So why exactly is your buddy - co-founder - saying you will?
Even going as far as saying media is classified by categories, which you supposedly want to go back from…
“In Plex, content is organized not by source but by type – like music, movies, TV, etc. So when Plex rolls out premium content and subscriptions, it would show its users what sort of movies they have access to based on their subscriptions within the app’s movies tab. The same goes for TV and so on.”
I thought you said that would never happen, mingling own media with streaming media?
So who’s lying here?
Doesn’t inspire too much confidence. You almost had me with your sweet talk, but no.
Let me just make a few things clear, because this is being taken very much out of context:
“Ad-supported movies” does not mean ads played before your own movies. We would never dream of putting ads in front of your own content, that makes zero sense and would be literally the dumbest thing anyone would ever do.
What is being discussed here is adding more streaming content, just like WebShows (also ad-supported) or Podcasts (not ad-supported).
The whole “content is organized not by source but by type” is likely taken from the demos of existing apps, which are organized that way now. I PROMISE you that we’re in the process of moving away from that as we speak.
I’m not sure where you got the “mingling own media” thing. I personally love seeing TIDAL suggestions when I’m in my own music library, as I learn about new bands or new releases by bands I have. But that’s personal taste, and it’s not forced on me,
So, bottom line—let’s not panic. I’m not in the habit of lying, and I’m not about to start now.
@elan longtime lifetime Plex pass holder here (and I interviewed for an Android position way back when; your comments about rebase vs merge in git have changed the way I develop )
The past few years I’ve been worried about Plex in 2 primary areas related to the seeming strategic shift toward outside integration (tidal, podcasts, web shows, etc…):
That we’re headed for a de-emphasis on local media - I have a lot of family that uses my server, and they’re just not tech savvy. Lately I’ve been fielding a lot of questions along the lines of “what’s this Tidal crap”, or “why are you putting podcasts on my Plex” and I have no good answers. TIL I can disable these things, but I used to get really excited when Plex announced new features. Now I get nervous.
That these integrations will lower the quality of the product - I definitely feel like there’s been a reduction in software quality ever since DVR has been announced, and it seems like changelogs almost always have fixes for things like it, live TV, streaming brain, etc… while other bugs kind of fell to the side. I used to be more active in the forums, but ever since the Plex cloud debacle, I’ve mostly stayed away because I felt like it was pointless to put work into reporting a bug, only to never receive a response or have the bug fixed.
(3. The crazy conspiracy theorist that lives inside me was ever so slightly worried about ads on local media; glad to hear that’s never happening)
I can see People worrying about where Plex will make revenue to improve their standing.
But ads on their media, I think we can agree that that would probably be the last option to chose for everyone (Also a clear satement was done, just prior) .
But I do agree that some have a weird president, so maybe it’s blurry lines around the facts and common sense all the way now?
Maybe Plex will invest in a southern wall and get trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of dollars in return?
Plex clearly isn’t planning to “implant” ads when playing your content.
The intention is clear that it will be used for THEIR content. Think News, Webshows, etc which is no different than TubiTV, Hulu free, etc. Nothing wrong with this at all. Don’t like the ads, don’t use that media.
If Plex was to come out with a 10K sized movie library and injected a few ads in these movies it’s no different then watching movies on TV. You get ads on CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX. When you don’t want the ads you go for HBO, Max, Showtime. They could even off a free or add free version (monthly) for the same content and there is nothing wrong with this either.
Again, don’t like it, don’t use it. I just wish (broken record) we could as admins say which content can be accessed while users are connected to our servers.
Perhaps Plex are providing content as they see a far larger market & revenues by moving beyond their current user base which is restricted to those who steal content?
And as with Plex Cloud before all the precious development time will go into this while the badly functioning core features still won’t get attention. Then, once it’s rolled out, Plex will have to realise that most of their users don’t accept ads and would rather switch off web content than watch ads and, like Plex Cloud, they will have to bury it (with a sh**load of lukewarm babbel while doing so).
You don’t need to be super clever to spot a dead end in Plex’s development roadmap …
You mean the fact that we had an entire Bloggpost about Plex focusing on their core, fixing bugs etc? As far as I know this is the closest we got to a roadmap from Plex (Also something that is being and has been done, at least on the Android App, the PS4 App and Apple TV for the last few months.).
This annoys me. You don’t need to be super clever to inform yourself properly. You just repeat a few guys in this forum, who haven’t done so either.
They Focus the Roku part, they focused the bugs or as you said the “badly functioning core” features.
So you think that Plex 2019 runs better than Plex 2016? Well, my own Plex servers don’t!
I don’t need to read a marketing blog post, I just need to log on to my servers: nowadays I get more unnecessary transcoding, more buffering errors, more freezes, … in general 2 years ago my Plex experience on all of my platforms (TvOS, iOS, Mac, Linux, Windows) was way better (!!!) than it is today.
2016 didn’t even have HW transcoding.
Apple TV with the new Engine supports a lot more formats for direct play.
PS4 didn’t really work and is much smoother atm, also because it got a major upgrade.
Android Music player works a lot better. This includes sync, gapeless and a few other features.
So yes, I would not give the 2019 Version for the 2016.
If you critize someone while he is doing exactly what you actually ask him to do, claiming he doesn’t do it, then you better be right. You are not. That is the whole Point.
Everyone can talk and claim something about his experience, writing with exclamation marks or in bold. Take a look at the patchnotes in the last few years. Tell me, does anything strike to you as having to do with the core functionality you claim they ignore?
This article says otherwise. This article says that the reason why Plex has libraries and servers combined by category is for the express purpose of adding in ad-supported and/or subscription streaming content. That’s exactly what we were worried about—that Plex is continuing to move away from local content curated by server admins in favor of a primary focus on cloud-based services.
You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth here, @elan.
I can see Elan’s side to this, but that article coming out at this time didn’t do them any favors in the middle of this UI fiasco.
Still, I can also see our side to this. We’ve been digging our heels in for nearly two years now, and it was clear the Plex team tried forcing us down this path.
I can see the allure of wanting media sources merged into one unified collection by type, but I feel like taking the choice away from us and also merging disparate libraries together into categories (movies, adult content, music videos, etc. into just “Movies”) was the wrong way to approach this.
I think Plex/Elan finally got the message, and I do see them fixing the UIs, or so I hope. I do understand and share the hesitation of trust - we have been ignored for close to two years now overall, and I’m not going to forget that.
That article was published today. It’s a puff piece for Plex, designed to tout its new cloud-based focus, and it presents the new UI as a vehicle for this new focus. Yet, @elan has been saying for weeks how they’re moving away from the category-centric model of the new UI.
The two things don’t jive. It would be different if this article was written two months ago, but it was published today.
)