I don’t have a choice. Since Plex chooses to not have its music-matching be cross-platform*, I am locked out of any decent Plex music experience.
*- It is valid to say Plex chooses this because they choose a 3rd-party provider, Gracenote, that is not open and cross-platform. Plex often tries to pass the buck here but at the end of the day, Plex chose Gracenote. Gracenote didn’t force Plex to use them against Plex’s will. Plex could’ve gone with something open and cross-platform such as Musicbrainz.
@elan Thanks for great product and joining this discussion. I noticed my Roku version seemed a bit crippled. I thought I had done something n my settings. I didn’t even come looking for this issue, but happened upon this thread. Mistakes happen. Sounds like you realize it and are moving forward. I’m thrilled with your product in general. I ran an decentralized Kodi setup for years. I thought my new TCL TV could run Kodi natively, but found out I was wrong after I bought it. I had heard of Plex, so I decided to give it a try. I love it. I had tried and failed with a DNLA (Serviio) setup years ago, and I couldn’t get it to work without buffering. That is why I went to a decentralized Kodi setup. Once I got Plex going, I was sold. It is an outstanding product for what I need. Delivering local content to a variety of devices. I didn’t even know at the time about the remote and synchronizing feature. Before Plex, a family trip was an ordeal for movies. I would ask my kids 2 days before we left, which of our movies do you want on your iPad? I would then run handbrake and create compressed copies of each movie, then they had to download them through a cumbersome process. Boom. Plex just does it. Awesome. Anyway, great product. Hiccups happen.
In what way is music matching not cross-platform? According to Plex, Gracenote is available for many different platforms that can run Plex Media Server. Gracenote isn’t not-cross-platform just because it isn’t supported on every-single-server-platform.
I think perhaps he is referring to certain unix-like distributions that are not linux, and that gracenote does not have or provide the necessary libraries to work on that server OS, so some gracenote functionality does not work with his particular server os.
That doesn’t make the Gracenote software not cross-platform though. It’s just not universally supported. It’s not wholly on Plex if he insists on using FreeBSD instead of some other Linux distro.
I think I made the mistake of voicing a rare (personal) positive of Plex.
If the guys who followed on from me are assuming correctly, then… well I will leave it there.
regarding gracenote functionality; it’s just ‘ok’, but not what I would consider ‘awesome’.
I have a 200k+ track local music library and google play music ‘feeling lucky’ more often gives better mixes than any of the various plex/gracenote mixes.
There are TONS of users who long ago discovered that Plex + FreeNAS is a match made in heaven. One only needs take a peek on the FreeNAS forums to see how popular this is (most FreeNAS users are easily able to get Plex going without assistance, so few participate on the Plex forums). Luckily Plex has a FreeBSD version so it runs natively at full-speed “on bare metal” on a FreeNAS server without emulation or other trickery/hackery. Unfortunately, Gracenote does NOT work on this very common platform for Plex users, effectively locking them out of the new music features. Meanwhile, other open alternatives do work but unfortunately Plex went with Gracenote.
Yes, we did it for an initial set, and have just started working with them on some user testing of the UI upgrades. It’s been super helpful to allow direct (chat) communication as we’ve been able to have real-time conversations with them about things as well!
Great Popeye reference. Let’s see how I drunk I get tonight.
Hi Elan, will the Apple TV and Android TV get the same UI as well, I ask because I have invested in fire sticks for my house but need something more powerful for my main 4K TV in the living room and having the same UI makes life easier for the wife and kids.
I have asked a simple tech issue with my Plex Pass nd no one has been able to help me. Emby and MrMC play my files with no issues. I think this will be my last time ponying up for Plex Pass. Bummer, I really was enjoying it.
