How about fixing stuff?

General Discussions
1

Saw the new release announcement for Plex Server. Had this lovely line in it:

No user-visible changes. Updated support for as-yet-unreleased functionality. Stay tuned!!

“as-yet-unreleased functionality”
Why don’t you fix the crap that doesn’t work before you work on releasing new stuff.
Before you ask me “Duh, what doesn’t work, a-huh, a-huh, a-huh” just take a look in the many sub-forums and see for yourselves.
And stop asking for stupid logs. For almost all of the issues you have asked for and gotten hundreds and hundreds of logs and the crap is still broken. How many years has it been since iOS sync issues have been reported (FYI since iOS sync has been implemented - day 1) and how many logs have you gotten? It continues to be so dog slow as to be useless or just fails completely.
I used to think that @Elijah_Baley was a little hard on you occasionally. Not anymore.
You really need to fix your product before introducing anything new.

2

@rsava said:
Saw the new release announcement for Plex Server. Had this lovely line in it:

No user-visible changes. Updated support for as-yet-unreleased functionality. Stay tuned!!

“as-yet-unreleased functionality”
Why don’t you fix the crap that doesn’t work before you work on releasing new stuff.
Before you ask me “Duh, what doesn’t work, a-huh, a-huh, a-huh” just take a look in the many sub-forums and see for yourselves.
And stop asking for stupid logs. For almost all of the issues you have asked for and gotten hundreds and hundreds of logs and the crap is still broken. How many years has it been since iOS sync issues have been reported (FYI since iOS sync has been implemented - day 1) and how many logs have you gotten? It continues to be so dog slow as to be useless or just fails completely.
I used to think that @Elijah_Baley was a little hard on you occasionally. Not anymore.
You really need to fix your product before introducing anything new.

When I saw the announcement I though about exactly the same thing.

I just seems that something new keeps coming without any real attention to what is wrong with the existing functionality.

Plex says that they have different people working??? on fixes that on adding new features so the adding features does not detract from attention to fixes. I call bunk on that. When you are adding features it detracts from everything else because any fixes must be tested against the new functionality and the new functionality must continually be tested with whatever fixes are forthcoming. (If any are actually forthcoming)

Every piece of development of new functions takes testing time away from fixes.

Trying to fix code that constantly is undergoing changes is MUCH harder that fixing code that is frozen and it is unnecessary,

Plex is trying to add more and more and I think it is just a money grab.I mean that it “sounds” better to say “Look at all this new stuff we have added” than it does to say “Look at how much we have fixed.” But the fact is that if Plex had solid, fully functioning, competition they would be in some trouble but their only real completion, Emby, is still lacking in many areas so is not really pressing Plex to fix their bugs. But Emby’s responsiveness to customers is continuously exposing Plex’s lack thereof.

For me, right now, Plex really has no bugs that I run into often at all BUT their apps on Roku, android and Raspberry PI have a number (a pretty large number) of functionality lacks and holes in the way they work and that needs fixing before adding more fluff to any part of Plex.

Sometimes I think Plex thinks fixing bugs is like fixing a dog or cat and they are afraid they would be cutting the balls off their product if they actually “fixed” what is wrong.

BTW: Did anyone notice that Plex has said they are not going to have any more community round-tables? I guess they did not like what they heard so they just are not going to listen it that way any more.

3

@rsava said:
Saw the new release announcement for Plex Server. Had this lovely line in it:

No user-visible changes. Updated support for as-yet-unreleased functionality. Stay tuned!!

“as-yet-unreleased functionality”
Why don’t you fix the crap that doesn’t work before you work on releasing new stuff.
Before you ask me “Duh, what doesn’t work, a-huh, a-huh, a-huh” just take a look in the many sub-forums and see for yourselves.
And stop asking for stupid logs. For almost all of the issues you have asked for and gotten hundreds and hundreds of logs and the crap is still broken. How many years has it been since iOS sync issues have been reported (FYI since iOS sync has been implemented - day 1) and how many logs have you gotten? It continues to be so dog slow as to be useless or just fails completely.
I used to think that @Elijah_Baley was a little hard on you occasionally. Not anymore.
You really need to fix your product before introducing anything new.

Like you, I’m at a loss to understand why bug fixes aren’t prioritised.

As a software developer, my employer would be extremely angry if our software had the number of long-term bugs found in the various apps produced by Plex. I can only assume that this is a management decision.

4

They’re not bugs…they’re “features”.

Seriously annoying that the Fire TV stick version is basically useless when it comes to subtitles because unless it can direct play both video and audio it forces a transcode of the video burning in subtitles.

It’s been a bug for at least a year (iirc) and we have the same old “bug in exoplayer, needs to be fixed by them”. Why do so many other media players not suffer from this on the Fire TV and if they’re not using exoplayer then why the hell don’t Plex dump it and use an alternative.

5

I’m with you guys, the number of outstanding bugs and the constant frustration to the lack of response makes loving Plex difficult at times. Everytime they bang out a new feature I think to myself ‘pointless and why haven’t they fixed the list of bugs which have been reported’. Get the foundations right and it makes extending the product easier later.

Currently to high a few - sync content starts missing artwork and app regularly reports it’s unable to find associated files and slowly the sync content becomes unplayable forcing me to delete and resync, scrolling a queue crash’s the app, opening the app can take several attempts, Chromecasting the track being played doesn’t always match the the information being displayed.

Please Plex, get you house in order… we’re paying you remember.

6

I’ve given up on Plex. Completely …

Since months I’m using more and more Emby for my media consumption. I didn’t run into problems like Elijah_Baley yet (rather the other way round: Emby relieves me of a lot of troubles I had with Plex), so as of now Plex for me is clearly on a way way into a dead end street. The last thing that keeps it alive is all my scripts that I wrote to automize my setup. Once they are adapted to Emby, I’ll shut down Plex.

It’s still unbelievable to me how you can neglect loyal clients like Plex is doing it right now. How you can introduce tons and tons of non-core features up to the point where nothing works any more reliable. How, as a company, you can completely forget what it is, your clients want from you. This and the arrogant, smart-alecky way Plex is communicating with us … well, nevermind. I don’t care any more.

7

@Elijah_Baley said:

BTW: Did anyone notice that Plex has said they are not going to have any more community round-tables? I guess they did not like what they heard so they just are not going to listen it that way any more.

Yes, I did. I was going to mention that in my original post.

8

@foxprorawks said:

Like you, I’m at a loss to understand why bug fixes aren’t prioritised.

As a software developer, my employer would be extremely angry if our software had the number of long-term bugs found in the various apps produced by Plex. I can only assume that this is a management decision.

While I am not a software developer myself, I do work for a software company in a different capacity.
When we have big issues with our product it is all hands on deck to figure out the issue and get it fixed. From fixing the code to QA’ing it we all get involved up to and including the CEO who wrote the original code over 20 years ago.

As @Elijah_Baley states:

Plex says that they have different people working??? on fixes that on adding new features so the adding features does not detract from attention to fixes. I call bunk on that.

I call bunk on it also. We also have different groups of developers over 5 different products. When a major problem hits they get pulled temporarily to help. We never let bugs go on for years. The list of bugs going on for years in Plex is mind boggling. It makes it very apparent that they do not have different people working on bugs and on adding new features and they do not care about fixing bugs or they can’t figure out what the “F” they are doing so they just ignore them hoping we will stop complaining.
We will. And our silence will be deafening.
I used to defend Plex but not anymore.
FIX YOUR CRAP PLEX.

9

Plex must have the most insane software entropy… No wonder why they can’t fix anything

10

This is a known issue with Plex.
They have NO meaningful SDLC, Management is clueless as how to run a software company, and they don’t really care as long as they can con folks into investing in this mess…

As I have said MANY times before… Plex’s priority is NOT the user base, software reliability, bug free systems, but something else we do not see yet!

11

@jjrjr1 said:

As I have said MANY times before… Plex’s priority is NOT the user base, software reliability, bug free systems, but** something else we do not see yet**!

Yes, the ever present “as-yet-unreleased functionality” which some how gets implemented but NEVER the bugs that have been around for years.

12

Heck
With the new privacy rules…
They are probably making tons of money just on selling our personal data…

They must be making money on New Feeds somehow. Nobody here asked for that feature.

And of course DVR and Plex Cloud are train wrecks probably NEVER gonna be brought up to “Ready for Prime Time”

13

Ah well at least the new feature won’t be taking up resources very long. They’ll release it with lots of fanfare and pics of dogs, give it one update and neglect the heck out of it from then on like usual I suspect.

If they’d release a half decent htpc client on the other hand or Linux support for the htpc client or revive Plex for Kodi or decent subtitle support or fix some bugs or start communicating with the users or implement user requested features over Ivory tower development … Then I’d be truly surprised and happy.

14

@rsava said:

@Elijah_Baley said:

BTW: Did anyone notice that Plex has said they are not going to have any more community round-tables? I guess they did not like what they heard so they just are not going to listen it that way any more.

Yes, I did. I was going to mention that in my original post.

Where? Blog post?

15

@stefanvanruiten said:
or implement user requested features over Ivory tower development … Then I’d be truly surprised and happy.

You mean like the collections feature?

16

LOL
We all gotta just understand Plex is what it is.

I can’t let myself get sucked into a discussion like this again.

Plex will ban me again if I do…
LOL

17

@jjrjr1 said:
LOL
We all gotta just understand Plex is what it is.

I can’t let myself get sucked into a discussion like this again.

Plex will ban me again if I do…
LOL

Again? Lol

18

@KarlDag said:

@rsava said:

@Elijah_Baley said:

BTW: Did anyone notice that Plex has said they are not going to have any more community round-tables? I guess they did not like what they heard so they just are not going to listen it that way any more.

Yes, I did. I was going to mention that in my original post.

Where? Blog post?

One of the Plex Employees said that in a thread some time ago (Maybe October or November) I do not remember exactly.
I think they said they received nothing of value from the roundtables.

Found it:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1565611#Comment_1565611

@kinoCharlino said:

@beckfield said:
Has it been nearly a year since the last ‘quarterly’ roundtable?

We’ve pulled back on doing quarterly roundtables with the community (keeping separate ones for the Ninjas in tact) as we evaluate a better way to do it with the community. We didn’t see much value in getting people together to share current issues they face, which is something already discussed in the forums. Our original intention was to discuss big picture things more, though the discussions tended to lean toward discussing whatever issue the participants were experiencing at the time. We are looking into evolving the roundtables into something more useful: expert panels. We’re thinking on the lines of a group of volunteer community members who are given access to upcoming features early in development, where they have a chance to test and provide feedback using a structured rubric and come together in a roundtable to discuss. We’re still working out the details, but we think it could be a good approach to improve our ability to digest power user feedback at an earlier stage of development. I’ll be sharing more info about it as we get ready to launch it.

19

I never was in one of the roundtable events, but I totally understand moving away from it if the entire purpose of the meeting was reduced to a “this is what’s wrong” session.

20

@kegobeer-plex said:
I never was in one of the roundtable events, but I totally understand moving away from it if the entire purpose of the meeting was reduced to a “this is what’s wrong” session.

The ones I attended were a lot of “This is broken” but also a lot of “This is the direction Plex should take” and a lot of “This was a waste of resources.” It was quite clear that Plex did not want to here that their flaunted new features were not working well and/or not usable amd/or not wanted and they REALLY did not want suggestions that did not agree with the path they had already chosen. I got the strong feeling that they were disappointed that there was not more people that thought they were moving in the correct direction.

Plex clearly did not really listen to the feedback they received or they did not believe that the feedback was at all what their users really felt. They clearly feel that feedback from what they call “Power Users” is not of ant real value.

I think they just held the rountables in the hope that that the troublesome users would shut up and since that did not work they are discontinuing them.