DVR using Plex and HDHomerun

Once I had Plex up and running on my Drobo, the next thing to integrate was HDHomerun. I have a dual tuner HDHomerun and I connected it to an antenna, ethernet and powered it up. I uploaded the HDHomerun software and firmware via their installer on my Mac and tested out the signal strength. All good so far!

Next was to get Plex talking to the HDHomerun. I went to Manage: Live TV & DVR: Setup Plex DVR … and … “problem!”. My Plex was not able to find the HDHomerun!

I figured it might be due to me having an older version of the PLEX app on the Drobo. So I fearlessly moved on to upgrading Plex on the Drobo. I did look online to see what “the people” were saying about how to upgrade and there seemed to be a couple of choices.

Attempt 1: Being a bit cautious, I tried the old school way of doing this: Rename Plex to Plex_Old, Download the new .tgz file, unzip, drag-drop to DroboApps, reboot… FAIL! It really messed things up. 2 instances of Plex’s showed up. Lets blame this one on my ignorance on how the Apps work on the Drobo. So I uninstalled the new Plex (I was not able to delete it), and rebooted the Drobo.

Attempt 2: Still being cautious, I now attempted to do a “drag and drop” into the Plex folder and select the replace option for duplicates. I guess it worked, but I now got another “Upgrade” message.

Attempt 3: I finally (I think) found the right way to do the upgrade. Basically, take the .tgz file and place it in the DroboApps folder and reboot the Drobo. On reboot, the tgz file is magically gone and Plex has been upgraded. Plex is functioning properly. Success!

NOTE: Make sure you are logged in as an admin, else you will not see the DroboApps folder.

Do keep in mind, once you upgrade Plex, Drobo start prompting you to upgrade Plex! This is because the version you have is not the same as the version Drobo expects to see in there. Just ignore that message.

On to the next step, I let the Plex:HDHomerun identify and save the channels. The Plex lifetime pass includes TV Guide, which is really handy, for selecting a show to watch, or for the DVR functionality. Once the TV Guide was up and running, I went thru and picked a (random) show to record. Reviewing the recording later on, I am happy to say, it came our really well. I am pleased with the quality. I had assigned a TV folder on my Plex_Media share on the Drobo, and the recording was saved at this location. Perfect… all is good now 🙂