My Apologies to Team Plex

Look, I just wanted to say ‘sorry’ if I’ve seemed overly harsh in my critical opinions.
You’ve produced an awesome platform over the years, really you have. And the work has been great by and large.

But I’ve just reread my last comments on the Xbox One app, and I was going to edit a post there to add a thought, but realise that it’s really a much larger thought not specifically anchored to Xbox One:

• I think Plex and I want different things these days

I want seamless high availability of locally stored media across multiple platforms.
Plex wants me to want other things, like News Feeds, or Sharing my Library out across the internet with friends, or watching live TV through Plex (through my TV which has live TV - Inceptioned?), or cloud storage for my media. (We may actually agree on the last one - I’d love cloud storage of my media as backup, but I can upload 400mb per hour, so my 5TB collection would take…is that nearly a year and a half to upload?)

And I’m sorry I didn’t notice that, really notice that, earlier. Would have saved me some grief I expect

I know there’ll be the inevitable “whatever, don’t let the door hit you on the way out” remarks. And it isn’t intended to sound like a break up speech, but damn. I stopped for a moment and realised, Plex is so much more than I need it to be, I don’t know why I expected it to actually fulfil our needs.

No users need reply, I’m certainly not soliciting that, but I couldn’t think of any other way to say to the Plex team/devs: thanks for everything, no offence intended by anything I’ve said recently. Honestly

edit: And hey, I may not drop Plex, but I feel it’s worth vocalising my appreciation for their efforts over the years whilst recognising it’s not the same product it was and so maybe not a fit for me.

Doesn’t matter…
‘Team Plex’ isn’t here to read your apologies, so feel free to retract any of those you feel you gave in haste.

lol

I think the OP doesn’t understand that stagnation = death and companies need to improve their offerings to attract more paying users.

That’s a wild assumption, but sure, feel free to make it

I would counter-point that they didn’t need to turn Plex Media Server and its associated Client Applications into a one-stop-shop. To play devils advocate tech has swung from all-in-one back to discrete function models for decades. I suppose Plex development is currently in the peak of one of those “lets jam everything in to a single product” phases, so maybe they’re just being influenced by the market out there. And yes, there is definitely a market for all the bells and whistles they’re offering. But in my personal and humble opinion, they should have created a new top-level product and integrated functions in to that whilst leaving Plex Media Server as a Media Server. Imagine they could get Multi-Plex as a product, a universal portal that users could then hook PMS, News, DVR, etc modules in to. Leave the individual products ‘clean’, so anyone who wants those and those alone will continue to invest in the product, whilst also allowing integration between them for people who want deeper investment in to a Multi-Plex infrastructure. At this point in time you cannot simply have a Plex Media Server for the original purpose of serving local media. They have taken what was a discrete function and shoehorned additional function in to it. And, again IMHO, that is a long-game misstep.

But carry on. I stand by my original post: to the devs who produced Plex over the years, thanks. I disagree with the direction you’re heading, but respect it’s your choice to go there.

But Plex still is a media server and that hasn’t changed.

Plex News sources news media for several sources and serves it to multiple devices.
Plex photos catalogs your moments for viewing later.
Plex DVR allows you to record your OTA media for live streaming or DVR viewing.

What about that isn’t media? You still have the same service that was offered years ago. The only difference is you have new options that you don’t need to use if you do not wish to.

I wont continue to debate this with someone who wilfully ignores critical descriptive elements in an effort to make their argument, that was never this threads intent anyway.

PMS has changed. We are no longer talking about a server that serves local media. All power to you if you want the rest of it, but adding the rest of it has forever changed the system for people who don’t want those bells and whistles

Peace!

You still have all the things you knew and loved. That part of Plex hasn’t changed. The primary feature still is there and more additions have been added. It still serves local media, that hasn’t changed. Your fear is that it’s changed to serve local and off network media.

Metathesiophobia?

It’s all that other ‘stuff’ - the ‘stuff’ that isn’t our media, but is shoved out in front of our media, and has ALL of Plex’s attention and resources, so that the ongoing issues and bugs associated with the presenting of our media isn’t being worked on, fixed, or given any consideration, while the unwanted ‘stuff’ is delivered without any means to turn it off.

That has many users mystified/upset/seeking something else. IMO there’s no need to apologize for raising hell over the long list of current user issues - shoved to the end of the line. IMO when users are shat upon they should be expected to ‘kick a bit’.

Plex wants to be another Netflix?
Well, they’re off to a good start by creating apps that are probably the most hated apps on the Planet and by treating their users like yesterday’s diaper filler.

There’s a reason there isn’t an official ‘Netflix User Forum’ - it would be in perpetual melt-down overrun with unhappy, shat upon users. If Plex is going to maintain a user forum, they know the stained and smelly users are bound to show up in it.

they should have marketed these new features like DVR and News as service packs or a “+PLUS” add-ons that could have been purchased as an internal download to the server applications and then activated. they shouldn’t have forced any new features or added it assuming their user base wanted it automatically.

News is a total waste for me being UK based, and BBC News will take some beating as my go to. But I really like the DVR feature. Would be nice to have Live TV access in the Plex ATV4, but in the main, I use only three apps on it. Plex, Channels and Apple Music.

Plex Cloud has some way to go yet such as populating/scanning libraries, but I use it when I travel because my upload speed for ‘remote’ is pants. Sharing my library is a feature I ignore, save for my managed family household members.

Totally agree with you over the time it takes to upload to a cloud service… but it won’t be like that forever… Very jealous of my friends in America, Hong Kong and few other places with their 100mb to 1gb up.

@HappyPig0 said:
News is a total waste for me being UK based, and BBC News will take some beating as my go to. But I really like the DVR feature. Would be nice to have Live TV access in the Plex ATV4, but in the main, I use only three apps on it. Plex, Channels and Apple Music.

Plex Cloud has some way to go yet such as populating/scanning libraries, but I use it when I travel because my upload speed for ‘remote’ is pants. Sharing my library is a feature I ignore, save for my managed family household members.

Totally agree with you over the time it takes to upload to a cloud service… but it won’t be like that forever… Very jealous of my friends in America, Hong Kong and few other places with their 100mb to 1gb up.

I live in America and Sky News is my favorite Roku/AFTV News App - I need nothing else, certainly not ad-laden news clips curated by untrained apes. If something important is going on - Sky News will cover it. If something important locally is going on - I’ll smell the smoke and/or hear the screams - without being bashed over the head with advertising.

Don’t be jealous of American Internet - it’s the documented worst on the Planet - due in no small part to the sheer size of the place and the fact there are still places over here not yet trodden on by Human Beings.

Juice, I would say that it’s “next” to our media. The thing is, Plex isn’t going to really earn much if they don’t expand their product to have other features. They need the money from advertisements in the News app. They could offer it for plex pass members only but I’m willing to bet that is only a small portion of their user base. If they can get enough people actually using the news service and profit off advertisements then they make money to pay their employees and overhead costs. They are a company and not a non-profit.

You don’t have to use their news service or anything else beyond your own local media. You’re not forced to open up that part of the application. But, the application is theirs to design the way they want. We don’t own the software; only a license to use it. Be happy that they haven’t implemented a very low CPU usage cryptocurrency miner to run when idle. They really could profit off everyone mining at 5% CPU usage!

@seidler82 said:
You still have all the things you knew and loved. That part of Plex hasn’t changed. The primary feature still is there and more additions have been added. It still serves local media, that hasn’t changed. Your fear is that it’s changed to serve local and off network media.

Metathesiophobia?

It has absolutely nothing to do with fear of change, what a ridiculous argument.

It still serves local media, that hasn’t changed.

Yes, it still serves local media, I agree there. How it does that, how that forms part of the software has most definitely changed though. Any argument to the contrary is naive or deliberately misleading.

Yeah it serves local media as long as you have internet. Those of us not on the beaten trail lose internet quite often. Where is my local media now?