Does anyone at Plex even read these forums? That’s never been clear to me. It sure does seem from reading on here and in the plex subreddit that users are overwhelmingly against the dropping of plugin support from clients–at least manually installed plugins.
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They do, but they cherry pick what they respond to. Sadly, these days a lot of that is just being defensive rather than providing actual answers (or even a “we hear you”).
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So many years I have wasted on these forums and so many likes I have given.
Never has a truer statement been made on this or any forum…ever.
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That has been my experience over many years as well, and it’s so disappointing. Plex is honestly probably the single most useful and used piece of software that I’ve made a part of my everyday life. I just wish the developers were a bit more customer…friendly.
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ANDDDDDDD here it is. “Curated” cant wait to see the ads on here.
ANDDDDDDD you can disable it. (yawn)
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I also use subzero and trakt constantly, why take away features like this…
syncing your watched history with trakt is a god send for me, multiple times I have had to reinstall my plex server or have had a corrupt database and because of trakt my watched history is always backed up.
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I’m bumping this, because I think it’s a big deal, a really bad and customer unfriendly decision from plex, and I think it’d be great if they’d actually communicate with their paying customers
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I use sub-zero (heavily) & trakt. Removing the plugin support feels like a gut punch from the Plex devs. … Every major update/announcement of new features made, Plex strays further & further away from community/client needs.
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My main use of plex across multiple uses is two plugins that have better support than plex itself… My business employees use plex to view their content we’ve created and help our business grow…
I’ll be more than happy to use social media of 100k users to express my opinion of removing plugins, my 63+ employees who also pay for plex pass will be leaving and expressing their feelings to 1M combined followers as well. Your current business model is trying to grab the casual cordcutters while killing your core customer base, as a business owner in entertainment industry i get it, but youre neglecting the core who could actually help you make a better product and service which means more revenue!
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I agree that I’d like to see plugin support continue as well as the watch later functionality with plex-it. I haven’t had the opportunity to full delve into the plugin support but I did use a few that were useful to me.
My thoughts exactly.
Like many, my reactions, and sentiments were just the same as those that had already sounded off on this thread.
And then I got to thinking more about the problem. It comes down to dollars and cents. After all, Plex is a business. They are a software development company specializing in entertainment and media organization.
What we have witnessed with the premiere of the News function last year was that, Plex bought Watchup, a media streaming company/platform to give us news content. Great. Now, it’s not as great as say Haystack, and Plex News would be even better if RT was banished from the platform, but hey you get my point.
That being said, what do we see in-between news segments in Plex? Commercials. And commercials are…money. Advertising budgets to be more exact.
Now going back to the Plug-in Apocalypse.
@cayars is exactly right. Plug-ins scrape the site we are watching content from. I’m can be sure the Broadcast networks (etc.) do not like this as they are losing advertising income. Consumers love it on the other hand for the convenience of having a one-stop-app to go to and not to have to see commercials (yeah, I love the last part too. Hi-Five!)
What I see is, Plex is working to further legitimize themselves and position themselves (so that they can pivot when they need to) with media companies in the industry/Hollywood (and the likes) to forge media deals.
Let me quote Plex for a second with,
“…For the better part of a decade, we’ve been working obsessively and tirelessly to craft the best media platform on the planet.” [source]
In order to do this, Plex needs to sever some loose ends and clean up house in order to be able to be invited to the bargaining table. Media companies will not deal with anyone who is a perceived threat to copyright and intellectual property. Period. (Or not without their cut. It’s called showbusiness for a reason right?)
Still with me here? Good. Don’t worry, it will all come round circle. I promise.
Much of what we don’t talk about here (And remember the first rule of Fight Club?) is that Plex users use Plex to consume vastly large media libraries that sit on private servers. This is why any of us are here right? We either are members of someone’s own server or we host our own. And how these large libraries are compiled are neither my business nor your own.
Okay, that being said…but wait…nothing was said because we are adhering to the first rule of Fight Club, remember? 
To wrap things up, by removing these plug-ins (which typically break each time a content provider’s website is updated or their API changes) Plex is freeing up developer resources for other areas of interest. (But weren’t the vast majority of the plug-ins managed by independent developers? I know. My thoughts exactly.)
This is a great way to segment into Plex DVR. By getting rid of plug-ins, Plex be in a better position upsell the DVR platform of their software. It already has the option to set up (at the server level and client level) automatic commercial skip — I don’t know how it works but it is MAGIC.
The big selling point of Plex is to cut the cord, am I right? That being said, cord cutters should be supplementing and taking advantage of OTA broadcasts. Thus, no need for plug-ins — I’m sure as Plex’s logic dictates.
I’m still not happy and I will miss the ability to easily catch up on all of my Knight Rider, Miami Vice, and Quantum Leap episodes from the comfort of my Plex VR luxury apartment.
R.I.P. plug-ins October 9th 2018 will not be forgotten
P.S. - A rant: The new “curated” Web Shows feature is trash. YouTube and Vimeo offer far better content and YouTube does a better job of “knowing” what I will enjoy next.
Thankfully we can sweep this unneeded “marketing bullet point” of a feature under the rug where hopefully the 2% of its users will someday (soon) lose the Web Shows feature to something “new and improved”. What “new and improved” will look like I don’t know, but with Plex’s track record of News and Web Shows — it’s not looking so good.
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On behalf of those of us that do not follow the forums I want to make you aware that many of us use the TV network plugins on a daily basis. I came to Plex for that capability and Plex is the main medium for us to watch on demand shows without the horrendous advertising that eats up so much of our lives. I came to the forum today regarding a non-working channel and now I find this news.
Plex provides many benefits for media entertainment. I feel you will find a considerable outpouring of anger if this function of Plex is abandoned. I have recommended Plex to to others based on the channel plugins alone.
I hope you will reconsider…
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This was a really good post. And your point about the origin of media on, frankly, all non-plex provided media being none of anybody’s business is extremely well taken. I fear out legitimate concerns about use of software plugins that nobody has ever asked plex to support (outside of letting us use them) will fall on deaf ears.
That said, I’m going to keep this thread bumped in the hope that someone from plex will a) read it and b) actually engage.
Outside of discussion of some broken features, this thread is one of the most viewed threads on here in ages, and I think that’s highly indicative of how much heavy plex users value this feature.
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I could add to the already well-worn statements here, all of us deeply disappointed that Plex is removing a core function that brought many of us to the platform, seemingly deaf to the desires of the users.
Instead, I’ll just coyly mention I’m terribly glad I never “bought in” to the lifetime sub to this software. And given the way the wind is blowing, never will.
If I had, I would be quite seriously insisting on a refund.
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Yup, the biggest issue is the lack of interest in listening to paying customers. It’s not ok.
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I don’t really follow the forums at all. My Plex setup has been solid and I don’t have much reason to read the ongoing discussions. I stumbled upon this thread quite by accident in an unrelated Google search and had no idea that Plex was planning to discontinue Plugin support.
As someone who is hearing impaired, I rely heavily on Sub-Zero. Losing subtitles will essentially make Plex unusable for my needs.
To be fair, it remains to be seen a) if plex’s official solution will work as well as sub-zero and b) is there any particular reason why plex needs to discontinue support for plugins like sub-zero (and all the other entirely user created and supported ones) while adding their own subtitle functionality?
The point remains that this is crappy communication from plex. Calling it communication is not even really right since it’s only in one direction. This is more dictation.
In the real world, they’re called announcements. It’s what companies (from Apple to your local Mom and Pop store down the street) do when they choose to discontinue services and/or products.
In their announcement, they outlined why they’ve made this decision. You don’t have to agree with it or even like it but it’s their software so it’s their call.
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