide an XMLTV file. The only benefit to using an EPG123 XMLTV file for emby would be better station logos... I don't think the s/e customization is needed within emby.

Personally, I don't think there is a problem with using the EPG123 XMLTV file with emby since Gracenote is already getting their money through your Premiere membership. But I certainly appreciate Schedules Direct's stance of making it black and white that any product that charges money to use it, and/or is not opensource, is not allowed. I trust their interpretation and understanding of their own contract with Gracenote.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

adam1991

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#29

Post by adam1991 » Wed May 27, 2020 7:26 pm

This is the origin of the confusion, IMHO:
1. GRANT OF PERMISSION.
Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Company hereby agrees to permit You, on a non-exclusive, revocable, non-transferable, limited basis, to access and to use Licensed Data under the terms of this Agreement, provided that such access and use of Licensed Data are solely (i) for Your personal use and for non-commercial purposes; (ii) achieved using software products included on the Approved Software List (defined below); and (iii) in accordance with the restrictions and limitations set forth in this Agreement. This Agreement does not include or extend to any commercial entity's retail PVR, DVR, IPG, EPG, Widget, or software application that has been specifically created to use such data.
The first bolded section sets the tone: this system as we here use it is not meant to be used by, say, Tablo to scrape data and deliver it on a commercial basis to its DVR customers. No question.

The second bolded section seems to be clear; should SD have an agreement with Tablo (for example), it is not THIS agreement. THIS agreement does not cover any such contract with a commercial entity that sells a DVR solution. But it's not as clear as it could be.

Anyway, I'm trying to get clarity on just what SD means, and what they want/expect from its personal end users like us (as opposed to commercial entities, which are not part of this discussion).

adam1991

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#30

Post by adam1991 » Wed May 27, 2020 10:21 pm

So, straight from the horse's mouth:
The bottom line is they (Gracenote) don't want us (SD) competing
with their primary B2B business.
and THAT makes perfect sense. If we're not going to use a current product that's a customer or potential $$$ customer of Gracenote, well, enjoy the data. But otherwise, fuhgeddaboutit.

Me, I refuse to be the guy who takes advantage of a situation and burns it to the ground and screws it up for everyone. So on that basis alone, I won't grab SD data and use it in Plex (or any other current for-pay setup).

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#31

Post by Space » Thu May 28, 2020 12:59 am

Schedules Direct is a non-profit who's purpose is to provide guide data to freeware/open-source programs.

Originally, Gracenote provided free guide data to these programs through their own API, but due to misuse by commercial programs, they chose to shutter the service rather than police it.

So a bunch of people got together and created Schedules Direct (SD), a service to replace that free API that once existed. However, they now needed to pay Gracenote for the data (which is mostly why there is a yearly fee). The contract that SD has with Gracenote indicates that only freeware applications can use the data (this does not just mean the software that directly gets the data through the SD API, but also the ultimate end product that uses the data). They also have to police their service to make sure it is not being using by any third party that is making a profit off of the low-cost data subscription (like making DVR software that you have to pay for, but then having to get your guide data separately from SD). Commercial software makers that wants to use Gracenote data should contact them so that a contract can be established directly between the two parties.

If there is already a contract between Gracenote and a software maker, and you pay that software maker for guide service (which may be provided as part of a package that also include DVR service, etc) then I suppose it is a grey area as to if you are allowed to use Gracenote data through SD as well.

adam1991

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#32

Post by adam1991 » Thu May 28, 2020 2:09 am

If I buy/subscribe to a DVR that has a contract with Gracenote, but I really wanted to get the data through SD instead (and was able to), I honestly think that Gracenote would be OK with that if SD asked.

I would, however, make zero assumptions.

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#33

Post by jachin99 » Sun May 31, 2020 2:51 am

Emby just pushed a server update with tv guide fixea

adam1991

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#34

Post by adam1991 » Sun May 31, 2020 1:31 pm

Does Emby use Rovi? Because the Plex people are complaining about data. Apparently a server burped and screwed things up for a few days.

Surprise, surprise.

jachin99

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#35

Post by jachin99 » Sun May 31, 2020 4:06 pm

I'm pretty sure they use gracenote. The guide data with emby has been reliable for me minus anything on the discovery channel. I think discovery throws things off because all of the shows I record have a corresponding special episode, and discovery labels each of these episodes a unique season number so every show is its own season. I never really investigated the issue too much because I don't actually watch those shows very often. I can tell you that I get cast & crew, suggestions for similar shows, and season & episode numbers.

adam1991

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#36

Post by adam1991 » Sun Jul 19, 2020 11:57 pm

OK, an update. I went back to Plex and have been recording a couple of things. Old Ice Road Trucker shows (on a subchannel full of 5 minute commercial breaks), and for the last couple of weeks Tough As Nails on CBS.

First off, about a month ago the Rovi data went belly up and every episode had a generic description. At least I'm fully briefed on the hot mess that is Rovi. But they did fix it as of a couple days ago.

Anyway, regarding commercial skip: there is none on IRT. But you have to expect that from a cheesy subchannel. CBS, though--comskip has nailed it. Nailed it. Yeah, Plex is cutting out the commercials instead of skipping--but that doesn't matter. I sit down to a 42 minute show, every time.

I'm impressed with comskip.

adam1991

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#37

Post by adam1991 » Sun Jan 24, 2021 5:39 pm

I thought I'd re-visit this. NOTE: I have Plex server running on my Synology NAS for the purposes of the DVR function.

I had plenty of time to consider things due to the late TV season start. During that time Plex fixed some of their major items, so I just fired it up again and tried recording some things. And it worked, for my limited purposes.

I kept the WMC box going while I then added the slow season start primetime stuff to Plex--as a parallel test. In the end, given my limited DVR use anymore (no cable, just OTA, doing only new primetime stuff, no sports or news or gawdawful "talk" shows), I've found Plex to be...perfectly acceptable, maybe more. Not what WMC is, but easily useful for my DVR needs today.

And as of December 31, Plex moved back to Gracenote guide data and off of Rovi. That was a huge stumbling block in my mind, now resolved.

One thing that caught my eye: commercial detection is 99.99% dead perfect. It's better even than the vaunted ReplayTV. I can think of only one time where it got caught up by one of those two minute long medical infomercials. Other than that, it's been right on--even with CBS, which with ShowAnalyzer on WMC needed its own tweaked setup to be acceptable. And I can even play with comskip and customize it, if ever it comes to that.

With the accuracy of Comskip detection, plus now Plex skips commercials instead of deleting them, I'm good. I would like AUTO skipping of commercials, though, without my having to push the OK button on the remote. One can dream. (I would also like a good and easy way to copy/move the shows, with commercials deleted, out of the DVR library and into the TV shows library for permanent, commercial-free storage. I'm on a mission.)

Again, don't mistake this for my saying Plex DVR is perfect. It isn't. But I already use Plex for other things; plus, life is full of compromises, and Plex's DVR seems to be an acceptable one in my situation. YMMV.

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