I have a Zidoo Z9X Pro media player. The old Z9X runs Android, which lets the user select which player they want to use, thus giving the user the best combination of Plex UI + Zidoo player. However, the Pro runs Android TV, which arbitrarily removes this functionality. This makes Plex unusable, as the internal player is unable to play all my media files correctly. Jellyfin can do this but I would much rather use the Plex app.
There is an older thread where a dev explained why this isn’t a thing but I found the answer unsatisfying:
This is unlikely to ever happen I’m afraid, we want our player to provide you with the best experience when playing videos from your Plex server. If you are experiencing issues, please make a thread with logs (and samples if its a particular video) and we will look into the issues and make sure things play for you!
Opening up an external player brings a lot of problems and means you can’t transcode from your Plex Media Server to deliver the content to your device in a suitable way. For low end devices like the Fire TV / Mii Box you would end up in a situation where you are forced to direct play a video that your box can’t handle, which can end up damaging your device. On mobile the setting was there due to manufacturers providing built in hardware decoders that can only be accessed via their own player, thankfully though this is something that manufacturers no longer do.
This makes sense for low-end android boxes, but it’s actively holding back the user experience on high-end android boxes like the Zidoo. The hardware can direct play anything I’d throw at it, transcoding is not an issue. If you’re concerned about casual users ■■■■■■■ up their system, make it an obtuse system setting that you have to actively seek out to enable.
