There seems to be a contradiction there.
Written and published aren’t even close to the same thing.
It’s all in the design.
Had we been able to click a few buttons and instantly have LIBRARIES such as:
News
Podcasts
Web Shows
That’s an ENHANCEMENT not an INTRUSION since you have choice in the setup of your server. Like it, then use it. Don’t like it, then don’t enable it.
Don’t like Web Shows now? Maybe try it again in 3 months and activate as a library then if the content improves, etc.
Once the admin sets up these “libraries” the user has their own choice in using that library or not OR could ask the admin to remove it like any other library on the system.
EXTERNAL CONTENT = GOOD if the admin is in control
EXTERNAL CONTENT = BAD if the admin is NOT in control
Plex could easily change the perception of this being an INTRUSION to an ENHANCEMENT if they wanted. Who would have issue with “free ad supported” content when they have a CHOICE in administration of it?
TIDAL is a bit different since it requires a separate subscription but could be done very similar as a library by the admin for those who have a subscription.
INTEGRATION into the existing system/server is key for success of external content IMHO.
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I agree.
They upset me with Tidal when it became my default music library on my phone even after I disabled it on my server.
Seriously, why should I even have to deal with that?
That assumes a written article takes a long time to publish over at Tech Crunch. How long ago was the Roku app UI updated? A month? And you’re telling me it’s possible the interview they had with Scott and Keith probably took place long before then only to be published today—with Plex not realizing that what they said in the interview would contradict with what Elan is telling us?
It’s possible Elan didn’t know about the article, but then who do we believe?
One says they will be adding additional functionality in a certain way. The other one says local media are still important as ever and will not be forgotten, worked on.
Nothing contradicts itself there since there are many people working there.
This here is a concern I share. I want my media to be easy still and have control over what is shown to People connected to my media server.
Especially since I am from europe, american channels are useless to me.
As well as english content is useless to most of my users.
But that has nothing to do with elan and certainly doesn t make him a hypocrite as was inclined by you 8472.
If we can t stay by facts while talking it’s bad enough. When we start insulting People with things that are simply untrue I get angry.
I can get behind that. In my earlier comment, I did say that I saw Elan’s perspective. I can see Plex improving or bringing about a library-centric UI again (preferably with the left navigation drawer on Android) with the option to include subscribed media in your libraries or in a separate library.
It would be nice to “attach” remote media sources to local media libraries as long as it’s optional.
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part of the problem is where to put this online content.
plex has put it in the client, where it does not even require a server.
this does make it simple for the user who does not have an existing media collection to still have access to content.
but on the other hand, they also want to sell plex passes.
While it does complicate things for the end user, putting all the web content IN THE SERVER would help push the EU into understanding they can start collecting their own content and watching it along side or instead of the plex content. Which could lead into further plexpass subs.
This would also help keep the clients less complicated, by making the server do the work of managing the content (both local and web), and keep the client a simple UI and playback purpose.
This would also address the admin concern of whether to allow 3rd party content on their servers to their users.
From the article:
“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.”
From the forums:
This, among other things, is what does not jive.
It makes logical sense that the reason why Plex would want to bundle admin-curated libraries and servers by category—that that reason is so that they could also bundle cloud-based services into those categories. To say that, no, they’re not going to bundle libraries and servers into categories anymore, doesn’t fit with a puff piece (that is, a marketing tool designed to promote Plex) that lauds how the current UI model bundling content sources is an advantage when looking at adopting ad-revenue streams from watching online movies and shows.
Or could it be as simple as the type first approach WAS the intention at the time of the article interview and the last 2 years, but due to overwhelming demand they are listening and modifying that approach?
That seems most likely to me.
I SPECIFICALLY asked Elan about it (see above) to get something concrete and explicit intention and he gave it to us. I personally will take him at his word that this is the CURRENT PLAN and what he has put in motion.
Let’s just be a bit patient and see what they delivery specifically dealing with the menu/type first stuff.
Everyone can jump on Elan later if they don’t deliver what he said they would. 
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I agree. The problem isn’t the ad revenue (although the argument can be, and has been, made that to devote man-hours to features people don’t want takes man-hours away from developing and fixing other overtly requested features). The problem is that the choice over how and what media is presented to the user has been taken away from the server admin. And when the server admin is likely the most (and perhaps only) tech-savvy person in his/her circle of Plex-users, maintaining the client for each user becomes a chore when the admin can’t do it on their own end from behind the scenes. Having to touch each and every user account from each and every device those users access Plex with is a much bigger IT headache than setting it up from the server end.
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This is very much the thin edge of the wedge…
The move to “Plex provided content” is simply the direction the business wants to go to make it’s money, and so when that becomes the focus; the support, new features, maintenance for local content will become less and less important.
That may take years to happen, but it will happen.
As a customer one has to decide to accept the new direction or move on, sadly after many years i’ve decided to move on.
@Elan While I’ve seen a ton of negativity on here I’m thankful you’ve been replying and trying to make it right. I understand that folks don’t like some approaches and frankly, I hate the new UI.
I appreciate the stopgap of retro and the fact that you guys are listening. It makes sense that you need to find future proof ways of monetizing. (MS vs Windows OS ring a bell anyone?) Every company has to find its own way in making profits & paying for staff.
It’s good that you are assuring folks that no ads will be placed on private media. (I’d be gone in a heartbeat at that point. Newp. No thanks)
Some requests, which may not be reasonable but all I can do is ask as a single voice.
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With the announcement for ad supported content, can you tell us if there will be a way to disable it on our servers, akin to how I can disable podcast?
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With such content, will it flow through my server if I had shared my media? Meaning, will my server be a middleman for such traffic to that remote user? It would make sense for it to be a URL referrer but for the traffic to go our their local ISP, not a weird loop thing.
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Can you give us a non binding relative crapshot guestimate of when the Roku fixes will be forthcoming? I know this is always the hard part in a dev environment (been there man) but anything you can give us would be great. Note folks, anything he says is SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Bugs get found, approaches get changed, but if he CAN comment, we should respect that.
Finally, thanks for even reading this.
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I’ll take a shot at this but of course Elan can elaborate or state if anything is going to change.
- We already have ad supported content in a few external sources like news, webshows.
You can already disable it via Plex’s website. This isn’t on your server even though it may look like it to you. You are changing YOUR settings but not the settings of all users on your system.
Plex also allows YOU to change the settings for managed users (home users like wife & kids) but not unmanaged users. They need to make the changes themselves if they don’t want to see this content.
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This content does NOT flow through your server. That is the beauty of the way they have designed it. When a client chooses something from News (example) it goes from Plex’s cloud servers to the client directly without any impact on your server.
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When it’s ready.
They aren’t going to sit on it. They will want to release it when it’s ready. Obviously only Elan can elaborate on this.
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This content does NOT flow through your server. That is the beauty of the way they have designed it. When a client chooses something from News (example) it goes from Plex’s cloud servers to the client directly without any impact on your server.
That’s what I thought but it occurred to me to check. (Never assume!)
When it’s ready. They aren’t going to sit on it. They will want to release it when it’s ready. Obviously only Elan can elaborate on this.
Haha for sure. I was just hoping for more of a relative “We are targeting a week, two weeks, month, six months” I’m not sure if they are rewriting from scratch again or just rebase (obviously oversimplifying the tasks at hand)
We’d all like to know the answer to that and only Elan or another Plex employee can’t answer that. However, based on past history I wouldn’t really expect an answer other than “soon” or similar. You never know how testing will go or if another obstacle roars it’s ugly head.
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Haha, I’m always happy to talk git! Thanks for your post.
I can definitely understand that concern, especially given press articles of late 
But as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, we are clearly investing heavily in local media (two big recent examples are the new video player on iOS/tvOS and the cross-platform music player) and will continue to do so. It’s the core of our product, and has been from the start. We’ve also dabbled in online content from the start (first with plugins, and now with our cloud-hosted architecture). So to me it’s more of an evolution.
Taking TIDAL as an example, as I mentioned above, I see this as being an amazing marriage of local + online content. I literally use it every day to discover new music, and I would argue that it’s an elegant way to expand one’s musical universe:
- It tells me when new albums are released by artists in my library
- It recommends artists related to artists in my library which I don’t have
- It shows me albums I’m missing by artists in my library
- It will “augment” artist radio by pulling in some TIDAL content
- It offers a Discovery radio with artists I might like but which don’t exist in my library
- It gives you music videos for artists in your library.
So I can understand why you might not like TIDAL, or want to subscribe, or want it near your music collection, I respect that. But if you are the kind of person (like myself) who maintained a Spotify sub just to find new music, or were constantly trying to expand your own library, it’s a godsend. Not only am one of the developers, I’m also a heavy user! [obscure reference to some men’s baldness thing]
And again: it’s purely optional! If you don’t want it, don’t subscribe.
One of our main focuses for the year is stability. We have a lot of apps, doing a lot of things, and we absolutely want to make things work better.
You, sir, have a glass which is clearly half empty. The benefit of the cloud architecture for online media that we’ve built is that there is very little cloud work to integrate new sources of content, and clients basically get it all for free (because it’s the same API).
Seriously, stop reading so much into that article. The reporter saw the current UI, which is type-focused. We didn’t have edits on what was published. There’s no conspiracy here.
Yep, that’s pretty much the most accurate thing I’ve read about where our thoughts are.
Yes, jump all over me. I will happily make a public Hangout where you can just yell at me live. Want to do it sooner? Happy to spend the time.
We allow disabling all online sources, and we’ll do that for any new ones. I’m not entirely sure what you mean about “on our servers” as the account setting for it is in the cloud and “global”.
Online content, such as TIDAL, is “linked” from server, the traffic doesn’t flow through the server as that would be a bad experience for streaming video from cloud to server and then out again, e.g. Even when you make a universal playlist which incorporates content from shared servers and online content, the content which is “foreign” is linked, not proxied. Make sense?
That’s a harder one. We’re working through the design elements now, and working on a mock PoC for some initial testing (it’s hard to know how something will work just from pure static design). (Yes, there will be more details forthcoming here in the forums!) Then we need to fan out and implement in multiple clients. Figure it will take one to two “cycles” (we operate internally on 6-week cycles), so you can form a rough idea of how long it might take…but blah blah yadda subject to change.
The changes are clearly more of a top-level reorganization, so that makes it easier than a “rewrite”, clearly…
Thanks for writing 
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Thanks! That is exactly what I was looking for. The transparency is always appreciated.
You can’t please the loudest voice every time but hopefully this appeases some 
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Oh heavens YES PLEASE. The left navigation drawer was PERFECT, I have no idea why you ever did away with it. Today was one of those days when I decided to try Plex again (Emby was out of sync and I wanted to see if Plex behaved better with the episode… in all fairness it did)… but yikes what a drag making sure I’m on the right server (I have two remote servers and a local one) and then having to click, click and click some more to get to the content I want.
I’ll never be 100% Plex again, but it make me 50-50 again instead of 90-10 in favor of Emby!
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Truth be told, @elan, on the topic of local media, I really do wish Plex had better (local) audiobook support. I listen to audiobooks a lot, and Plex does not remember what chapter I am on. I have split (by chapter) and tagged all of my audiobooks, into mp3s, as one would for music. But though Plex remembers where I was on a particular track (most of the time), I have to screenshot my place to remember where I was for later.
You have said in the past that implementing audiobook support is complicated, but I’m not sure how album-level resume and/or allowing tracks in an audio library to show up on On Deck is that much to ask.
Also, I’ve read multiple articles that say Audiobooks are the fastest growing media format.
I know that’s off topic, but I’m posting it here because a) I bet you’ll read this, and b) Plex is still currently better at audiobooks than either Emby or Booksonic, so as far as an “alternative to Plex”, there really isn’t one in this case when it comes to audiobooks on a personal media server.
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Yeah, we’ve definitely discussed internally a fair amount. The conclusion was that it was likely something we’d like to support, but that there were a fair number of nuances around it which would make it less than trivial—some of the chapter-isms and different formats for books (file per chapter, file per book, e.g.) were non-trivial to handle well. We also wanted to find a good metadata source.
On the flip side, some of the things we’ve done in the new advanced audio player (silence compression, voice boost, pre-buffering) clearly help make audiobook playback even better too…
