Plex to see and play recordings off my T3

[stevehunt_aus]

I have Plex server running on my Disk Station NAS, I'd like to:

1) Setup Plex to be able to see and play my shows recorded on the T3 (not sure how to link the T3 to Plex)
2) Setup Plex DVR to be able to manage my T3 recordings

Really struggling - any help would be appreciated

[MrQuade]

To add your T3 recordings to you Plex server, you just need to be able to access the T3's SMB network share from the Plex server.

I am not familiar with the Disk Station NAS, but you need to figure out how to get it to mount the T3's hard-disk over the network.

Even when that is done, the Plex server will not really understand the recording file names since the files have a date and time embedded in them (the Plex server mistakes those numbers for series and episode numbers). I've had a play around with various library filters, but never had much luck making the recordings site up in a pretty fashion.

If the Plex server just lists the recordings as a home video library, then you can have Plex just list and share the recordings with their bare names. Not pretty but it works.

As for Plex DVR, I think you may be misunderstanding how that feature operates.
With Plex DVR, the Plex server just uses the T3 as a network tuner, and it makes its own recordings on the server, but uses the T3 as the source of video. Plex DVR will not instruct the T3 to make its own recordings.

[stevehunt_aus]

Thanks, I will try and figure out how to mount the T3 drive so my Synology NAS can read it

[MrQuade]

Thanks, I will try and figure out how to mount the T3 drive so my Synology NAS can read it

This may be of some assistance.
https://www.synology.com/en-global/know ... motevolume

[asteele]

Hi, I am trying to do this with my U4.

It should be easy to have my Synology NAS map to the U4 using the NFS Server within the U4, but I can't seem to figure how to setup the NFS Server correctly.

I can see the config option to enable NFS, but I can't see where the rest of the NFS Server settings are.
I surely need to let the NFS Server know which U4 directory is to be mapped to which NFS share name.

I can see the mount settings, but this looks to me to be where I configure the U4 NFS Client to map out to a remote NFS Server.

I want to setup the NFS Server in the U4, not the Client.


I am sure this is a daft question, but after several hours of fiddling, Googling and forum searching I am stuck!

Any help would be very much appreciated, thanks!

[MrQuade]

The NFS server doesn't work on the T series or the U4 unfortunately. It does on the new V2 though.

You should still be able to connect to the U4 using SMB though.

[asteele]

Ah, that's a mighty shame - I could have spent 3 hours last night doing something else!

I don't think my Synology NAS supports anything other than NFS or CIFS for network drive mappings.


I thought I had read you could enable a Plex Server to run on the T4/U4, in which case I could just launch my Plex client (on Windows, AppleTV, iPad etc) and get access to the U4 content that way, but it looks like T4/U4 can be made to run a Plex Client, but not the Plex Server.

[MrQuade]

I don't think my Synology NAS supports anything other than NFS or CIFS for network drive mappings.

SMB and CIFS refer to the same thing in this instance.

I thought I had read you could enable a Plex Server to run on the T4/U4, in which case I could just launch my Plex client (on Windows, AppleTV, iPad etc) and get access to the U4 content that way, but it looks like T4/U4 can be made to run a Plex Client, but not the Plex Server.

That's correct, the Wiz can only be a Plex client.

There is no need at all to use Plex to access your recording from windows though.

Just open up the U4's "movie" share in Windows Explorer and play any recording you like using you preferred media player app (VLC, MPC, PotPlayer,etc)

[asteele]

Thanks for your help as always over the many years!

We used to have a pair of networked D2's, we have a kids main lounge TV and a parents upstairs lounge TV.
It was awesome that we could watch content from the D2 in the kids lounge, through the D2 in the parents lounge.

Now that we have a U4 in the main kids lounge, we are unable to watch any content from it when we have retreated to the parents lounge.

We do have Apple TV in the upstairs lounge though, as we use Plex on it to get movies etc from a Plex Server running on a Synology NAS.
This is brilliant for serving up movies and full seasons of TV shows etc, and we can watch from any TV, any laptop or iPad.

We use the U4 for our daily TV stuff, and its brilliant for quickly skipping ads etc as we all know.

I was just trying to find a way to get to the U4 content from the downstairs TV accessible from the upstairs one - presumably using the Apple TV interface and Plex Client. Such a shame the D2 can't browse the U4 in the same way it could browse the previous D2.

I already use OpenWebif from my Windows PC and our iPads to get U4 content, and they perform brilliantly.... it's just our 2nd upstairs lounge that can't watch content from the U4. We do have the D2 recording many shows as a double-up to what the U4 records, so there is a cheat workaround.

[prl]

D2? Do you mean DP-P2?

[asteele]

Ah yes, I mean the amazing DP-P2 - I have 3 or 4 of them with dead PSU's or hard disks now.

[prl]

Ah yes, I mean the amazing DP-P2 - I have 3 or 4 of them with dead PSU's or hard disks now.

The usual shorthand is P2, because by your naming scheme a D1 could be any of DP-S1, DP-P1 or DP-H1.

Warkus may well be able to revive them.

It should be possible for the DP-P2 to see your U4's CIFS/SMB shares, though IIRC people have had mixed results playing the new series recordings on DP series devices.

The T/U/V series doesn't support the DP series's WizPnP streaming protocol so you can't stream in the other direction. You need to use something like YARDWiz to convert the files and copy them to the T/U series box (which can be done in one step if the computer you run YARDWiz on can use the recordings directory on the PVR as a network share. That's probably only worth the effort for copying over unviewed recordings on a DP that's going to be retired.

[Paul_oz53]

Re prl's comment on watching U4 via a P2: it only works for SD playback. HD will either give you a blank screen or lockup the P2.

It's also a bit convoluted to setup. Although I have shares enabled on the movie folder, the P2 doesn't see it. But I also share the root folder and the P2 sees that share. I can navigate to the movie folder that way.

[asteele]

Thanks, I did YARDwiz some original unwatched/valued content from the P2 and copied across to the U4 - that worked great. The file conversion date was the only very minor pain point, and I ended up creating a special directory for the old P2 content so it was kept away from the new content... but after a short time the dates for the old content were older than the new U4 content and are sorted in the right order anyway.