You can find almost thousands of entries that go back almost 6 years where it’s all about the apps reset the settings again and again. Alone from me are certainly 20 such posts from the last few years and again and again someone came forward who then said that was not possible, once set that remains so. That is only in the rarest cases really so. I have to make on average every 3 months, my 50 users a mail that you should check your settings. I have written a 12 page manual for all players that are in use with pictures of what the users have to set. It is really sad that it is not possible to say the admin enters it per user and done. Then it is stored safely always and can be retrieved even when changing devices, etc. directly. It’s really unbelievable that you have to let the users do that, half of whom barely know how to turn on a cell phone and make calls.
The problem is that Plex thinks the users should be able to make adjustments at any time, I just wonder what for, since most users simply don’t know what the individual settings really mean. So why can’t the admin set it, who 1. knows and knows what his server can and can’t take? It might be a problem to get fast connections in the USA or Australia. For me it is not a problem in Switzerland and everyone can play original without problems. Only very often transcoding is unnecessary and the users often do not see that you transcode because it is not noticeable to them, but it costs me electricity and a lot of nerves to go through this over and over again with the people. I’ve also had friends say that it’s too much of a hassle with Plex, the sad thing is that I have to agree with them. Instead of setting it up cleanly once, I have to go over it with my users every few months and then they claim that this is not possible from the Plex programmers and Plex ninjas. Just sad the whole support.
It is repeated again and again that one listens to the users and one works majority for the own media. I’ve been with them for 8 years and honestly have to say it doesn’t seem that way to me. Even if you look at the changes in recent months, you come to the same conclusion. Very much DVR, music and scanner adjustments, which often do not make it better. The new scanners are often only after weeks in German, the old kams from the 1st day, now I often have to make 2-3x the Plex dance until the text, etc. everything is in German. In the series are still no IMDB ratings possible, etc. I can think of 100erte little things that could be implemented quickly. It really seems to me that they are working more and more only for the US market and are more interested in becoming a multiplatform for all the other streaming services instead of satisfying the users who originally funded them.
Also, if you compare it to the two competitors, it’s obvious that they have a lot more programmers, but the competition is much faster in implementing new features. Not really comprehensible for me. Especially since in the other projects many only work on the side and here quite a few people work full time for Plex and yet new features and bug fixes take what feels like eternities.
But all the excitement is unfortunately useless. Since the few responsible really take the time to take care of us admins nor finally makes practical changes. Alone the account control and division would have to be completely revised from my point of view, currently you have to do patchwork everywhere and create categories twice to separate it cleanly because you can not set some per category or even 4K media cleanly to say no transcoding strictly, for this I had to create a separate 4K server. Anything but practical and environmentally friendly.
