Just to clarify, neither of these is true.
You don’t need a Plex Pass to stream remotely.
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Since my Plex server is already all set up and I’ve been a lifetime pass member for a while now, I’ll probably keep the server up for sharing, but I may do something else, like Kodi, for home. The interfaces I can get used to if I have to (and I do hate both the roku and fire tv interfaces now) but I always had hope they’d add the ability to skin Plex like Kodi. It’s the death of plugins that’s driving me away.
The new server stats are ok, but nothing like Tautulli, I constantly share Playlists, run Lazyman, track my viewing with Trakt, all with plugins that made Plex so valuable and worth the Plex pass. So much time has gone into getting things up and running the way I like and soon it just won’t all work.
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Why not give Emby a shot. The UI on Android TV is awesome. On Rokus is closer to the older Plex UI. Has Playlists, Trakt support (for every user). Emby has a server stats plugin that is better than the dashboard but not as nice as Tautulli, but contains the needed info.
They have a lot of supported Plugins as well for expanding the system. They don’t however have plugins like ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX. There is a playon plugin (slow) that can access this info however.
You can run Kodi on your devices that support it and use either the Emby plugin for it. This gives you the best of both worlds since you’ll have great access to your own library but can install any Kodi plugin for really extending your system. Other users can do the same as well (with Kodi) or just use the Emby client for getting the content from your servers.
Elan, no disrespect intended, but why answer just those two points?
There are many voices asking what essentially boils down to one question, that is the one people want answered, not tangential questions: why do users, arguably the core user base, who wanted or chose Plex for its amazing ability to make multi-client consumption of local media feel like our needs are being shuffled, continuously, to the bottom of the pile and ever more focus being shifted to online integrations?
Each iteration hasn’t made the local media content experience better - but to be clear, it didn’t need to: it was already pretty awesome. The issue is that each iteration is making the local media experience worse, and we can only assume, based on the things we do see being added/improved that this is entirely due to a focus on ‘other’ live content. Tell me that no-one sitting in seats at Plex is in the least surprised that the core customer, the cable cutter, is getting disenfranchised by this.
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To use the android app to access your server and play your content. You need a Plex Pass. Or, a one time purchase in the app, for the same price the one month Plex Pass is.
Which is something I don’t really have a use for. However, since it was suggested that I did not need a Plex Pass, I went and tried it. You do indeed need to make a purchase to use it. Unless…you want to watch your show a minute at a time.
Unless, there is something I still don’t understand. Which is possible, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know everything.
In any event, what jungwirth said. The main reason I started using Plex, and suggesting it to my friends who have paid. Was for my local media needs. I think I can safely say on behalf of all of these type of users…That we can’t help but feel like we are getting the shaft.
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Have you tried using the web interface on your mobile and casting from it?
No I haven’t. In all fairness its probably possible. But, that’s really getting out in left field. Testing something I dont really use anyway is sort of counter productive at this point.
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Precisely. As the adage goes. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it .” I can certainly understand the need to improve, but making things that did work perfectly stop working, in the pursuit of progress, could be argued as such.
I submit that you offer a simplified build as an option to this user base, that actually does the basic functions without all the support of music content, online, or whatever. I just want to be able to play content from my server, like a series that plays continuously like the classic did. I could start a 200 episode series, and it would play nonstop. I can’t achieve that now.
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Yeah, I just may. I’m just not looking forward to fixing all those little things that inevitably need fixing when things don’t go exactly the way you want when the library gets scanned for the first time. I’ll have to red up on pros and cons a bit beforehand.
I just want to distinguish between a tactical blunder (yeah, the new UI needs work, and we’re committed to it) vs an actual strategic shift. I’ve pointed this out elsewhere, but we’ve made massive strides this year for local media, including the new video player stack for iOS/tvOS and the new cross-platform audio player. You can’t get more local/core than that 
Please, let me remove all external content providers from my menus. I will never use Tidal, nor WebTV. I understand some will, but why, when I pay for it, do I not have the ability to remove this stuff?
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Yet another very, very upset lifetime member regretting years of support for Plex and Roku. Your new interface completely and utterly sucks and your decision to implement it as well as dropping support for channels / plugins in the Roku Plex app will hopefully haunt you for the rest of days! I have a Roku HDMI stick, a Roku 3 and recently purchased a Roku Premiere that I am going to return to the store. Thanks for misleading thousands of us into believing we had a good thing going.
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They didn’t technically mislead anyone. They just put out a horrid update. I’m a lifetime member also. I feel your pain because I have like 5 Rokus including a Roku Stick which I use for traveling. Now they are obsolete and I need to replace them with amazon fire sticks to run Kodi. My guess is this will haunt them though. Plugins gave community developers a feeling of “skin in the game”. Now that that’s done, I can see Emby, which unlike Plex is open source, garner more notoriety and users.
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Thanks. But, no thanks!!!
It’s a temporay fix brought only to calm down the biggest outcry while you still don’t understand or even are trying to fix the general painpoints people are having with your product.
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Weird 
I’ve asked about this, I see all of them myself.
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Maybe this is the not the hosted web version. Instead this is from the server direct one.
And Maybe you are not locked in. See upper Right Corner.
I’ve tried them all, but I always end up coming back to Plex.
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I’m glad I found this thread as I’m in a similar boat. I too use Plex for my local media, though I do use the DVR. What has me looking into alternatives is that Plex no longer does a good job with the basics. For example, I wanted to play all of our Christmas music, so I created a Collection. Unfortunately, when I attempt to play it on my Apple TV, it doesn’t work at all. I guess I could have tried to create a Playlist, but I didn’t, though my video playlist doesn’t repeat.
Yesterday I installed Emby and was able to get it up and running really fast. It’s very straightforward and seems to do a much better job of the basics than Plex. The home screen has “My Media” and nice big icons for Music and TV Shows - the 2 categories I created, as well as Collections with my Christmas playlist.
Finding this in Plex is much less intuitive, as the entire screen is taken with “Recently Added”. There is no list of my stuff. For that I have to go and select a library, etc. Doing this in the mobile and Apple TV apps is very tricky and not obvious. I wrestle with it every time.
To be honest, my collection did not play back in Emby. On Apple TV, nothing happened and in the web player, I got an error message. However, I went on to their forum and got 2 replies from a staff member “System Architect” who told me that it should be fixed in the next server update. I’ve never gotten that type of timely response in the Plex Forums. In fact, when my Collection didn’t play back I found an existing thread: Collections not working for Music Albums from almost a month earlier with not a single response. I chimed in but haven’t heard anything back.
It’s great that Elan is responding to this thread, but it would be better if the “Chief Product Officer” paid attention as there seems to be a disconnect with the product focus of Plex and a perception of caring about the customer, not technological direction.
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