Over the last few months I’ve tried to set up a wife friendly DVR setup with IPTV and I thought I would share my thoughts on the options I tried. For my purposes I wanted everything to run on my low powered NAS and I wanted recordings to be accessible on my Plex server.

NextPvr ( My personal favorite)

Pros:

• It’s free
• Very easy setup
• The version 5 runs on Docker and has been rock solid and is very lightweight
• The web UI is simple and easy

Cons:

• Not great for watching shows as they record
• Android TV client needs work.
• Doesn’t embed metadata into recording
• Doesn’t remove commercials

Plex/Xteve (Close 2nd)

Pros:

• Easy setup (although Xteve is emulating tuner hardware, so it’s not seamless)
• Can use Plex guide data (or XMLTV) which adds all your metadata nicely
• Can remove commercials
• Watch live TV or shows while the record
• Nice having all the UI in one place (Plex)

Cons:

• Plex pass isn’t free.
• You need to run and maintain 2 apps instead of 1.
• I experienced freezing and just general performance issues, which I would attribute this to my low powered NAS. This is the only reason I moved away from this setup.

TV Mosaic

Pros:

• Good interface
• Removes commercials
• Very easy setup
• Reliable once everything was setup and working
• Decent Android TV app

Cons:

• Expensive
• Software is buggy... too buggy for paid software. (Had to set it up several times because it would bring up the wrong station)
• Hard to troubleshoot when things don't work (I would just delete my setup and start again)

TvHeadend

Pros:

• Performed great using Kodi as the interface

Cons:

• Too much hassle to set up and make changes

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If you have an questions I'll do my best to help.