I agree on that. If a company wants to make a kitchen sink product that has opt-in features and does NOT negatively affect the reasons we started using Plex to begin with, I don’t mind either.
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What do you mean by this? I run Harmony hubs on both main TVs. One is a Roku Ultra (no on-screen keyboard on that one but navigation otherwise works fine) and the other is a Shield. They both work with my Harmony hub without issue. The Harmony is controlling the hardware device, not the Plex app. AFAIK, even the standalone remotes can do this. I just had more devices in place than the remotes I have could handle.
Am I missing something else related to the “PlexPi” thing? I also run Kodi builds on RPis that I have PlexForKodi on without issue.
I am curious about this because I have long wanted a regular Plex client for the RPi. They would make awesome, cheap streaming boxes!
The challenge is that Plex,inc doesn’t know what the definition of “opt-in” is. Plex,inc continually lies to us paying users on that front so I’m not optimistic at all. Plex,inc has a corporate goal of using dark patterns to trick paying users into sharing private information, this point is not in dispute.
Plex,inc thinks that blindly clicking yes throughout the setup process is opt-in.
I did get somewhere with the EU GDPR commissioner’s office, hopefully testing the strength of the Plex D&O insurance due to Plex,inc’s lying to us paying users and the max fine is levied.
I don’t expect Kevin to acknowledge this. Every Plex,inc FTE has abandoned the threads, I would say on a demand from Keith or Jason or even general counsel. But us paying users need to remember that Plex,inc is still lying to us about what plex,inc thinks opt-in means.
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I’m not precisely sure what I mean because I haven’t yet built a “headless” RPi / Plexamp. My understanding is the UI for that particular rig lives on a phone or tablet, and there’s no on-screen display like you see when you run Plexamp on your phone. You just get a PCM stream out of the HDMI port for your AVR to be the DAC for. I guess it shows up as Dolby Digital.
If (big if) a future RPi Plex Appliance could be controlled by a one-handed remote like a Roku is, that would be great. Bonus points if my current solution (Logitech Harmony IR or RF Hub) can be made to work. The ability to use old Roku remotes instead, or even Wii controllers would be very cool. Second best is something like a K400 Logitech Wireless Keyboard & Touchpad Combo with media buttons. Third best is a phone or tablet. Then there’s the problem of volume control on the Denon AVR, currently solved by the now-discontinued Logitech Harmony. DW doesn’t want multiple remotes. Neither do I. It’s already a pain using the Plex Channel/app on the Roku for some things but having to do others (like schedule DVR two weeks hence) on the web UI.
But I don’t know yet how Plexamp headless works right now – I’m thinking about what it would take to dump Roku and set up Plex for long-term success without having to build hardware. Sort of like pfSense.
Make sense?
It’s a neat little project, a good analogy is a self-built chromecast audio.
Currently, yes, Phone/Tablet or web interface is the only way to control. And it works well.
My use case is that I have a DAC on my pi4 so the flow is: Plex Server controlled by either phone or plex app on PC, to plexamp pi to onboard DAC to RCA to hifi amp. It’s awesome for flac listening.
Once multiple artists are fixed in the music library databases, I can drop spotify. Plexamp is that good for my use case (and high WAF once complete).
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Thanks. I have a 1L PC downstairs someplace I thought I’d experiment with instead of buying more hardware. Maybe paying too much for a genuine RPi is the best way to go. We’ll see.
Damned right I do. This isn’t the mission we signed up for… nor is it the one we were promised years ago when we began investing in Plex. PlexAmp doesn’t even cover music as a solution to your “new direction”. The app is not available in platforms I use. My music was set up via the Plex app for Alexa… which was hooked into my home theater. All I had to do was tell Alexa to play “The White Album” on Plex and my room filled with music. Now you’re removing that ability. I might as well go with those “other” services and just kill Plex altogether. Yeah… I get that I’m the minority. But this minority does pay for a Plex Pass and did invest in the product at one point in it’s development; which leads me to ask… what are you going to do about this “new direction” to keep US? Or do we no longer matter? I don’t understand you people. You’ve bloated the hell outta Plex over the years with senseless crap we don’t WANT… and now you wanna take away features that your competition HAS and we need. Do you ENJOY shooting yourselves in the foot, much?
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This is something I think it would help to keep in mind when trying to discuss with Plex - the business - about something. I feel that sometimes there are high expectations from Plex users around what being a ‘customer’ means to Plex, Inc these days and sometimes that leads to missed solution possibilities.
The new business customers must be a significant part of that number.
Those of us in the forums are mostly local media management folks and represent a tiny fraction of Plex’s current customer base - based on some of the things Plex reps have said over time (including in the recent fireside’s). Even with some observation bias you can get a feel for which topics get more engagement. At least from my own perspective.
There aren’t dedicated categories for the rentals or live TV and if you look at the tags they are pretty sparse (“rentals” tag only has 3 topics). Partly that’s because they’re mostly covered by the server side. That fits with the new business that relies on the server software so resources are provided for server support and are still very good. Our local media playback client issues don’t get that same attention (I’m being selfish linking one of my own). 
That’s because local media client issues are very unique situations requiring personal attention for an ever increasing “niche” use (see some comments in that linked post for more on that, this is already gonna be long - sorry). That means a lot of resources are spent on managing one-off issues; that’s a lot of overhead for a business.
Streaming services like the rentals and live TV and social\discover features are a dedicated platform managed directly by Plex, so that’s a much more standardized environment which requires a lot less user support. It also means regular income for the business in the form of rentals, ads, and data collection from viewing and social telemetry. That’s less overhead associated to recurring income which equals more profit and returns.
That’s the opposite of us folks only using Plex for local media who aren’t providing any new income. Essentially, anytime one of us says “I’m a lifetime plexpass owner and don’t care about streaming” we’re telling Plex they got all the money they’re going to get from us already. We’re a former customer… not a current customer; just a user.
Not to say Plex won’t continue to do work on their “legacy” product. There are still employees and reps who are very dedicated to helping users and many employees are users themselves and want to see improvements too. Plus, there are incentives for Plex to keep from ditching the local media management functionality and community that was built the last several years. For the foreseeable future anyways.
I don’t say all this to vilify Plex. A lot of this is just how business revenue expectations work these days and Plex seems to be following some of those expectations. It’s just disappointing and frustrating for many of us specifically in these forums and I think that disconnection sometimes makes it difficult for us to communicate effectively. I don’t always do it well myself, that’s for sure.
Suffice to say I still think Plex continues to be the easiest local media management platform to adopt and manage while still providing excellent features and functionality compared to the other common options… even if it’s not as reliable or community driven as it used to be.
Don’t pay me too much mind though… I’m just frustrated with some of the changes over the years and wanted to say something for myself I guess. Like many have said here… I hope to see things go well in the future.
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Since that thread is locked - it would be a really good start if you allow local user switching on logged-in systems so we are not blocked from local user switching when your service or the Internet goes down.
That would be a good start.
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Some things I like a lot, some not at all. But that happens when you’re not working on your own project for your own use.
Finally building in NFO support and expanding on API access is great for those of us who use Plex for our local assets - especially ones that can’t be pulled from online sources.
I personally don’t care about social aspects, but since Plex doesn’t force users to add local media, do allow a full and complete opt-out of any social features. This opt-in/out will get you actually more, rather than less, subscribers since you can fully cater to both sides. And with privacy laws popping up more and more, you have to be weary of collecting too much information that increases any fines.
We tried the new photos app beta, and it is actually quite a nice start. Turns out we are happy about having it in a different mobile app. Makes it cleaner.
Tried PlexAmp before, but because of the current limiting Plex database backend and the way licensing works I did not like it. We ended up with a family subscription music service because we found Plex neither useful on mobiles for our family nor useful through Amazon Echo device integrations.
I like Plex and if more “fancy” features get you to be alive, then do spend time on that. But don’t forget that there are a lot of different users out there and use Opt In/Out wherever possible. Spending some time on that will actually give you more users. It’ll be worth it.
Oh - and try to listen to your users. Not everyone will ask you to “have more horses on the carriage” rather than building an automobile, but some people may suggest power steering and cupholders.
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This maybe speaks to the unworkability of lifetime passes as a business model. At first they seem great: revenue acceleration! More revenue is more staff, more staff is faster iteration. But at some point the bill comes due; at some point you’re relatively saturated and you can’t extract any more revenue from the people who would have otherwise been the most dedicated customers. I think it’s a little cynical to say “well, customers should expect lifetime doesn’t really mean lifetime because it’s not workable as a business model”. Customers aren’t the ones that offered the business model!
My broader sense is it’s totally reasonable to expect a business to pay attention to 99% of their customers instead of 1% of their customers. But if that’s the case, on the business side it’s better to cut bait entirely than to keep people on the line. In Plex’s case, the analogy would be that if being an ad-supported VOD service is where 99% of their users and profit is, that’s what they should do, and if personal media is some vestigial thing, I think open sourcing the core local media infrastructure would be the move. That way they can pivot to pay attention to the thing that actually pays staff salaries and the community can continue to improve the product it uses. But no one asked me. After all, I’ve already given them all the money they’ll get from me, like a chump.
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Thinking about lifetime passes, I wonder if they could create an incentive to subscribe for other things outside the server. Perhaps a monthly subscriber could get one free rental a month, and maybe a higher tier could get ad free streaming.
I would rather there just be the option for lifetime pass holders to be able to do a monthly “donation” subscription.
Then the incentive would just be based on maintaining and improving current satisfaction of using plex.
As it stands there is no way for me as a lifetime pass holder to contribute any more money despite there being times where I have wanted to as I feel like I’ve gotten enough use out of it since purchasing in 2017 to chip in more.
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Donation subscription sounds like an interesting idea.
There could also be an option for feature fundraising, but I think Plex is too big to be doing that.? At least usually only small developers do it to see if there is enough demand for a feature. It doesn’t necessarily need to cover development costs, but give an indication of how many people are willing to pay for it and therefore how much it would increase the value for all users - even the ones who never go to the forums.
And then there could always be donations for feature releases. For when you say - wow - I have been waiting my whole life for this. I’d like to give them some money as a thank you and to show them they are on the right track.
I’d be curious though of the 16 million users - how many actually make it to the forums? Even just following the e-mail blasts.
I do have a Plex Pass, but my username has Plex in it from way before I got active in a forum and I avoid posting with it here to avoid any confusion.
I sure hope the browser versions are still supported! I don’t want to have download a separate app to view my music, and PlexAmp simply doesn’t stack up for PC use or library management, the current system is already ideal, it has it’s flaws, but changing it would be a major slap in the face. I payed for lifetime because I love Plex and it’s devs, but I would hate to have given my money to something that’s going to take it use it to remove my primary use case of the product. I mean a major point of plex is having everything in one place, ripping that from the product would just make in less convenient to use and force most of us to find a Plex alternative.
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I use a Roku for the stereo setup in my garage specifically for it being the cheapest way to stream my music and to be able to see what is playing at the same time. I can use Plexamp as the remote while I am working on a project or having a camp fire in my driveway. If music playback goes away in the TV apps, I hope a Plexamp app is being developed to replace this functionality.
I also think it is a good idea for the management of all the media libraries be in one location, one app. The web app is what I use exclusively for managing my media and libraries. Needing to go to different places to manage the different media types on the same server is not efficient.
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We agree. There are no plans to manage different types of libraries in different apps. Or, said a different way but saying the same thing, the original post here calls out an intent to create a single, improved, bespoke management experience that would work on web and also finally give a good experience to managing a server on a mobile device.
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I just hope you guys kept in mind features for existing users you’ve had in place for a while, like collections and music videos, when planning all this, and not just, ‘deciding to break these things’.
How would collections work now in apps when you have a movie in the ‘Movie & TV app’ on your TV and a soundtrack for that movie in the ‘Music app’ on your phone, in a collection together?
You gonna show it on the TV but the user can’t access it that way, gotta use your music app/phone?
Not show it at all? Hope the user already knows the collection has music in it and goes to check the music app after watching the movie?
Stop showing collections in client apps altogether except for the server management portion?
Music videos for matched music tracks inline in the music library? Was that remembered at all?
Edit: And really I hope this isn’t ‘what we’re enabling 3rd party client apps’ or whatever to figure out. Wouldn’t feel right being forced to use a 3rd party solution for an actual (non-hack, official) feature the other thing I originally paid for supposedly ‘supports’. Especially when those 3rd party devs might try to then themselves charge me for their 3rd party app to display the thing I thought I already paid for with the other thing.
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I mean as long as we can still access and listen to all libraries all from the same app, and UI isn’t radically changed, then I’ll be happy.
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