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/

It depends if the channels are QAM or full DRM. Plex states in their FAQ the following: > Channels encrypted with DRM of any kind are not currently supported.

This likely means any premium channel can't be recorded and according to get channels it goes beyond HBO or Showtime: > As of mid-2015, Verizon FIOS has enabled DRM on FOX affiliate channels like Fox News and Fox Sports.

Not exactly, 'protected' channels are only supported by Windows Media Center, TiVo and SiliconDust's DVR right now. But majority of the channels on cable networks aren't protected, as long as you're not with TWC or Cox anyways..

Comcast in Seattle encrypts all channels on the wire. If you have a cable box then you can get a digital stream via ieee1394/firewire of all non-premium channels. Premium channels you cannot get a digital stream at all.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

+1 Same here. And I assume Youtube TV knows this as well as they are the only streaming service I know of pushing to include NBC, FOX, CBS, ABC local channels. "Stream live TV from ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN"

PS Vue also has local channels

In my market (Seattle) Vue only has CBS. I specifically want to watch College and NFL FB. NFL is generally on Fox & CBS OTA channels and ABC has many college games. (Other games are on NFL Network, ESPN, and Twitter, which are available via streaming)

Youtube TV isn't even available in Seattle at the moment ( https://support.google.com/youtubetv/answer/7068923 ), so the value proposition there is a bit mixed compared to the available services with mixes of affiliates in many markets.

I assume everybody wants all of them in all markets, it's just a different strategy of when to make something available. E.g. what if you're like me, and primarily watch college sports on ESPN, and don't really care about NBC or Fox locals in your market?

Local news and sports games were the reason I bought my antennae.

Honestly it's painful at this point watching regular tv when my internet goes down. It seems like Plex should still work in that case though.

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.)

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?

I wonder if it works with the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable CableCARD Tuner. I'm still running it with Windows 8 Media Center Edition w/o any problems after 7 years of continuous use!

Edit: I just saw their Supported DVR Devices and Antennas web page[1] and ATI isn't listed :(

[1] https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/225877427

I'd give it a shot. If it works you can have them update the compatibility.

Plex DVR supports the HDHomeRun Prime, which is a Cablecard tuner.

There are some games on the broadcast network channels. So while you may not be seeing a majority of the games you will still be able to watch a handful of them.