@lezardon
thanks a lot for the hint. i tried it and it worked. allthough not exactly in the way you desribed with your screenshots.
i had to assign the volume controls to “Up (held)” and “Down (held)”
Because assigning them to “Up” and “Down” just simply renders the remote useless inside PMP. It takes away the up/down navigation. I would love to use it the way you have set it up. Because now the volume controls are working but since they need to wait for a couple of seconds to kick in it makes controlling the volume a rather dreadful experience. but at least it works.
@Boomen
Thanks to you, too! I installed OpenPHT and it was a wonderful experience. Up to the last minutes after having set up everything perfectly i had to realize that it isnt working with my apple remote. Simply didnt respond. Rebooted. Reinstalled.
Nothing helped. That was really frustrating.
But I was so happy to about OpenPHT so I even tried using Remote Buddy to circumvent that apple remote stuff (allthough it seems stupid to use Remote Buddy with OpenPHT since it is bragging to be compatible with so many remote including the apple remote). But even Remote Buddy couldnt really help. Because regardless of what i set up the volume controls would just simply be displayed but not changed upon using the remote.
After 1 wasted hour I gave up and now i´m back to using the all new shiny Plex Media Player with Remote Buddy as a workaround for starting Plex (long press menu button) and controlling the volume (long press up/down).
All in all I am for the first time really deeply disappointed by what plex is delivering. I just cant get my mind over the fact that they made controlling the volume so inaccessible. I just would love to read an explanation for this stuff since it seems just senseless to me at the moment.
I discovered the new Plex Media Player long time ago and didnt use it for a reason. Now i wasted much time, have to buy additional helper software and the result is a significant deterioration in user experience.
Well, obviously a background section of my brain will from now be on the watch for alternatives. A task i didnt have to do since years having been a satisfied plex user.
Thanks for the feedback. In fact you have to use up (held) /down (held) otherwise it will interacting with other options. I have taken the habit and I cannot say it is really nightmare. Just different
I was forced to update to PMP because PHT was not able to read HEVC video codec and this codec is more and more popular.
I also miss the interface of PHT, especially for vertical scrolling. Horizontal scrolling is awful in term of ergonomy. How to convince the developers to add an option for vertical scrolling to PMP and other plateforms ?
hmmm … i hope i will get used to it soon, but at the moment it´s really a pain in the "$%&§&.
the responsiveness is down because first you have to wait holding the up/down button for seconds before the PMP starts reacting and then the increments of the volume setting are now far more smaller than in in PHT.
In PHT you used to have 0 dB as the maximum and then it went down into the negative quite fast
now you have 100% as the maximum volume and it goes down to 0% by 1% increments.
am i the only person who controls the volume quite often during a movie in plex?
Not at all! It also happens to me lots of times, so I’m stuck with the old PHT for the moment and I am waiting eagerly that PMP comes with these crippling troubles being fixed. I am really disappointed by this new software, which brings few useful improvements but loses several benefits of the previous version.
But since the last sign of life from plex regarding this issue seems to be in this thread and from december last year, i am not so sure they treat this issue as an important one. All the live tv stuff isnt doing anything for plex users outside US i understand… which is OK for me as long as they dont degrade working apps for all users at the same time. why force publish PMP if it doesnt come near the existing PHT that is to be dumped?
I’m having the same issue with the remote not working at all whenever I
switch between the 3 options I now have installed (Plex Media Player,
OpenPHT, and the Plex plugin running on Kodi). From what I’ve read each of
these programs claims exclusive use of the remote so the other programs
can’t use them.
Solution is to cycle through the different remote options in the settings
till you’re back at the the apple remote. (Both standard and universal seem
to work for me)
You’ll have to have keyboard handy when cycling through the options
because you’re have to select “none” at one point. Sometimes starting it
with no remote selected and then setting the option to the apple remote
works too.
The other option is to disable the apple remote under “system preferences”,
security and privacy, Advanced, in OSX and then enabling it again.
Sorry for the vague instructions. Only thing I know about this is something
with all the programs taking exclusive use of the remote. If someone knows
a better way to do this let me know. Just fiddle around a bit, once you get
the remote working with OpenPHT you’re good to go, if you don’t run media
player again. If you do, you’ll have go through this process again.
But since the last sign of life from plex regarding this issue seems to be
in this thread and from december last year, i am not so sure they treat
this issue as an important one. All the live tv stuff isnt doing anything
for plex users outside US i understand… which is OK for me as long as
they dont degrade working apps for all users at the same time. why force
publish PMP if it doesnt come near the existing PHT that is to be dumped?
Thanks Boomen for your efforts. I always had only one plex client installed. in case to avoid running into any of mentioned remote-claiming issues.
After your post i gave OpenPHT another shot. No success. I followed your instructions and even tried rebooting the whole machine after switching off the remote in the system prefs and in OpenPHT and setting harmony remote, then standard, then universal … nothing works. My apple remote just opens iTunes if i click the play/pause button, anything else just doesnt work.
Before again deinstalling OpenPHT i tried to use it with Remote Buddy activated. And to my surprise this works.
I can now navigate through my libraries AND control the volume using up/down buttons (even without the long press).
I removed the long up/down press configs from Remote Buddy and even then it worked:
I have no explanation for this and therefore i am happy but not that overwhelmed. All of this should work without all this fiddling aroung and involving third party software that maybe doesnt solve the problem after some updates …
But at least I can use OpenPHT now and I hope it will still work this way in the future.
thanks for your help!!
Quick Update: i just found out that it actually doesnt work to control the volume in OpenPHT using the apple remote.
it only worked because i was connected via teamviewer to my macmini while setting it up. As soon as i activate the correct source on my samsung TV the whole volume control thing stops working. I assume it has to do with the sound being sent to my Samsung TV via HDMI. Anyway, as soon as the macmini is outputting to the TV the volume up/down buttons simply just display the current dB level that is set at that moment (e.g. -13 dB) but cant change it.
So i´m back to the start… this is really annoying.
@walkhalily said:
Quick Update: i just found out that it actually doesnt work to control the volume in OpenPHT using the apple remote.
No Idea what you are talking about. I have openPHT running on my Mac Mini and volume control with my Apple remote works perfectly.
But holy fing st I CANNOT believe they still did not manage to get this to work in PMP… Honestly, PMP is slow as f*k and needs twice the button input… so its a big disappointment anyways (though I am sure they can fix that… just do the same as you did for iOS: allow Users to go back to the simple and useful “browse” layout…
BUT: No volume control = NOT USABLE AT ALL
I went back to openPHT after literally 3 minutes. And I really wanted to like it…
@walkhalily did you get your HDMI Sound issue fixed?
Other wise I can check my settings because I had the same with PHT on Mac mini connected to a Samsung TV.
BR
The only long-term workable solution is to support SCOPE for inputmaps, the same way the old Plex used to work. That’s the ability to define/re-define the actions of buttons dependent on what part of the Plex UI is being used.
Plex doesn’t seem willing to change the default behavior and that won’t help someone who wants something different anyway.
In addition to allowing for scope in inputmaps, LONG press for buttons/keys also needs to be supported. This is something else missing that used to be in PHT.
In my own software for the Apple Remote I’ve had to set up some defaults for the current PMP for general customer use, but they’re a compromise based on the limitations of Plex itself.
It’s sad that nothing has changed or has even been considered since the beginning of this post… Thanks to OpenPHT to allow us a proper experience of Plex, far better than the PMP one.
I the meantime I switched to the new PMP while using RemoteBuddy to trick PMP in letting me use the Apple Remote. So now I use the long press UP and DOWN for volume control. Its totally annoying and I avoid controlling the volume the most time because of its clumsy response. At first of course nothing happens, but as soon as PMP recognizes the long press it hurdles up the volume range super fast. So its so hard and annoying to control it that way, that I instinctively learned to avoid it at all.
as stated by tobiashieta in December 2016 it´s something plex they “want to fix in the future for sure”
So we should know that this does not mean that it´s gonna be done in 15 months.
To be fair I don´t know if in the meantime plex decided to deliberately scrap that feature after all - it certainly as if they did so.
Additionally PMP sadly is impressively slow the most time. So the idea of leaving abandoning plex at all or giving OpenPHT a new shot always lures in the background. Just a question of again dedicating my time to fix something that already worked.
It’s really bad and not understandable how and why such decissions are made.
Looks like the old desktop app is not important anymore.
Perhaps people prefer DVR features over basic features like volume control.
It’s only a minor problem that DVR is only usable somewhere in the US under laboratory conditions.
My EyeTV can do all this, so there is no need for it at all, unless it would support EyeTV … but…
I had PMP installed and tried to get used to it. It’s impossible. Total opposite of what my family and myself expect.
I tried OpenPHT but also can’t live with certain bugs of it (like no multipart movies supported).
So I went back to PHT. And it’s still by far, the best experience you can have with Plex!
I had to freeze my Software setup, because I don’t want to risk that a future plex server uptade makes
my PHT Desktop APP unusuable.
But given the “new, super plus, premium, plex pass” features are features 90% of the world can’t or don’t want to use, this
is the best option for me.
Plex once was the best media center. Nowadays it’s a bit mediacenter, a bit cloud, a bit of media streamer (but not the important ones) a bit of everything but nothing really good.
hmmm … thats really sad.
so which server version are you using now?
maybe I too i should preserve the last working plex server version and PHT for “future” use in case things break heavily.
@kroeatschge said:
I tried OpenPHT but also can’t live with certain bugs of it (like no multipart movies supported).
It’s strange, multipart parts movies work fine for me, with this software (Plex Server 1.10.1.4602 and OpenPHT 1.8.0) and a strict respect of files suffixing.
thanks a lot kroeatschge!! So a quite recent version from December 2017.
But do you have any idea how I can download that version now?
Because Plex obviously does not make older versions easily available from what I can see. There is a thread that describes it but that version number you gave me enough for downloading. There is a list of the exact version “spelling” that can be used to build the download url and get the desired file. For example the 1.9.3.4290 version needs the string “1.9.3.4290-9798172d4” to be used in that url to get to the download: https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-media-server/1.9.3.4290-9798172d4/PlexMediaServer-1.9.3.4290-9798172d4-OSX.zip
@walkhalily the reason it won’t work is that I’m using a Synology Diskstation as Server. It’s possible that
DSM Server versions and OSX Server Versions do not match.
You can try PHT at any time with your current server. If it’s ok, keep a copy of the installation file.
