GOODBYE PLEX, hop on the train to leaving plex in the dust

General Discussions
73

Curious what server and OS do you have?

74

@MwC_Trexx
I agree with your post and viewpoints, however it does not help the cause of civil and productive discussion when people full of self-righteous indignation flood the forums with posts about going to a competitor. Don’t the competitors have forums they can go to?

Then there’s the wild speculation that goes on every time Plex changes a full stop in their Terms and Conditions or adds a feature to the software, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

It’s kind of hard not to speak up when someone is trashing a product you use every single day without a problem and have no problem with the company.

75

Dell R710/Scientific Linux 6.10 (RHEL/Centos equal). NO systemd.

The RPM look like the just stuffed an Ubuntu build into the package and called it a compatible RPM.

76

Maybe just check the thread title and stay out of likely threads that are going to talk about things like this. This thread is a prime example of a thread that likely isn’t going to be “pro” Plex. Threads talking “GUI/UI” for new releases will also likely not be pro Plex.

It’s not that people just started hating Plex but find that Plex is changing in some way and the software that used to work well from them doesn’t anymore. Typically it’s not one event or thing but a combination of things.

While sometimes it may seem people are just talking trash about the product (some do) there is a lot of good open descriptions of what has changed, why it doesn’t work for them, etc

If people didn’t keep posting the same things then nothing would change for the positive. Just look at Roku and the new UI which is now being revamped and type/first being removed. That wouldn’t have happened without the “self-righteous indignation” that flooded the forums. Everything had been said previously when the UI was pushed on other platforms but now with the amount of Roku users got noticed.

Same with people leaving the platform for a competitor. Plex won’t learn anything if these threads didn’t take place. It actually better for them then any “exit questionnaire” could ever be. There is a ton of good information in many of these threads if you read them with an open mind.

The wild speculation thing is absolutely true but is of their own doing. When actual customers are treated like mushrooms and kept in the dark but have to read about features written in articles FIRST then they get a 2nd hand message which may not be 100% true. But the damage is done because that info was never shared or VETTED with customers first which is kind of dumb. Most of those articles are geared to get new users. When those articles talk about removed features and then also new features not really interesting to existing users and the existing users don’t even know about this stuff what will the average intellect think? Just human nature but that new customers are more important to share info with than existing users. That’s not even getting into the features being talked about which is a whole other can of worms.

Carlo
PS I added the “can of worms” for your “kettle of fish” LOL

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77

It’s also difficult when PLEX employees are stifling information. On more than one occasion I’ve added links to threads of issues I felt were related and/or similar and shared my experiences. That meant I’d have some similar posts in multiple threads to link the thoughts together. I’ve had PLEX employees tell me that what I’m doing is trolling and remove my posts, as though they’re trying to keep people from seeing some of the larger issues. I know conspiracy right?

But take LiveTV/DVR. While it never achieved a rock solid stable state it was progressing until early December when the bottom got pulled out, especially if you used a ROKU. Server 5488 makes it next to impossible to consistently tune and/or watch LiveTV
 In fact just now a program playback just bombed. More than 1/2 the time you can’t tune a station. Many times time shifting doesn’t work and the list goes on. You report these things, take your time to send them the logs and it’s as though things go into a black hole. When Elan jumped in to quell the uproar before the Holidays he close down some threads and promised communications would improve. Well they haven’t and just today one of the same PLEX employees chastised me for trolling when I was trying to find out when we’d be seeing some fixes. He claimed he never saw any reports about crashes or tuning issues and then said he hadn’t seen any crash reports from my server for a couple weeks. I told him (and had posted it) that he hadn’t seen any because I had disabled it pending an update. He didn’t seem to like that. I guess we’re supposed to support them with free testing services :slight_smile:
Anyway, I agree, if you want change you need to keep the pressure up and you need to keep remembering that different people count on different features. All I care about is LiveTV/DVR to service my tunerless TVs in the bedrooms. It’s a disaster so I’m out looking at other solutions. As I told Elan, I’m willing help and play nice, I just expect the same in return.

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78

Hard to say this but I have been a Plex Pass member for 6+ years. It has done me well but after trying out Emby for literally 24 hours it really has the core features that I want nailed down and looks great. Easy as hell to setup and the customization is really great. Metadata is handled faster and better than I have ever seen it. Transcoding is supposably is better, and even the android tv app is far superior to Plex’s right now and since Shield is the only place where 4K HDR’s play like butter, so im there. Get your Andriod game up Plex! Desperately struggling here to find a reason to stay with ya.

I know feel as though I’m stuck between two women and can’t make up my mind. I have my old faithful, but shes going crazy and taking a new direction and theres this interesting sexy new fox in town, but will she stick around and stay true. I guess I’m lucky where I can give them both a chance and run them in parallel on my server for the next year. By 2020 I’ll most likely drop the one that just isn’t working out.

Ok rant over, step up Plex your the old dog!

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79

Sadly I think I am on the “leave Plex” train. Myself and my family just do not like the latest update. A lot of the fluid parts of Plex are now cumbersome and un-intuitive. I won’t completely abandon it as I have been a user since the company started, but I will use other stuff until the next update and see what happens.

For the record
things I miss

  • Ability to single click into sections, now I have to navigate more
  • Ability to delete a file without having to go into a sub menu
  • Ability to watch a trailer for a movie or see extra media like cast interviews, reviews, etc. (Think these were extra features from plugin maybe?)

Playing Media itself still works fine, but it just does not feel fluid anymore. Ah well.

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80

Interesting read so far.

I am a relative “NOOB” on Plex, started dabbling with it back in 2012 and purchased my Plex Pass annual subscription on September 9th 2013 (think it was $30 a year back then). Took the plunge and became a “lifer” in 2015 by spotting the Plex gang another $60. Looking back thru the years I have enjoyed Plex it is fair to conclude that the “evolution” of Plex, from a “Feingood Freeware Project” up till “Rokugate” has been fast furious and nothing short of impressive.

I remember spending hours reading followed by umpteen failed attempt to “hack” my 1st gen Mac Mini sized Apple TV desperately wanting it to stream my media using Plex. I also recall the sense of being the best brother ever, spending 2 hours on the phone talking my seriously ill Sister through connecting to my Plex Server (She lives 4700 miles from me). I also remember shaking my fist at my PC after downloading and installing an update for PMS only to discover nothing “worked” as before, There has been some up’s and a number of down’s in my time as a Plex’er. Some of the down’s have been at the “WTF” level, including the serious disappointment of the Oculus Go app, which to me resembles how I submitted assignments in college 30 years ago; slapping something together at 4am for a 9am deadline without reading or reviewing, hoping the fancy “binder” would somehow make up for the garbage content.

I guess that I to a certain degree could qualify as “victim” of The Plex Player design / functionality changes. I have 3 Smart TV’s in my home 2 of which are updated to the new " 4 click to get to where you need" version of Plex Player (Samsung). a ROKU box spotting the new version, which I do have to admit am not a bit fan off, however not to an extent that I am willing to “divorce” Plex over it. An Oculus Go that I purchased for the sole purpose of using Plex, now thinking it was a waste of $$ as there has been no effort shown from Plex (to date) in trying to address ( or improve) the multiple bugs and overall lack of quality of their brand burner of an app truly is ( in my mind).

I read the OP twice. I also spent the time to read the 71 replies. I understand people are frustrated, I applaud that people proclaim they are “Leaving” Plex as it is a testament to the choices we have and the freedom to do so. I am not trying to defend Plex, the company, the software or the direction that is taken in designing / developing updates containing significant changes to previous version design and functionality which is almost certain to cause a negative reaction in any one who is familiar with and used to operating / navigating the versions before.

For those of you who are Window’s PC users; The multiple versions of Windows over the past years. Anyone who depended on a PC for work or similar felt betrayed as the “enhancements” for the most part rendered any operational routine ( commands and much more, performed without thinking) useless, unless performed by moving a mouse, clicking 3 times etc. Another example was when Apple changed Apple TV by dumping your personal applied media, not purchased through iTunes from the main page to somewhere in the back. It made me unplug the 2 ATV’s we owned.

So why is Plex doing this?. Why would they betray OP to a point where he felt it warranted to invest time, after being a paying customer for years and using his debut on the forum (despite years of being a paying customer) and risk losing an additional 12 customers (half of them paying)??. Pardon my poor attempt of sarcasm here, but my objective impression of the original post has me convinced that the true and complete underlying of frustration there extends a bit beyond “4 extra clicks”. Okay back to the first 6 words in this paragraph. This is my opinion, brief version:

Companies are in business to make money. Provide a return of investments. Show growth and sustainability by enhancing existing products on a growing number of levels, one likely being scaleability of the type of users ( beyond us who are crusty old experts) such as Uncle Bob who flings his Mastercard at the Best buy sales guy after he shows him the smart app lineup. Plex has grown from one guys Github project to a company that guaranteed would not have survived this long had they banked on operating on PlexPass income alone. My loyalty and tolerance in having to endure the parts of the Plex evolution I have not cared for partially stems from the fact that, unlike so many other successful tech startup’s they did not sell their concept to one of the hollow crap giants leaving their “early Plexer’s” a discount code for Amazappletube


Just my opinion and I am often wrong


Hugs,

L

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81

I do not necessarily think you are wrong. But I would like to focus and comment on this particular portion of your post as it relates to what is going on with Plex.

Let’s take the Microsoft’s release of Windows 8 as an example. There was a huge uproar from users about the loss of the traditional windows start menu. Microsoft had replaced it with a tiles only view which was more at home on a mobile - touch screen environment. MS took the position that this was the new/better/improved/way of the future method of interacting with your programs. They didn’t do entirely away with the traditional desktop, but it was tucked so far out of the way that it might as well have been gone.
Being that they have the resources, they even had a lot of the tech press and a number of influential youtubers talk about how it made sense to replace all your monitors with touch screens and take the plunge with Windows 8.

But, in the end, even Microsoft realized that they had f’d up in a major way. Even big old evil MS bowed their head down (to some extent) and took steps to right the wrong they had visited upon their users. How?

  • First they released Windows 8.1 while they worked on Windows 10.
    8.1 brought back the desktop to the forefront.
    It partially restored the start menu. Not entirely to be sure, but it was not the big tiles only view of windows 8 (although you could still get that if you wanted).
    It was no longer necessary to interact with programs with mouse gestures. The minimize, maximize and x for close buttons were back.
  • Then they released Windows 10 which finally brought back the start menu properly and it even had a true enhancement by giving a space for tiles
 which you can control how much of that space you grant to tiles.
  • To boot, they made the upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge for Windows 8 and 8.1 owners. I don’t remember if Windows 7 hold outs could also get it free of charge.

Sure, you could argue that part of the reason why they made it free was because they wanted fast adoption in order to start collecting telemetry.

And yes, you can also argue that MS only bowed down because enterprise users were just not going to migrate to Windows 8.

However, for whatever reason(s), the point is that even they recognized their screw up, apologized (after a fashion), and corrected course).

Now Plex seems to have recognized how royally they messed up. Only time will tell if they truly mean to right that wrong.

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82

Yep, Windows 7 was included in free upgrades. Only Vista and prior were not included. Honestly, I suspect that’s because they were far more worried about the lower odds of success when upgrading any older hardware that was still running Vista or XP.

While no OS is perfect, I can’t imagine ever downgrading from Windows 10 back to any earlier version. I’m glad they realized their errors with Windows 8, which were mind-boggling as they happened.

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83

I ditched Windows back when Vista was “launched” The move to Mac OS was a long learning curve that certainly was not without frustrations but I stuck with it and made it work (both for my business and private use). 3 years ago I switched my PMS from a Mac Mini to a PC running Windows 10 Pro.

My comment about Windows OS was to illustrate an example. Having to change and adapt to anything without having a choice is understandably hard to accept, especially when it affects functionality / use of features Etc.

Thank you for taking the time in replying
To learn is to live :wink:

84

Very interesting topic as I am also in the same boat as most of users here.
I have been using plex for over 5 years now and all I can say about Plex is what a great product it was.
I started with small setup, some Fujitsu laptop with Core 2 duo, media was stored on crappy and cheap iOmega storage, only client was ATV2 over PlexConnect. Android app and iOS came quickly in the picture and it was time to move to bigger setup. I managed to get my hands on HP Z400 (Xeon W3565 3,2 GHZ, 12GB RAM) and Synology Ds214play. At that time i decided to reencode my media to MP4 (thanks @cayars) and start with prepared media Every new media that comes to my setup is first run throught bunch of scripts converting it to MP4 so there is no media incompatibility. Rpi with Rasplex was main player, followed by 2 iOS devices and 1 Android. Over 4 years using that setup i am serving 6 RPI (1 local, 5 remote), 3 iphones, 2 ipads, 1 android phone and 1 android tablet. Besides minor problems (low internet upload at the time) there were no any issues with Plex setup. A year ago telecom provider offered fiber connection (200/100) and since then there arent any problems/glitches or issues. Oh, forgot to mention one thing; Plex Media server currently being used is version 1.9.7.4460, dated somewhere November 2017. I am a kind of person who doesnt update if everything is working OK. Also clients arent updated to newest version as they simply are working.
Recently I aquired HP Z640 (2xXeon E5 2620v4, 64 GB RAM) and Synology DS1817+ and I am testing newer Plex Media server versions with newer clients versions, Same media is used for older and newer Plex Media servers. And i am starting to realize most of the stuff thats being written in this topic. What used to be done in 1-2 clicks, now it takes 4 clicks. Usability became somehow strange, not so user friendly anymore. Long awaited LiveTV and DVR is almost useless, even with HDHomerun. I can understand that “hacks” like TVHProxy, Xteve and similar arent the way Plex intented to use Live TV but as i said even with HDhomerun user experience is awful; channel tunning is slow (2-5 seconds), sometimes it can not tune to channel, and after 1 min it can tune to channel
Grouping media from different servers into a group is something which i really can not understand and other stuff already mentioned here. I never used TV apps (no compatible TV) and also RPI with rasplex was a great solution for me and my family. Recently started using the Samsung app and i am really disappointed how it looks and feels, rpi was brought back to that TV and everything was back to normal.
Although this may be my subjective observation i had two other household members telling me the same (wife and father), who were actively using the Plex system all the time. Old Plex media server never failed them, never gave them any glitches or errors, it was just working (and depending on active internet connection of which they were aware of). When i put them as testers to new Plex media server they were astonished and asked me why did i broke the great Plex :frowning:
Other day i installed Emby
Seems ok in the beginning, LiveTV works awesome, still have to check it all possible clients and see how it works.
Do i consider to switch? Yes.
Will i give Plex some time before making a switch? Yes
Working in a vendor company I understand that some of the moves vendor make can piss the end users and most of the time those moves could have been better communicated to end users but company has its reasons for such moves. Smart company listens to its ends users and makes compromises of what they as a company want and what end users want. At the end, without end users company wouldn’t have grown and they cannot sell their products anymore.
I am sure Plex will bring back some of functionalities or present them in a new way. Only problem I see is timing as other players in the market have developed great products.

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85

Can’t find server, can’t access server, not authorised to cast, credentials expired. Uninstalled, re-installed, bought pass (only for one month, thankfully). Won’t work on Windows, won’t work on Fedora. No customer service. Have given you hours of my life and frustration, Plex. If you were a High-Street retailer, you’d be holding a closing-down sale. Emby is working fine. I’m off!

86

turrah.

Good Day sir

87

+1 for Emby

This update is beyond unacceptable. I paid for 3 lifetime subs. What a waste of money. Your support staff needs an upgrade as well.

Goodbye.

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88

I have been a heavy PLEX user for over 3 years. Minor before that. Have multiple family members that access my server

Rarely any issues. The cost is well worth it.

I look forward to the DVR issues to be worked out, but other than that no problems.

If you are not happy why do you keep posting here? Honestly if you are moving on, please move on and stop the nonconstructive criticism.

Best wishes

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89

Sure, but this time it is not only blah blah blah. They really made it “web” centric instead of “local” centric. It really takes a lot of clicks to be able to play something and it is really crowded with services we do not really want.

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90

yea it’s long long long overdue that this over bloated thread with tons of long winded post from windbags be closed. other than 1 issue with a port i’m still loving plex. i took another look at emby and still not impressed. plex is still more configurable as far as libraries. was not impressed with emby on collections. i create one and i end up with a new icon at the top for collects without a icon, where plex i create my collections and simply select movies COLLECTIONS or folders within the same library. the whining about interface i do not get since you don’t see it very often.

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91

Hard to look away from a train wreck.

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92

Best to let it go and distress