The cable industry’s been circling the drain for a little over 10 years, and on-demand streaming is to blame. Still, the linear “live TV” format has its merits, especially on chore day when I just want something in the background, which is why I’ve gone out of my way to make Plex feel more like cable.
There are actually a ton of different ways to accomplish this goal. But I’m kind of lazy, so I’ve mostly focused on easy solutions that don’t require much effort. Admittedly, the first two of my solutions can feel very “pretend,” so skip to the last one if you’re desperate for a true cable-like experience.
3Dump Everything in a Playlist and Hit Shuffle
Plex’s playlist feature is pretty simple. It can’t do a lot, but it has a shuffle button, which can provide a semblance of the cable TV experience.
Take all of your sitcoms and dump them into a playlist—that’s your “sitcom channel.” You can add the sitcoms one at a time by pressing the three-dot icon on their posters (in the Plex web UI), or do it in bulk by applying filters to your library. You can do the same for cartoons, comedies, or anything else, although this shuffled playlist thing tends to work best with non-serialized content. You probably wouldn’t want to watchBreaking Badin shuffle, butI Love Lucyis fine.
You can take things to the next level by programming a smart playlist. Just open your Movies or TV Shows library in the Plex web UI, click the “All” filter, and select “Advanced Filters.” Then filter by genre, date range, director, or whatever you want. Hit the “Save As” button, select “Smart Playlist,” and Plex will generate a playlist that auto-populatesand updatesbased on your original filters. If you make a smart filter for the horror genre, for example, any horror movies that you add to your library will be automatically added to your playlist.
Unfortunately, smart playlists can only pull from one library. A smart playlist that you create in your TV Shows library can’t access your Movies library, and so on. Normal playlists do not have this restriction.
2Follow a Franchise’s In-Universe Timeline with Chronolists
Years ago, I watchedBuffy the Vampire Slayerand its spinoff,Angel, by airdate. These shows were on the air at the same time, and their stories had some overlap. It’s a cool trick that makes the two shows feel like one big piece, which is something I really enjoyed.
But jumping between Buffy and Angel was a pain. I had to jump back to the Hulu menu after completing each individual episode (well, the ones that aired concurrently, at least), and I wasn’t always sure whether I was watching the shows in the right order.
Keeping up with a large franchise’s in-universe timeline is an even bigger challenge.Star Warshas about a dozen movies and a couple hundred TV episodes, many of which are prequels, or sequels, or prequels of prequels. There are even some sequels to the prequels.
Plex’s smart playlist feature can’t account for in-universe timelines. There are some big-brain ways to get around the problem, but I’m lazy, so I use a website calledChronoliststo sort franchises into in-universe timeline playlists.
Chronolists is dead simple. You log into it with your Plex account, select the franchise that you want to generate a chronological playlist for, and let it run a script on your server. The end result is a playlist with a franchise’s movies and shows sorted based on their in-universe timeline—it’s the ultimate version of a TV marathon.
The only problem with this trick is that you can’t run filters on playlists in the Plex app. As in, you can’t tell the playlist to hide episodes or movies you’ve already watched. I don’t really care because I like to scroll through and remind myself what I’ve watched in a playlist, but things can get really unwieldily when you’re about 100 episodes deep in a franchise. (It may be wise to break a Cronolist into several smaller playlists for this reason.)
Kometa(previously Plex Media Manager), is actually a far better solution for the in-universe sorting problem. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that can auto-generate some very complicated, highly-customized playlists and collections, among other things. I recently nuked my Plex server and haven’t gone through the trouble of reinstalling Kometa because it’s kind of a pain to set up and use—there’s no UI—but you should absolutely look into it if you’re trying to make your Plex server feel more intelligent and TV-like (or if you find the Chronolists trick too rudimentary).
1Create Custom TV Channels With dizqueTV
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Plex playlists, which can feel vaguely like “real” TV if you put in a little bit of effort. But there’s actually a far better, far more realistic way to recreate the linear TV experience within Plex. You just need to hijack Plex’s built-in OTA TV functionality with an IPTV app calleddizqueTV.
For those who aren’t aware, Plex can stream local channels when connected to aTV tuner. It even has a built-in channel guide. dizqueTV spoofs a hardware TV tuner so you can inject custom channels into Plex—these channels use the shows and movies that are already in your library, of course, but they’re endlessly customizable, and you can run multiple simultaneously. They also behave likerealchannels—they progress even when no one is watching.
dizqueTV app is very easy to install. It scans your media library through Plex, so you don’t have to point it to any folders or perform a complicated setup process. Spinning up a new TV channel takes almost zero effort, although it’s easy to get lost in all the options—you may sort everything by airdate or write scripts to achieve a more complicated schedule, create daily segments that mimic things like primetime or the afterschool block, or add blackout periods where the channel just doesn’t do anything.
I’m not going to teach you how to install disqueTV because that’s beyond the scope of the article (and, in any case, there are plenty oftutorials on YouTube). Though I should note that dizqueTV can be very resource intensive. I don’t suggest running it on a weak machine. Plus, Plex’s OTA TV functionality requires a Plex Pass subscription.
If you’re interested in this stuff, take a moment to look intoTunarr, which is a fork of disqueTV. It’s still being fleshed out, but it may be the better option for long-term support. And if you want to do thiswithoutPlex, I suggest that you useQuasiTV, since it’s easy to use as a standalone app.
