Plex Hits TiVo Next Week

tivo-plex

By way of a TiVo media blast and discussions I’ve had with Plex representatives, we now know the rumors are true. Plex lands on TiVo Roamio, Premiere, and Mini hardware next week! And, fortunately, the Plex experience is not buried within the Opera TV Store, residing alongside Spotify and an also soon-to-be released iHeartRadio under Music & Photos. Although, in actuality, most folks will probably utilize the multi-talented Plex as a video player – reinforcing TiVo’s need to rethink how they present and we access apps.

Plex on TiVo is a custom built affair, similar in presentation to their other Smart TV apps and utilizing the Opera SDK. At launch, streaming will max out at 720p – but 1080p is on the roadmap. However, unlike most Plex “Smart TV” implementations and given their partnership with TiVo, a PlexPass subscription will not be required. Unsurprisingly, our Plex libraries will not commingle with TiVo’s unified search and OnePass that encompass both linear television and streaming apps like Netflix. All that remains to be seen is how well Plex performs. No, it probably won’t be as sprightly as Roku or Amazon Fire TV, but it could be good enough for Input 1. And a big boon as TiVo now courts cord cutters.

57 thoughts on “Plex Hits TiVo Next Week”

  1. I’ve never used Plex, but am very interested in it for putting my video and audio collection on my Tivo Roamio once its rolled out. Any idea if a simple NAS device (1 bay synology) work well with this implemenation (I understand those devices don’t transcode well)? If so, its probably time to move our data in the house to a NAS and away from the PC harddrive model.

  2. Using Plex with Downcast on Mac for podcast functionality that Tivo pulled. Being able to pull them in on Tivo Roamio and Mini will be great.

  3. Without OnePass integration, I don’t see me using this much. I will probably use it occasionally, but will stick to PyTiVo pushes instead.

  4. I have high hopes that it works well. Plex is already a big part of my setup but I do fear that it will run as sluggish and slow as Hulu or YouTube already does. Please impress me again TiVo!

  5. I’ve been using pyTiVo for a long time. I’ve never used plex. I’m curious to see if this will be a better experience or simply just another experience.

  6. “Without OnePass integration, I don’t see me using this much. I will probably use it occasionally, but will stick to PyTiVo pushes instead.”

    I won’t be using it much either, but that’s because I have superior Plex endpoints, and don’t mind switching inputs. (Unless, of course, Plex on TiVo gets very close to the UX I get with my other endpoints, which I don’t remotely expect to happen.) OnePass integration would change the equation for me, as it has with Netflix and Amazon.

    But you’ll be really missing out if you stick with pyTiVo. Plex is far superior in multiple ways. It’s really kickass media serving, from snout to tail…

  7. I have opined several times why Onepass is a non starter for Plex… I will use TiVo Plex a lot and am really looking forward to the Music player component.

    TiVo has allowed its own local integration utilities to get so old and ugly that it was hard to keep using them.

  8. @Chucky

    I use Plex on my Roku so I am already used to using it. My issue is more with the trickplay. I fast forward, rewind, and jump around shows a bunch which I find a pain to do with traditional streaming. If it worked like multi-room streaming, I would be more excited, but I doubt it since Plex doesn’t work like that on the Roku. This is the same reason I never use Netflix or Amazon streaming.

    I would be curious what multiple ways you find it superior. If I feel like watching something via PyTiVo it is usually going to be a binge viewing so I push 5 episodes or so via the web interface on my iPad while watching something else. When I am done, the first if not all the transfers are good to go. I don’t watch on mobile even though I have the Plex app on my android, and my iPad never leaves the house.

  9. @brennok

    Shoot, I would much rather TiVo modernize and add MRS streaming from a local share. If they updated the experience to be similar to modern TiVo to TiVo access and streaming it would be awesome. But they have abandoned the product and frankly the SD screens forced transfers are annoying.

    As for trick play – I use this with my movie library, with no commercials to skip trip play is less of an issue. Yes usability it is very much like Netflix – and they seem to be doing alright.

    Install the Plex server and try it out, it is a real easy install (unlike pytivo) and automatically gets all your metadata and cover art. It is a constant interface for movies, music, photos and even internet videos.

  10. @Bradley

    I think you missed the part where I already have and run a Plex server.

    I doubt very few people watch TV like I do so they aren’t as sensitive to trickplay. Everything I watch I have my hand resting on the fast forward button ready to skip at a moments notice and it gets used constantly. My friends described it once as media ADD. I think it stems from before we had DVRs and I would flip back and forth between multiple shows at once. Now I just watch one show but fast forward any parts I don’t care about seeing. An hour show cut down to about 40 minutes without commercials usually takes me 25-30 minutes. About the only thing I don’t fast forward are comedies or at least in those I don’t fast forward when there is dialogue so those I usually watch via Plex. Everything else though gets pushed to the TiVo.

  11. “I use Plex on my Roku so I am already used to using it.”

    Ah. Well, never mind. Carry on as you were.

    “My issue is more with the trickplay. I fast forward, rewind, and jump around shows a bunch which I find a pain to do with traditional streaming.”

    Ah, again. See, I never have this issue, since my Plex endpoint is a Mac Mini HTPC. Since nothing gets transcoded, it all plays direct from the hard drive, thus making trickplay much more like a TiVo than a Roku. (Plus, you get a much nicer overall UX with the Mac client than with any other endpoint.) I only played with the Roku endpoint for a few days just to try it out, and promptly deleted the app once my curiosity was sated.

    “If I feel like watching something via PyTiVo it is usually going to be a binge viewing so I push 5 episodes”

    Huh. Given my heavy Plex usage, it’s been so long since I’ve used PyTiVo for anything but occasionally reloading stuff I’ve offloaded from my TiVo that I struggle to remember the specifics. But my hazy recollection was that everything but offloaded TiVo MPEG2’s had to be streamed. So, if my hazy recollection is correct, PyTiVo pushes wouldn’t work for the kind of personally ripped DVD/Blu’s and downloaded web video that make up a hefty chunk of my Plex library, to go along with the TiVo offloaded stuff.

    Though, given my caveats, I may obviously be wrong about all that.

    “my iPad never leaves the house”

    That’s what you think. When you’re out, it takes strolls. Sometimes, it even comes over to visit me for coffee. As a result, I know lots about you, brennok…

  12. PyTiVo has never streamed so maybe you are thinking of Streambaby. Pushing works similar to Plex and just trancodes the file into whatever format will play natively on TiVo and then transfers the copy back to the TiVo. The TiVo then treats it like a copy once recording.

  13. Can you “fling” web videos via Plex to the tivo? Porn on the big screen would be much more enjoyable. Hopefully this is a feature.

  14. “PyTiVo has never streamed so maybe you are thinking of Streambaby. Pushing works similar to Plex and just trancodes the file into whatever format will play natively on TiVo and then transfers the copy back to the TiVo.”

    Ah. Now I vaguely remember. I think I even did that a couple of times. Like I said, it’s been a looooong time.

    So you’re willing to trade-off the superb metadata support and overall UX of Plex for the far better trickplay TiVo offers versus non-Mac Plex endpoints, which makes you a somewhat extreme outlier. But I ain’t got no quarrel with the rationale behind your particular use-case-scenario. Carry on, and enjoy.

    (However, I do vaguely wonder why the lack of OnePass integration impacts your decision. It’s a big deal for me, since OnePass would allow me to avoid the anticipated sluggishness and degraded overall UX of TiVo on Plex versus my current endpoint. OnePass integration would even make me willing to deal with the lousy PQ inherent in transcodes for certain material. But OnePass wouldn’t alleviate your trickplay concerns at all…)

  15. This was posted on 5/24. The press release says it will come out on 6/8.

    I’ve looked at several different calendars, and not a single one of them says that “next week” is an appropriate description for the amount of time between those two dates.

  16. You also have no confirmation at all that Cox On Demand is coming to TiVo this summer, nearly five years after it was announced, yet I proclaim it to be so…
    https://zatznotfunny.com/2015-05/tivo-cox-on-demand/

    More factually, the TiVo Mega was expected in Q1, and here we are 2/3rd of the way into Q2…
    http://investor.tivo.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=106292&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1964575

    Then there was the time they briefed media on Roamio OTA and said Lifetime was available but Mini streaming was not. Both turned out to be wrong. Or the time marketing triple confirmed the Mini 2 had the same remote control capabilities as the Mini 1.

    I could go on. Bottom line is my track record generally exceeds TiVo’s official communications. But, the Plex date could remain slippery, as they already missed their initial launch target by a few weeks best I can tell. I am hoping for earlier based on something. But if it does indeed launch June 8th, I’m only off by 24 hours. Which bests most publicly communicated TiVo targets. ;) And if it launches later, well that’s typical TiVo.

  17. “I’ve looked at several different calendars, and not a single one of them says that “next week” is an appropriate description for the amount of time between those two dates.”

    You, sir, obviously did not consult a Mayan calendar.

  18. Is anyone considering the pitfalls of the Plex App becoming available on TiVo Premieres, Roamios and Minis? For instance, is anyone concerned that the contents of our Plex Media Servers will no longer be private, and that there is surely a revenue stream available to TiVo’s sharing of the contents of such servers with the likes of the MPAA, HBO, etcetera?

    “Alert!! Alert!! Alert!! TiVo subscriber Number XXXXXXXXXXXX just watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones in it’s entirety from a file, Game of Thrones – S05E05, hosted on a local Plex Server. Subscriber has no apparent subscription to HBO, and the file appears to be an MKV file with no copyright protection. Subscriber’s name and address available for an additional fee.”

    No concerns?

  19. I assume Plex will launch silo-ed and remain that way for the foreseeable future. Also, I believe TiVo’s EULAs and what not say our usage data is anonymously aggregated. But anything is possible I suppose – definitely an interesting point you raise.

  20. “No concerns?”

    Nah. No concerns, at least at the moment.

    If they’re not going after bittorrent end-users by IP, they’re most certainly not going to go after this. In short, TiVo on Plex is most definitely not going to be the front end of the spear.

    Things could change in a macro way in the future, of course, but we live in the present…

    “Subscriber has no apparent subscription to HBO, and the file appears to be an MKV file with no copyright protection”

    And in a broader sense, how the hell do they know the provenance of that file? I rip my own DVD/Blu’s for my video jukebox. I also rip my TiVo files for my video jukebox. Now, both of those use-cases are de jure illegal under DMCA, but no one has ever been gone after for those use-cases since DMCA was passed, so they’re de facto legal. So, unless a legal regime change occurs, again, how the hell will they be able to tell the provenance of those files?

    Going after bittorrent end-users by IP will almost definitely be the front end of the spear. Then we can all start worrying about TiVo on Plex…

  21. No PLEX channels, but that I remember reading that in an earlier announcement. Channels are supposed to come in a future update (as well as 1080P)

  22. Yeah, it just didn’t seem like anything was 100% confirmed and you’re the first to report getting it, so best to get it straight from the horse’s mouth right?

  23. Sweet! Not sure what this means for broader release timing… that [*] indidcates you’re in a staging/testing environment. So either you’ve been randomly selected to pilot this, you were in a prior beta or test and someone flipped the wrong switch, and/or the app is being sent thru the ringer again for more testing. Also, are Podcaster and Picassa really dead?

  24. Do the 30 second skip and 8 second rewind buttons work on the Plex app? Probably not that big a deal but it would be nice.

  25. Only the Live365 has the [S], it but if I remember correclty Picassa had the [S] for a long, long time on my TiVo. Yes, it seems like Picassa and Podcaster have fallen off of my TiVo.

  26. @Daniel – the trick play seems a little kludgy to me – more similar to Amazon than Netflix.

    But to answer your question, the TiVo is not playing the video so it does not have the same controls as local content. It is streaming and works like the Amazon streaming app.

  27. @Chucky

    PyTiVo uses the metadata also. There is even a community tool for creating the metadata for your files or you can have KMTTG do it when you transfer. In fact I believe it is now at the point, the metadata makes a PyTiVo push identical to a recorded episode where it pulls in all features like explore this show. It also groups with your actual recordings. The only difference is the pushed recording is flagged as Copy Once, and possibly shorter if you removed commercials. I definitely know it groups since my pushes are always grouped by series.

    I also tend not to sit down to watch something and have to wait for the push. I usually decide I will watch something later so I queue up the content. As a result when I sit down it is already on the TiVo in the show folder.

    The advantage of the OnePass integration is just better overall organization and information. Currently I have to search multiple TiVos to see if I still have a show on the TiVo or if I need to push it. For example if I wanted to watch the second half of Agents of Shield season 2 which is either still airing or just finished, I have no idea if I still have them or if they are already on my servers. The other advantage is I would be able to see where I left off on a show since I delete everything once I watch it. I would still have to push it, but I could rely on TiVo for that info rather than using other tools.

  28. “If they’re not going after bittorrent end-users by IP, they’re most certainly not going to go after this.”

    Has no one ever been punished after being caught for torrenting movies? I honestly have no idea.

  29. “Has no one ever been punished after being caught for torrenting movies? I honestly have no idea.”

    I know there were many civil, not criminal, proceedings against music torrenting. Though that has been halted for quite a while now. I think, but don’t know, that there were also similar civil proceedings against movie torrenting, albeit on a much smaller scale, but again, if that did indeed happen, it has been halted for a while now. (If very fuzzy memory serves, the movie torrenting proceedings were only in response to pre-released movies.)

    In short, torrenting civil proceedings are non-existent at the moment. And I’m not sure if it ever happened against movie torrenting.

    However, I do know that no one has ever been gone after for local decrypted files that are de jure illegal under the DMCA. And the DMCA has been in place for almost 20 years now. And that’s the stuff that Plex is capable of assembling.

    So torrenting is a de facto legal grey area, and I can imagine proceedings starting up at some point in the future. Though I can also imagine it never happening given the success of movie/music OTT services and the fall-off in bittorrent traffic. But things like Plex on TiVo are de facto 100% safe in the short term, and very likely 100% safe going forward. If torrenting proceedings start up again, the local situation will start to be worth monitoring. (Especially if either of the trans-oceanic ‘trade’ treaties pass.) But I frankly don’t think any of the corporate players care in the least about local media, as opposed to mass, anonymous file sharing.

  30. While Onepass integration with Plex would be great, I think lots of folks are missing a key challenge with this. I’m a happy Plex Pass user, have Roamio Pro with multiple minis (Tivos since 1999), and the kids have Rokus for streaming Plex and Netflix. I deal a LOT with issues with episode number mismatches between what Tivo says and what Plex pulls from its configurable agents, of which I use TheTVDB.com.

    While most prime time shows’ episode numbers are usually in sync, kids shows are notorious for being off. Often way off. So I can see where it’d be a huge mess between the two libraries and trying to integrate those into one Onepass. Just to get shows (and often it’s beyond just kid shows from Disney, PBS, Nick and others) to show up with the correct metadata (screen shot, title, etc) in Plex I have to use MetaGenerator V3 to manually fix them. It’s a PITA.

    How would Onepass handle this? It’d be a mess IMO. Would be awesome, but I see this as the number 1 challenge.

    Ben

  31. “PyTiVo uses the metadata also. There is even a community tool for creating the metadata for your files or you can have KMTTG do it when you transfer. In fact I believe it is now at the point, the metadata makes a PyTiVo push identical to a recorded episode where it pulls in all features like explore this show. It also groups with your actual recordings.”

    Thanks for the info, brennok. News to me, and good to know, even if I’m not likely to shift from my current Plex ecosystem in the short-term. (I’m always running up against the 3TB limit on my TiVo, so I like having the unlimited storage capacity, and no planning involved that I can achieve with Plex.) But it’s food for thought going forward.

    —–

    “Currently I have to search multiple TiVos to see if I still have a show on the TiVo or if I need to push it.”

    Huh. As a single-teevee household, shows how little I know about how MRV works in the TiVo ecosystem. I always though there was a unified ‘My Shows’ list, but I guess that only applies with a single server and Mini’s.

    “The advantage of the OnePass integration is just better overall organization and information … The other advantage is I would be able to see where I left off on a show since I delete everything once I watch it. I would still have to push it, but I could rely on TiVo for that info rather than using other tools.”

    I still don’t understand why OnePass Plex integration would help your situation, even taking trickplay out of the equation, but at this point, never mind. And thanks again for educating me on some things I was ignorant about.

  32. Bradley was the only one who got it. But something changed for him yesterday which makes us think TiVo is readying it for release (or they realized his boxes are in the wrong groups). An app like this they truly could flip on any day they want, like June 8th, assuming it’s ready and assuming the underlying OS is at the right level.

  33. Message I just received on my RCN-branded TiVo Premiere:

    “New apps iHeartRadio, PLEX & Yahoo Screen will be added soon. Other apps will be retired as newer apps are already available. On 6/9, Live365, Podcaster, Picasa, Blackjack, Kaboom, Quizmaster, Rockswap, SameGame, Wordsmith and Skull & Bones will no longer be available.”

  34. “On 6/9, Live365, Podcaster, Picasa, Blackjack, Kaboom, Quizmaster, Rockswap, SameGame, Wordsmith and Skull & Bones will no longer be available.”

    Noooooooooooooo.

    How will I be able to swap rocks now?

  35. Is there anything still HME after that’s gone? If so, is TiVo disabling HME now or soon? That would mean the end of Enter Webz for TiVo – an interesting service I’d been meaning to test and write up.

    http://enterwebz.tv/

  36. “Is there anything still HME after that’s gone? If so, is TiVo disabling HME now or soon?”

    Well, how else are they going to make space for the forthcoming Chumby widgets?

    “That would mean the end of Enter Webz for TiVo – an interesting service I’d been meaning to test and write up.”

    Isn’t there some other, better web page viewer available on S5 units, accessible via kmttg? I haven’t played around with it, since I’ve got an HTPC that I use for such purposes, but I’ve noticed lots of work being done on it in the kmttg release notes…

  37. On 6/9, Live365, Podcaster, Picasa, Blackjack, Kaboom, Quizmaster, Rockswap, SameGame, Wordsmith and Skull & Bones will no longer be available.

    I find this announcement a little suspect, considering Blackjack, Kaboom, Quizmaster, and I think Rockswap are not even HME apps, and as Chucky lamented, there aren’t necessarily “newer apps … already available”
    … that said, games are not exactly a priority for TiVo, and those are flash apps that they may also want to get rid of in favor of HTML5.

    As WMcbrine has said, removing HME is an active effort on TiVo’s part. Just turning off their HME and Flash servers isn’t. So I’m still crossing my fingers that they don’t disable the capability.
    More importantly, the Series 2 and 3 systems still rely on HME apps for much of their functionality. They wouldn’t be so evil as to shut that off for no reason, would they? They had legitimate technical reasons for shutting off the YouTube and Amazon apps.

    Nah… HME’s not going anywhere until they decide to brick series 3 and 2 units. Disabling the 3rd party connection is the only possible risk, and again requires some effort on their part for no value added.

    Isn’t there some other, better web page viewer available on S5 units, accessible via kmttg?

    That was launching the internal Opera browser that the HTML5 apps use, but TiVo did actively disable that feature, last I heard.

    Enter Webz isn’t really a proper web browser, more like an “on-the-fly web page to app converter” ;] (and there are a bunch of custom HME apps on their that have nothing to do with web pages, like Cribbage and Radio Auricle) If I ever get a lot of time on my hands, I’ll rip out the innards for a system that would make results much more attractive, but a lot of the limitations will still remain due to HME’s nature.

  38. Thanks for the contribution, David. After I posted I stopped to wonder about S2 and S3. I think you and WMcbrine are right that it’d be something of project to excise all HME, so it could carry on for quite sometime (post Haxe rewrite — pre would have been the time to drop it). The one possibility is they disable the ability to manually add sources. Again, it would require specific action and they may have other priorities… like finishing the HDUI.

  39. “That was launching the internal Opera browser that the HTML5 apps use, but TiVo did actively disable that feature, last I heard.”

    If true, that’s really too bad. Despite having an HTPC, I was still looking forward to playing with it as the tools matured. And for folks without an HTPC, it seemed like a solution to a wide variety of edge-cases…

  40. “It’s now June 7th. Not seeing plex on my TiVo. Has this been delayed?”

    Most calendars indicate June 7th comes before June 8th.

    It will have “been delayed” if it’s not there when the clock ticks to June 9th…

  41. We know Bradley, who isn’t a beta tester of Plex, received it. But either he’s the only one and it was accidental OR, if he’s in a random pilot group, the others haven’t seen it buried in Music & Photos or don’t communicate online. TiVo’s media blast indicated June 8th for release and a CSR told one owner 20.4.8 would start rolling out in waves tomorrow as well. Not sure if that’s a pre-requisite or if they’ll just flip the switch for Plex, even if 20.4.7 and Plex have a certain amount of issues together. Or maybe Plex will roll out in lock step with 20.4.8 over a period of time, even tho the announcement didn’t suggest that. If it doesn’t show up tomorrow, we’ll know it was delayed (a second time).

    By the by, you know what else is June 8th? Apple’s big WWDC conference, usually jam packed with lots of announcements. I might intentionally hold it an extra day if they had another media blast or press release planned and/or media coverage scheduled. Tomorrow will be noisy, ya know…

    As far as being delayed, Scarymike was probably referring to my mostly blown prediction.

  42. “By the by, you know what else is June 8th? Apple’s big WWDC conference”

    I was a doubter for quite a while, but now I really think they’re finally going to introduce the revolutionary new Apple Umbrella™.

    —–

    By the by, I was flipping channels, and noticed a cable reality series called Zatz Not Funniest Animal SecurityCam Videos. If this isn’t your project, you really need to sic your lawyers on them.

  43. Way too much nature out here in the exurbs… but the $500 we spent on those Arlo cams is coming back to us in the form of entertaining 30 second videos. Isn’t that all the rage these days?

  44. “Way too much nature out here in the exurbs”

    I’m mad, and that’s a fact. I found out animals don’t help. Animals think they’re pretty smart. Shit on the ground. See in the dark.

    “but the $500 we spent on those Arlo cams is coming back to us in the form of entertaining 30 second videos.”

    Entertaining? You ought to check out this peer-reviewed scientific report on the dangers they pose.

    Animals think they understand. Most of them are a big mistake. Animals want to change my life. I will ignore animals’ advice!

  45. @brennok – “the metadata makes a PyTiVo push identical to a recorded episode where it pulls in all features like explore this show. It also groups with your actual recordings”

    Just curious, but can you get the grouping by categories (i.e. kids, movies, etc.) to work for shows that didn’t originate from the TiVo? I had a heck of a time trying to get shows from YouTube or PlayOn to group properly when pushed to TiVo with pyTivo. From what I could tell the grouping on TiVo is done via ProgramID, and there’s nowhere to get the ProgramID that TiVo uses except on the TiVo. I tried the ShowID on theTVDb.com, but that didn’t work.

    Ultimately I switched to Plex where I can control all the grouping myself, but having pyTivo is a backup strategy would be nice too.

  46. @BenP_TX – “I deal a LOT with issues with episode number mismatches between what Tivo says and what Plex pulls from its configurable agents, of which I use TheTVDB.com.”

    Completely agree, I use Plex mainly for kids shows and I have to manually add series and episode info for every single recording no matter where I get it from. My main sources are TiVo and PlayOn (prefer PlayOn because it strips out the commercials). I can see this definitely being a challenge for MyShow integration, although it would definitely be nice if TiVo could provide a solution. I would think there would be one authoritative source for season/episode info, but clearly not if Plex relies on a user maintained source (theTVDb.com) for it’s info.

    Thanks for the MateGenerator tip…I’ll have to check that out.

  47. “Has no one ever been punished after being caught for torrenting movies? I honestly have no idea.”

    Torn from today’s headlines: apparently, you can be offered a $20 settlement to avoid a civil suit for torrenting Friends episodes…

  48. I got it yesterday too and boy is it slow (at least on a Premiere). Almost 30 seconds just to get into the app. Navigating in the app is sluggish too. It takes probably about 5 seconds just to go from one window to the next. For now, I’ll continue to use Xbox to get to Plex. Although one scenario that I might use the TiVo app is if I’m already watching something on TiVo.

  49. “I got it yesterday too and boy is it slow (at least on a Premiere) … Although one scenario that I might use the TiVo app is if I’m already watching something on TiVo.”

    OnePass integration would change the whole calculus…

  50. “OnePass integration would change the whole calculus…”

    Yep, no doubt. I should add though that I did get better results when using a TiVo Mini (which is newer than my Premiere). The Mini was twice as fast, so I imagine using Plex on a newer device, especially a Roamio will be a much better experience.

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