You opened the door, so I’m stepping in… 
It should be rather obvious to a lot of people that I like Plex a lot. I wouldn’t spend the time on these boards if it weren’t for the way I view the software. I am, at times, very critical of the Team, but as a whole I think they do a wonderful job making a suite we all enjoy. It’s because of how much I use and like Plex that I am as critical of it as I have been. This suite could outshine every competitor hands down. And in many regards it does.
But Plex could be a lot better than it is. So take any criticism below to be constructive and not destructive. These things below are meant to make Plex better for all of us.
Trailers: I would like to see the option to only use local trailers. Those that are already in the media libraries we have. so those that have them in their media can use them in some manner. Besides playing them as an extra… Trailers now are completely broken as far as I’m concerned. They have never worked well, and when you do get them to work it usually forces the server to transcode. Not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. I’m trying to minimize transcoding and this feature forces it…
Group User: Don’t limit this to just grouping them up for library sharing. Also make the permissions for the group set the individual limits for sync, bitrate limits, OM version limits and exclusions. So I can set up all the “kids” with a set of permissions and have their parents on another set of permissions. The parents are likely to watch something on larger screens, so they are going to have different bandwidth needs than the kids that might be watching SpongeBob on a tablet or in the side room…
That said, if a group member for whatever reason needs something special set up, manually over-riding the individual settings takes precedent over the group settings. For example the family above. Permissions for the Jones family group in entirety, and make Mom and Dad Jones’ settings have a bit more liberal settings than the kiddies…
Other: I am all for a mega-pass group if you want to call it that. A group of hardcore testers that intend to break things to give feedback. This group should be by invite only, and should be someone that knows more than the average bear in here. The folks that can and will break it if it can be broken. And can also tell the Team how they broke it. It’s these testers that are really unsung heroes in the software world. They are the ones that take things to the edge to see where the edge actually is, and help the rest of us from falling over it as we flounder along.
Right now, the Pass members are the testers for the stable version. While this may seem like a good idea, there are a lot of features that seem half-thought out. User Exclusions and the OM are a couple of examples that pop into mind right away. If Carlo or Plexhilerated or a lot of others here would have been included in a testing phase there wouldn’t be some of the problems with these features that we see now. Exclusions would be Black and White listed and OM would be configurable for custom settings because the mega-pass group would have given the feedback for it to happen before it went to Pass Preview phase.
Other - Other: Less features getting moved from Pass to Public. We are the testers for the whole public arena. And while we do get some perks for that, we also seem to have things getting shifted out of Pass restriction to publicly available. Some things should stay Pass only and always remain Pass only. I know Sync is a Pass only. Premium Music is, Home Users are, etc… But there have been a lot of clients that have shifted out of Pass only.
For an example of what I mean, take bitrate limits. Public users would get server side limits for the whole server. Pass user would get individual user limits as well as a server limit. Or take OM features. Anyone in Public would be able to make an OM version, but only Pass members could FORCE a user to only get the OM version even if a higher resolution is available by individual user permissions. Public users have to use “Play Version” in order for their users to play the OM versions.
Make a Pass really worth having. Show that there is value to having a Pass over a Public account. Make those benefits really worth the money, time and efforts it takes to set it all up. For some people that isn’t there. They try it, but don’t see any value. So they drop their Pass and go back to the free Public builds.
I have a lot of other ideas, as well… But these are some of the things I think most of us (along with your ideas, Carlo) would love to see in the next 11 months or so.
