This ticket was opened in August of 2019 and now has over 1700 comments on it with 1281 votes. So far the simple request of changing the default value of a dropdown box has been completely ignored, and they have instead made UI changes no one wants (repetitively), added their own streaming and rental platform no one asked for, dabbled in music for a bit that no one really used and then abandoned it, and yet they still continue to ignore the basic features and functionality of their core software. Controlling our own media is what drew 99% of us to Plex in the first place, and that seems to be the last thing they are interested in helping us with. It’s our media but we can only watch it the way they say and how they want. We can’t even get them to change a simple setting in their software when over a thousand of us have asked for the exact same thing, and it should be a 10 second change for them. Their explanations of why they can’t seem to do it have not made any sense to anyone. They just won’t do it because they don’t want to. There’s no other explanation. Intentionally aggravating their user base further and further every day.
I finally got frustrated last week (not sure why it’s taken so long) and decided to try and resolve this myself. With a little help from some AI, cause I’m not much of a coder, I added an NGINX proxy on my Plex server to modify inbound headers from the Plex clients before they reach the server, and then built my own device hardware profiles on the Plex server itself overwriting the defaults Plex supplies. I’ve now resolved most of my transcoding issues on all hardware platforms without having to contact my users or have them make any changes at all. I’m actively blocking the new Quality Suggestion feature (that was supposed to help but made everything way worse), devices are upgrading everything to Direct Play/Direct Stream or encouraging 1080p whenever possible (unless manually adjusted by the user), and ALL my buffering complaints have completely stopped. All of them. I haven’t had a single buffering complaint from any user on any device in almost a week, and also haven’t received a single buffering alert from Tautulli in over 6 days.
All modifications are on the server/proxy side. This took a little over 5 hours of testing on a Saturday afternoon BY MYSELF, and now a week later this is what I’m seeing from my users on all different platforms this morning. It all just works.
So if I can fix your software in half a day by writing a little code and not knowing how any of your software actually works, what’s your excuse after 7 years for not changing ONE SINGLE EXISTING SETTING for us on YOUR OWN SOFTWARE Plex?
Well? Anyone? Yeah, didn’t think so.
