Plex brings Live TV features to fourth-generation Apple TV

Two recent features of Plex's media streaming app — Live TV and DVR — have emerged from beta, with the former appearing on the Apple TV for the first time.

To use Live TV, Apple TV owners must have a Plex Pass subscription and a compatible digital antenna and tuner connected to a Plex Media Server. The feature supports non-encrypted broadcasts in over 70 countries, and includes a program guide with artwork, episode details, and search functions.

Apple TV users may need to restart Plex to get Live TV to appear. With the feature emerging out of beta however they will also get access to Time Shifting, letting them pause and scrub through live shows much like they would saved DVR files.

Live TV is otherwise limited to Android and iOS devices. Support for Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and various smart TVs is said to be "coming soon."

Plex is mainly intended to stream media hosted on a nearby Mac, Windows, or Linux PC, though Media Server can also run on some Wi-Fi routers and network-attached storage, or even through cloud services like OneDrive and Google Drive.

10 Comments

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

About 7 years ago

Would be great if an over-the-air digital antenna could connect to the Apple TV so the entire TV viewing experience could remain in their UI.

rob53 3307 comments · 13 Years

SpamSandwich said:

Would be great if an over-the-air digital antenna could connect to the Apple TV so the entire TV viewing experience could remain in their UI.

Yes it would, however, unless they expand the number of transmitting antennas to more rural areas in the PNW, the only stations I get are from Canada. Seattle is the closest TV broadcasting location and it's 90 miles away. It's tough getting cellular antennas in my area so broadcast antennas would be just as difficult.

stompy 411 comments · 18 Years

SpamSandwich said:

Would be great if an over-the-air digital antenna could connect to the Apple TV so the entire TV viewing experience could remain in their UI.

That ship sailed before the first Apple TV shipped.

eightzero 3145 comments · 14 Years

Options are good. But this requires a subscription (plexpass) and that's a deal breaker for me. YYMV.

I see Mohu is releasing a OTA antenna with a wifi connection, the Mohu Airwave. Looks to be about $150, but maybe is tenable..

SpamSandwich said:

Would be great if an over-the-air digital antenna could connect to the Apple TV so the entire TV viewing experience could remain in their UI.

It seems almost trivial to add a tuner or two to the box, and a coax connection on the back.

jbdragon 2312 comments · 10 Years

eightzero said:

Options are good. But this requires a subscription (plexpass) and that's a deal breaker for me. YYMV.

I see Mohu is releasing a OTA antenna with a wifi connection, the Mohu Airwave. Looks to be about $150, but maybe is tenable..

SpamSandwich said:

Would be great if an over-the-air digital antenna could connect to the Apple TV so the entire TV viewing experience could remain in their UI.

It seems almost trivial to add a tuner or two to the box, and a coax connection on the back.

Buy Lifetime and then you never have to worry about it! I got Lifetime many years ago and it's been well worth it. If anything, it was a steal. I use PLEX pretty much every day. It runs on my Upgraded ReadyNAS 516. Unlike most of the other DVR solutions using the HDHomerun, where you need one of the newer ones to make it work. PLEX will work with the older hardware like mine which I used to use with Windows Media Center before I switched to TIVO. I keep all my TV, Movies, Pictures and Music on PLEX. I can stream my music from home onto my iPhone as I'm driving around in my truck. I watch PLEX at work on my launch break.
Right now there's a 20% off sale For Lifetime PLEXPASS service!!! Instead of $149.00, it's now $119.99. That's a great price. That's a great deal. Plex is always being worked on. There's new updates all the time. All the many features added over the years has been great. Plex is supported on so many devices these days. I use PLEX on my AppleTV 4's all the time. It does so much, and works so well. I like to think of it as my own Private Netflix type service. Each person in your house can have their own account. you can have a password if you want on it. You can even have friends accounts and you friends can log in and watch your stuff. I limit the bandwidth for the stream to them to 720P 3Mbps. You can control that and lower or are it up higher. That looks pretty good for them. Plex is on the fly transcoding the 1080P much higher stream down to the lower quality stream.
This is why you really need good hardware. Direct Play, do nothing is fine, for some things, but most of the time Plex is transcoding. It might not be for video, but for Audio as you may have a number of audio tracks to pick from. So my NAS has a Intel XEON 4 core processor in it. It used to have a slower 2 core XEON in it. ARM processors are really can't cut it yet. So a Cheap NAS, while you may be able to install PLEX on it, it won't be able to do any transcoding. A lot of people buy a Mac Mini because they have some power. They're small, and are not power hungry. So one of them, with a cheaper NAS for the storage and that works well. You can access the Mac Mini Remotely from another Mac or Windows PC. Or course you can just use the computer and HDD you have and nothing else, but not as convenient. Wouldn't work well for a DVR solution.