3rd party video players that work well with Plex

Plex Players
,
1

NOTE: Please do NOT recommend Infuse. It has never been but so reliable for me and, as indicated in this thread on their forum, they got sloppy and irresponsible with their data storage and have totally ignored Apple’s directives. This has reached a point where it becomes a significant pain at lest once a week. I’m not trying to be ugly about this, but I have said I don’t want to use it and that’s not a whim. I’ve had real problems with it and, with the latest issue becoming a serious weekly problem, and then finding out it’s because the developers were irresponsible, I have no intention of giving Firecore more money.

I’m new to Plex and it works very well for me except for two issues with video playback. The first is the time-out issue. When I play episodes in a TV show, usually (but not always) with shuffle, the player times out after something like 2 hours unless I’ve interacted with it. The other issue is the enforced 15 second gap after an episode finishes and before the next one starts. (I often shuffle play old TV shows for some non-neurotypical adults here and these interruptions in playback create issues.)

From what I’ve found, apparently these issues are hardwired in and can’t be changed anywhere. (If I’m wrong, that would make a major difference for me!)

I’m looking for 3rd party video players that work well with Plex, including using the metadata in Plex so I can still get episode titles and summaries while using the player. I use mainly Apple TV and iOS devices for playback. Being able to use one program on both device types would be nice, but isn’t necessary.

I have used other players, without Plex, in the past, but have started using Plex because they don’t always do the job. VLC works for basic playback, but doesn’t provide metadata. 8Player Pro works, but, again, no metadata. I’m done with Infuse - it can take minutes, literally, to load a list of files in a directory, and they have been storing their metadata on the Apple TV device itself, contrary to Apple’s instructions, and I repeatedly lose my metadata when tvOS clears (and that includes the played/unplayed list). (And now they say they’ve moved to a subscription model - I will NOT pay, especially by subscription, for a program that uses such poor design that it’s been losing all my data on a weekly basis.) Also, Infuse is video only - no audio files!

With that in mind, are there any 3rd player video players that work with Plex and use the Plex metadata DB?

2

Check out Infuse:

Good luck,

Chris

2 Likes
3

Definitely Infuse.
Not as pretty but a pretty UI< Reliable playback.

4

Thanks, but that’s the one I specifically mentioned I will not use. In short, on tvOS, it’s like this:

Apple: Don’t do the thing.
Infuse: We’re gonna do the thing.
Infuse: People are complaining because of problems when we did the thing.
Infuse: It’s not because we did the thing. It’s because of this other program doing the thing.
Infuse: We’re having more and more problems because we did the thing.
Infuse: We now need to find a way to do the thing with fewer problems.

Infuse NEVER said, “Hmmmm… Maybe we should stop doing the thing and make it work properly.”

Apple has said, “Do NOT use memory in an Apple TV for permanent data storage.” So the Firecore (the company that makes Infuse) said, “Well, we don’t see how it’ll be a problem, so let’s ignore that and use ATV memory for permanent storage.” They did. Now, at least once a week I run Infuse and find all the metadata, including which files I’ve lost, is gone because tvOS purged the memory.

It’s sloppy and irresponsible engineering and I’m tired of being burred by it.

5

Never found it to be but so reliable at all. That’s why I specifically excluded it. I’ve had it take minutes (yes, minutes - I timed it) to load a list of files in a directory when VLC would load that list in seconds. Had many times where it would be in shuffle mode and just sit there at the end of playing one file and just show the wait indicator and stay on a black screen.

And then there’s the issue they have that I describe in my previous response

6

Yeah I get you and have seen comments on the forum there. Personally since Infuse implemented direct mode I haven’t had it happen once but that’s not to say it won’t.

That probably just leaves Emby or Jellyfin as your options.

7

Considering that the whole mess with the metadata (including the list of watched videos) came from them not just ignoring, but blatantly flaunting Apple’s tvOS developer guidelines, it begs the question, “What else did they handle like this and when will the next Infuse bomb drop?” I’m tired of getting “that look” from my wife one or more times a week when she sees that, yet again, the software I picked, has lost all it’s data and settings.

I’m testing Emby on the same Linux server as I am Plex. I could deal with Emby, if I had to, but there are some things on it that aren’t as polished as on Plex. But is there a way to use the Emby player on AppleTV or iOS devices with the Plex server? If I could do that, it might be a perfect solution.

8

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.