@elan, I don’t know how many times you’ve heard this, but I really appreciate your being openly responsive lately, even (or especially) in the face of vitriol.
I really do feel that one of Plex’s greatest weaknesses over the time I’ve used it has been its approach to customer service, so I really am glad that you are interacting with the community and in a way that lets us actually feel connected with the devs.
I just thought I would chime in since I am the OP and I have read most every reply in the thread and haven’t replied in a while. I too appreciate the interaction, I have been enlightened both in a positive and negative way throughout. Knowledge is great and how you use it means everything, for both the consumer and the developer.
Since my original, OH HELL NO shock of the Roku app changes, I have played with different UIs, servers, and even built a lifetime pass with Emby to head to head. I can say that neither app UI follows consistent flows between platforms. For example, with FireTV the Plex app’s UI is different than the Roku app. User experience shouldn’t vary that much, really. All I want is my left folder navigation pane back, less clicks to find my media, and less telling me what I want to watch. No, I won’t eat my peas, tyvm!
Anyway I have mixed, matched, blended, I have found myself resorting to watching Plex via a web browser with laptop on my lap. That UI is exactly what fits my needs. Sad that I chose that delivery instead of my big screen TV. That is just sad.
I like PlexDVR integration with my HDHomeRun. I like Plex and how it transcodes my media. I can’t say that it is better than Emby in any functionality, it is simply what I am used to. The winner of my media will be the company that figures out how to put the dang Plex web UI into a Roku app!
my 2 cents…
I have been a PLEX user for about 2 1/2 years now & have been very happy with the design & functionality of the software.
I only use local files for TV, MUSIC & MOVIES
due to the needs of PLEX I now own:
home workstation/server
Samsung Tizen telly
3 X 4tb HDDs
I have bought the mobile app three times
& have PLEX player on 5 windows devices.
Yesterday, I unknowingly updated the software on my Samsung TV:
It now handles HD very well, that’s the end of the PRO’s
It crashes frequently, it is not a pleasure to navigate anymore and looks messy.
I have been meaning to by Plex Pass for the past 6 months or so. I’m glad that I haven’t, however, I would gladly pay to be able to “Roll-back” to the last update. Even if meant giving up playing HD content.
I can’t help but think that Plex have missed a major aspect of software development. Most software nowadays allow users to toggle on a Beta version to test and feedback, in order to improve the user experience of Plex. However, this is a toggle option. This update definitely wasn’t tested, and has been rolled out looking like a heap of s**t.
oh thank god
Thanks so much, that means a lot to me.
(Believe it or not, I actually really enjoy interacting directly with customers/end-users!)
I understand completely. There are many people to whom abuse produces pleasure. 
Hurt me and make me like it!
Sticks and stones may break my bones;
But whips and chains excite me!!
From a remake of “Sound of Music” as performed by Madonna (Planed but never actually filmed, unfortunately)
Spike heals and tight skirts and whips that can sting,
These are a few of my favorite things.
I have to agree with everyone complimenting @elan for his engagement. It is fantastic to hear his thoughts on Plex and I may be hallucinating but it feels like if Elan could decide everything himself, Plex would be a lot closer to what the active community would prefer.
Being a “Plex man”, I would like to have “everything” through my beloved Plex interface. I hate swapping to AppleTV just to watch Netflix or to some other box for other functionality. Even if I have missed gapless playback and felt that sound quality hasn’t been in par with some competitors, the complete Plex experience has been unbeatable. We also extensively use plugins for our favourite radio stations, some Youtube channels and I wrote a plugin for a website where we have a paid subscription to overcome their poor user interface and to not have to start a computer and stream it to Apple TV which was the only way to view it on our TV without having a computer hooked up. The news about removing plugins worries me a lot since we really don’t want lose the ability to get an integrated Plex experience even with websites that never would make it into the Plex ecosystem.
Really good news came with Tidal and the announcement made me finally signing up for Tidal which I have been reluctant to do since I haven’t found a good way to integrate it in our home.
Unfortunately, Tidal is not yet supported in Plex Media Player and the iOS version doesn’t make sense at all since Tidal already have an iOS app and on the phone I don’t mind switching between apps. The Tidal iOS app is also more responsive and has no buffering problems which leads to a higher sound quality.
So, I started to look into alternatives (now going into the thread subject!).
Emby has been a bit buggy, there wasn’t a good Raspberry Pi version available at the time I tested.
Their plugin policy forbids any “web scraping” so the plugin we use daily with Plex will not be allowed to use with Emby even if I have a paid subscription. I don’t think the Emby UX is as good as Plex, I don’t like the Emby subscriptions and … well, in the end, it’s not Plex!
To get Tidal up and running I have setup another Raspberry Pi running Volumio. Easy setup, good sound quality, reasonably good iOS app but no 10-foot interface for my TV! I don’t want to have a phone in my hand when I listen to music, I want to listen to the music and at most press some buttons on a real remote to adjust volume or skip some tracks. The integration with Tidal suffers from some bugs but the Volumio community is active and since the complete project is open source, anyone can contribute or build their own versions. That said, to get Tidal you also need a Volumio subscription. Volumio is a stand-alone music player and hence I can’t watch any movies and … well, in the end, it’s not Plex!
So my closing comment in this rather elaborate post is an appeal to the board of directors at Plex:
(Any similarities with any presidential statements are purely accidental)
Let’s make Plex great again!
It has always boggled me why this is not the Flagship of the fleet. It’s nearly the one app that everyone has the option of using.
This.^^^
It’s actually considered to be the defacto player. But just seems sadly neglected apart from destroying the UI.
Hopefully if it’s true that MPV on the new Apple TV player does or will do HDR then it may hopefully bode well for PMP in the future.
But then again, the native Apple tv Plex app did HDR just fine anyway even with .mkv
It just always seems to be two steps forward one step back. i.e.
The native Apple TV transcodes the .mkv container but no loss of HDR at about 1% CPU usage.
The new super improved Apple TV app with MPV no longer needs to transcode .mkv (and one day it will be able to do HDR.)
Personally I know which I prefer.
Maybe because mostly PMP is a computer based product and few people have any desire to go to the trouble of hooking a computer to their TV and the even greater problem of making things like “remote control” work correctly.
I have a computer and several other devices hooked to my TV but I use the computer mostly only for things that absolutely do not work correctly through one or another device.
It seems to me that putting a priority on a computer based client would be counter productive to serving the vast majority of users.
BUT, what do I know, Plex has placed high priority on many things that do not serve the needs of many users at all.
Plex’s poor ability to truly make their product better is a major reason I have moved so much use to Emby while keeping a toe in the Plex pond mainly just to see how toxic the water has become. I would remove the toe from the water but it appears that Plex will soon cause the toe to fall off without the need for me to remove it at all.
PMP already supports HDR.
Interesting.
Time to install PMP again.
I can agree with this. If memory serves, you and I are both Roku guys… but not everyone is.
My thought was that PMP is probably the one app that most everyone could, in theory, take a look at because most of us have a PC or Mac. I never meant to assume that it was in use by the most users. I’d wager the numbers might show the opposite.
I need to clarify my comment. PMP supports HDR as in it will tome map HDR to SDR and playback the proper colors. MacOS and Linux do not support outputting HDR at an OS level. Windows does, but MPV currently does not.
HDR to SDR is what the new video player in iOS does too.
@anon18523487 Is tone mapping coming to Plex on Android any time soon? Is ExoPlayer capable?
But that’s why people generally get upset. It’s like everything is left almost where we want it want, but it never gets over that hump to be complete. See collections for another example.
Not sure exactly what you are referring to. If it’s the HDR stuff I said above, those are limitations of the OS or MPV.
I don’t know the status. Checking.
It’s certainly why I got upset.
If I wanted to know if PMP could tonemap to SDR that’s what I would have asked/implied. Don’t get me wrong it’s great that it now does.
But I’m not really sure where anything mentioned by anyone implied anything other than Playing back HDR files with HDR metadata intact.
It seems were saying that Plex can now play HDR on an ever decreasing?? number of clients and that’s progress? Or in other words you may as well just rip/grab your conent in SDR in the first place. But none of that matters because we can now enjoy the “benefits?” of MPV, because @anon18523487 lets be clear…on Windows 10 at least, HDR playback is in no way a limitation of the OS.
I know it was a genuine mistake but it really doesn’t help the situation.
Anyways, I was gonna say thank the lord for MrMC, until i found out earlier their latest release on the Shield broke passthru of Atmos/TrueHD.
What I would give for a full week of trouble free viewing. Be it thru any combination of Plex/Emby or any 3rd part client.
