Client Profiles still relevant?

Plex Media Server
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1

It’s about the client profiles in PMS. Specifically, I came across the following forum post:
Writing profiles for DLNA devices

Now I am interested in the relevance of these profiles and this post today. Are they still relevant or have they perhaps been superseded by other technologies or improvements in Plex? Do they only apply to DLNA? How exactly do the “augmented profiles” work? Can clients override any of the settings in the profiles?

I’ve tried to research this topic, but it seems unnecessarily complicated. Even the augmented profiles part seems to be under NDA.
X-Plex-Client-Profile-Extra Documentation

I’m also a little surprised that there isn’t a central point of contact for customized client profiles yet. Surely this would be a prime example of a Github repo where the community could collaboratively tweak profiles.

It would be fantastic if someone could share their experience or knowledge to shed light and help me better understand these aspects of Plex.

2

Am facing the exact same question/problem right now and looking forward to input. Because I have Samsung models that try a “Direct Play”, however, in the end, the terminal is not suitable for this, so I’m thinking of leveraging that with a profile that they then transcode automatically for certain formats.

3

Same here, so we need to worry about client profile xml files anymore.? are they used?

4

Native Plex clients nowadays are using a very generic, basic profile as basis.
Then, the client app is either asking the hardware about its capabilities or is looking up the device class in its own internal table. Then the basic profile is “augmented” using this information to add abilities which go beyond the basic profile.

So no, there is no need to mess around with device profiles nowadays.

5

Thank you for this insightful explanation.