I have recently come back to using Plex after a couple of years of not really watching TV… my god how things have changed.
I remember the good old days when Plex did exactly what it said on the tin and did it very well. It was the best way to self-host good quality source media and stream it to pretty much anything I could wish for. It never annoyed me and I only ever had very minor issues with library organisation and that was it.
What I am using today is a far cry from what it used to be. I have constant issues with playback, crashes, sub-optimal transcoding formats, interruptions in the form of incorrectly identified ad breaks and credits half-way through shows, hell… even scrubbing backwards through a video causes some clients to outright hard crash; the most BASIC thing to ask of a video streaming server / client platform.
There are some things it does well for me, like dealing with HDR content, and I think the UI is very pretty, but my overall impression is that of an almost complete reversal of progress on improving the most fundamental parts of the service.
The most egregious part is that while all this is happening (or not), the only thing the devs are apparently focusing on is turning Plex into yet another horrible social network which nobody asked for, and creating a platform on which to share their maliciously collected data against the users’ will. I would say more on this topic but I think that wound is well and truly open already.
On behalf of all your users who used to enjoy your amazing self-hosting platform for what it was: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? Please stop alienating your users with this utter garbage and fix the things that actually matter.
Agreed! Plex,inc took outside investment to make plex,inc a social media network. There was a recent layoff and since then, FTEs that are left in the forums are cannon fodder without leadership help. They are trying their best but it’s apparent that engineering was hit badly.
Further, if a broken system has nothing to do with social media milestone payments, that system appears to stay broken forever. It’s only been 9 years since we have asked for more than one artist to be available per music track - some would say that is an engineering problem too hard for plex,inc to fix, especially post-reorg.
Not one executive (Keith is far too good to address users) has even apologized for showing hardcore porn to children when Discover rolled out initially. I’m betting Keith needed that milestone payment deeply.
It’s typical of today and I feel sorry for the devs who created such a good thing in the first place. FWIW, my rant was definitely not aimed at them, rather the corporate idiots who are apparently taking over and trying to ruin their great work.
I imagine most of their meetings these days start along the lines of an overly-excited “OMG hey guys, what if we…” and end with some nonsensical woke BS idea which leaves anyone with a technical mind with their heads in their hands.
It’s a depressing time to be alive when everything good gets inevitably destroyed in the end.
The various plex lab and side project apps are pretty good and only slightly impacted by the Discovery social media thing. They also continue to get some improved and new features that are not focussed on the social media aspect.
This one will hurt the most with forced social media integration, but then again: not even Spotify or Apple can get social media right on music so perhaps Plexamp will be spared.
I know this is not what you want to hear or read, but this is the state of the world. This is the world we have all opted in for. Nothing is free anymore, humanity has decided that making an insane amount of profit and wealth accumulation is the single most important endgame. It separates people from a “life of economic misery” and gives them power.
So unfortunately plex has grown a few tumours and the parasites which are venture capitalists have attached themselves to that growth and infected it, taking over and now demanding it grow bigger to feed their collective puss addicted souls.
There is nothing we can do about it, because the next service you choose, which is free, remember, plex started like them, and chances are they will end up like plex. Plex just grew and grew and free things don’t pay for themselves and with Data being the single biggest most lucrative commodity of our times, it’s no wonder they are pushing the drug of 2020s, social media.
Maybe it’s time to dust off the good ol WD hub I was using a decade ago. Sure, it doesn’t have the UI interface of Plex, but hey it still played tv shows and movies and that’s all that matters in the end.
I would possibly use the Discover Together, but would be much more selective of who I share it with (and what).
What really sucks about how Plex rolled it out is that they first made everyone you shared your server with in the past your “friend”. Then they sent out a blanket email to those friends of what you’re watching.
And yes, I know that there was a form where that information was presented (at least for many users), but I think the big issue is a lot of people didn’t fully understand it, and aren’t going to take the time to read through blog posts, emails, etc. to learn about it. They just want to watch TV!
I don’t think the social media aspect of Plex is necessarily bad, but needs way more options to control what is being shared and with who. I could even see wanting to share with a small group of friends a new movie I have on my server (but would no way in he!! want that to go through Plex servers).
