HDHomerun Freeview

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

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Nottingham
Anyone using one?

Thoughts?

Anyone able to comment on the Plex integration?

Contemplating getiing a Quad for the house and running through Plex.

How well does it integrate with Plex regarding recording to your NAS?

Many thanks.
 
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I'm still testing, so thoughts not fully formed yet.
  • It's good for streaming live TV to mobile devices but for TVs I'd rather plug an aerial in.
  • Emby looks like it'll be a much better UI than Plex (I'm still testing this).
  • A subscription for PVR will be required (around £4/month for Emby)
  • Native EPG with Plex & Emby are garbage, I'm currently testing Schedules Direct which seems to be brilliant but another subscription charge of around £2/month.
Will post more as I get to grips with it all, and looking forward to yours and others shared experience. :)
 
String said:
I'm still testing, so thoughts not fully formed yet.
  • It's good for streaming live TV to mobile devices but for TVs I'd rather plug an aerial in.
  • Emby looks like it'll be a much better UI than Plex (I'm still testing this).
  • A subscription for PVR will be required (around £4/month for Emby)
  • Native EPG with Plex & Emby are garbage, I'm currently testing Schedules Direct which seems to be brilliant but another subscription charge of around £2/month.
Will post more as I get to grips with it all, and looking forward to yours and others shared experience. :)
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In case anyone else reads this, my experiences were similar to yours.

Switched from Plex to Emby. Live TV EPG has been terrible for months since the provider was changed and the Schedules Direct EPG doesn't integrate properly. Not to mention the issues with having to update the EPG manually and Live TV playback issues.

Emby works perfectly with the Schedules Direct EPG (full 14 days) and the interface is much nicer with more configuration options, all main items on once page with themes etc. The is EPG quick and easy to use in a web browser. The Plex EPG resets to the current date and time when close an info panel and then you have to scroll again to the day you were viewing hoping the EPG doesn't crash.

Plex clients were tested on Shield TV, Windows PC and Android devices. Android phone was the most stable but I don't want to watch everything on a phone display.
 
Yes, just like Plex, it has apps for mobile devices, an application for a Windows HTPC and can be used in a web browser. The mobile apps are able to download \ sync content, watch live tv and schedule recordings etc.

Plex does all of the above but the live TV is unstable to the point where we started to download UK TV shows instead of taking a chance on a tuner error or bad EPG data missing a recording.

The old Plex Home Theatre app was really good and replaced by OpenPHT when Plex stopped supporting it. OpenPHT had no Live TV support so moved to the new PHT app which is difficult to navigate, unstable, missing features etc.

I've been using Emby for around a month and don't think I'll go back to Plex soon (have lifetime sub). Since setting up Emby I haven't had to go back in to server settings once.
 
Gimpymoo said:
Thanks for the info. Good to know either way.

Can I ask what was the main gripe?

What was the quality like?
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Main gripes:

  • The quality of recording - it had annoying judder on my Samsung TV during playback.
  • The smart TV apps are really cumbersome, Plex is garbage although Emby was much better.
  • Streaming Live TV to a TV that was connected by network cable to the same router provided buffer/judder/pause etc..
  • It was going to cost around £10/month for subs to Emby & EPG provider - a little more and I could have a Sky Q package!

I'm just about to buy a Humax BT DTR-T2100 box and try that out.
 
Since Plex changed its EPG provider it has become incredibly frustrating as episode data is missing or just wrong all the time.

They are slowly fixing things, well until last week when they broke it again but the issue seems to be that the new provider is just poor (and probably cheaper hence the change).

I use it as a recorder only, live tv is just cumbersome and while the UI has improved it's got nothing on a youview or sky box. Changing channels is pretty slow as well so you cant channel hop.

The Hdhomerun app is pretty poor as well tbh and their DVR service costs either £30 or £40 a year.

Another issue with UK TV is that hardly any devices support the HD channels properly. The only device I've found that can play them is the shield as it has a built deinterlacer, the new fire tv 4k stick was also supposed to have it but it has a bug so crashes on UK TV HD channels every time. Older Amazon devices work but the quality isn't great because of the interlaced content.
 
I had all problems with plex and Emby as above and swapped to a program called channels app and it’s worked flawlessly has and Android, apple and windows app, really intuitive and well supported, would highly recommend any one using hdhomerun check this out

Fergin
 
Fergin said:
I had all problems with plex and Emby as above and swapped to a program called channels app and it’s worked flawlessly has and Android, apple and windows app, really intuitive and well supported, would highly recommend any one using hdhomerun check this out

Fergin
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I've heard a lot of good things about channels as a DVR but it seems rather expensive at $8 a month or $80 a year for what is essentially freeview.
 
Fergin said:
I had all problems with plex and Emby as above and swapped to a program called channels app and it’s worked flawlessly has and Android, apple and windows app, really intuitive and well supported, would highly recommend any one using hdhomerun check this out

Fergin
Click to expand...

Can it run through Plex or LG WebOS or Roku? I am trying to find a solution for humping Freeview around the house via IP to TV's.
 
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the underlying xmltv epg feed seems to be free, equally the freetime one (is that part of the broadcast stream?), so I wouldn't be signing up for a monthly charge,
rather put the money into, say, windows (nuc type) hardware wher you can access an open/free epg system eg https://sichbopvr.com/

String has, it appears rejected hdhomerun, but from his comment not sure if the BT humax pvr is acceptable either ?
 
jpaul said:
rather put the money into, say, windows (nuc type) hardware wher you can access an open/free epg system
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Oooh.. I am down with that.

Could that then feed into Plex?

I want a unified system in the house that ALL devices (TV's and computers) can access thus recordings are shared.
 
jpaul said:
why then ? the (freetime)epg/user interface/live are not excellent versus usb tuners ecosysytem ?
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It offers nothing over my LG TV except recording multiple channels at once. I find my TV more convenient than the box, particularly on demand and apps - examples being Chromecasting BT Sport to the TV via the app, pressing the Netflix or Amazon button on the TV remote as opposed to faffing around the Youview menu to find them.

If I could move recordings from the BT Box to tablet etc. then it would have been useful.
 
Gimpymoo said:
Oooh.. I am down with that.

Could that then feed into Plex?

I want a unified system in the house that ALL devices (TV's and computers) can access thus recordings are shared.
Click to expand...

I've read some of the guys on the Plex forum have had success with NextPVR if you can find a decent freeview EPG source, think they just add the recording folder to their Plex library so they can watch via Plex when it has finished recording.

I see Plex have finally fixed the issue where you couldn't fast forward / rewind an in progress recording without messing up the timeline so thats a positive step, if they could just get their EPG source sorted then it would suit my needs as a DVR (not so much for Live TV though but I rarely watch anything live).
 
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