I would love to get RAR-support back into PMC. For me TranspRAR is not a good solution (crashes etc).
Although not a developer myself, I know the guys well enough to be able to say that this will never be looked at, no matter how many users pine for it.
The reason is that it won’t ever be possible to implement RARs into the transcoding/streaming/media analysis backend, that the philosophy of Plex is based on.
Best to use feature request voices for other things 
All feature requests are equally valid We really want to know which features are important to the community, and if there’s high demand for a feature we’ll definitely consider it. We can’t guarantee that all requested features will be added, however - we’re still a relatively small team & need to prioritise what we work on based on the development cost & benefit to the user base as a whole.
Ah, then i know why it havent been done since V. 8 :)
I´m also not an developer and what you say might be true for the code from XBMC, but might not be if the Plex-guys creates the solution themselves.
Ah this old chestnut… I did find myself wanting this back when v9 first came out, but have since found using a 3rd party tool to watch for RARs and extract them.
Having PMS extract on the fly still has it’s charms, but I found if the content is extracted I can easily copy the file using SMB / FTP to my iOS devices for viewing at the gym.
I’ve gotten so used to no RAR support I’m honestly not sure whether I’d use it or not these days.
That said, some of the guys at work will never be able to use Plex until it has RAR support built in, their files are stored on a NAS, making RAR processing that little bit trickier.
Sorry for bringing up this old thread. Which program do you use to autoextract the rar files?
+1 for the feature to play rar files within Plex as well :)
Probably the only feature I miss..
You could use TranspRAR, then you dont need to unRAR you’re files. Otherwise an AppleScript could solve it. Havent fine it myself though.
Im on PC, only solution I have found is the vmbox with linux rar2fs and samba solution. Complicated but seems to get the job done.
Looking for all possible solutions as Im soon getting a new server hardware and want to set it up as good as possible. Im dealing with lots of rars daily though and from what it seems many are not letting this old trandition of shrinking stuff go.
Plex is the way, im not in any position to change it out as there isnt anything close to usable when it comes to using it on my smartphones when im traveling and from any computer Im using.
But some autoextract application might be one way of solving my problems some.
If you’re on osx, the best and easiest solution is Hazel http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel
if you don’t want to spend money, or you’re not on osx but on other unix systems, you can have a look at maid: https://github.com/benjaminoakes/maid/ it will require a bit of ruby knowledge though
Hazel is what I use....
After Transmissions is done downloading the files are moved into a "Downloads to be Processed" folder where hazel does:
1. Trashes "Sample Folders"
2. Deletes any Empty Folder
3. Moves into the Subfolders
4. Unarchives any archives it finds and then moves the resulting file into a new folder were other actions (renaming the file removing periods and such ) happen
5. Trashes any unwanted files like .txt .nfo .sfv files (I get my info from TheTVDB)
6. Moves any Standalone video file (for those torrents that just contain the tv show and no Archives)
From Step 4 files are placed into a Renaming folder where Hazel does the following
Searches for files that are in a specified filename and based off of that it renames them to "Show Name - S[Season Number]E[Episode Number].extention"
after that the file is moved to another folder to remove periods from the filename using "A better finder rename droplet that just removes periods" and finally the file is sent to my TV Shows Directory inside it's respective TV show folder where plex scans for changes and adds it to its library.
Attached is the rules I have Hazel use, it works pretty much flawlessly
I forgot where I found most of the help to build the rules, but I know it was a link or two off of Noodlesoft's forum page.
a few files get stuck in the process, but mainly those are "daily shows" like Real-Time and David Letterman, but those few files I can manually fix
DLM,that is pretty much the same as my workflow, minus the renaming which i don’t need, and plus a call to subliminal ( https://github.com/Diaoul/subliminal ) to handle automatic subtitles download which at least in my case works way much better than the subtitles agent in plex
Hazel is probably good if you download new stuff. If you have tons of rar-archive it’s pretty messy. Plex really doesn’t need rar-support as rar2fs does the work just perfectly. If you run windows, you need linux in a emulator. If you run linux or mac your all set!
I don't see any reason why this shouldn't be included, it's simple to implement and it can be done transparently, just another paid supporter requesting this feature
Another +1 - for me it's the most vital feature missing from Plex.
Still wanted, only thing I'm missing from XBMC.
Early 2021 clean-up: fast asleep…
