A week’s notice!?! That’s very poor.
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I’m not trying to add insult to injury, but I’m not sure buying a lifetime subscription to any service from a tech company like PLEX is a wise idea.
I know someone who bought a lifetime subscription for LiveJournal (@ $150 or $250? can’t remember), and maybe a year or two later it was sold to a Russian company and it became a ghost town. A “lifetime subscription” of about 2 years before the company took the payout and bailed. Me. I’m the idiot who bought a lifetime subscription for myself and a couple of friends.
Anyway, I’m sorry you feel betrayed. It’s not the first time I’ve felt betrayed by PLEX and I’m sure it won’t be the last… and they’re laughing as they take our subscription money to the bank and we continue to beg for more of the same treatment.
Point taken. But if you got it when Plex was running a discount, and use the premium features for more than a couple of years, then it’s no more expensive and paying monthly. If you use it.
Well. You are too late! That already exists GitHub - akhilrex/podgrab: A self-hosted podcast manager/downloader/archiver tool to download podcast episodes as soon as they become live with an integrated player.
I partially use this already but will now switch completely to it.
I am a big user of podcasts on Plex. The functionality of cross-platform with podcasts in Plex has been excellent. It bothers me a great deal that Plex has decided to abandon podcasts.
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Podcasts are literally the only feature out of the plethora of trash (Tidal, Discovery, free movies, ect) that they’ve added that I actually used. So of course they are killing it.
I will continue to reiterate: Plex no longer cares about your personal media or its original users. They took investor money and are now trying to break into the streaming app space on a larger scale, which means throwing away those people in favor of new customers. The attempt to drop HTPC support a few years ago was a warning shot.
It will get worse from here. How long before they decide that “not enough people” are using the server functionality?
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I canceled my plex pass subscription because of this. sure I could listen to podcasts on my phone. but when I am laying down, I want it to play from my TV’s speakers.
plex podcasts works great for me as is just leave it as is do not delete it!!!
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I know that between the decision to drop the feature and the awful way it was handled (even looking for an announcement in my email I can’t find one), I’m spreading the word in my circles that Plex is so entirely focused on being yet another commercial TV streaming service that people shouldn’t bother signing up for it.
Someone above mentioned the amount of work they recently put into trying to make Downloads work, and they seem to be writing all of that dev time off. Well, the company went through a major executive change last year, and it looks like they’ve chosen a new direction for the platform.
It’s a shame because Plex started with groundbreaking technology and really interesting vision. Now it’s just pushing the commercial TV experience of the past.
The problem is that it wouldn’t save listened/unlistened status or save progress through episodes.
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I used Podcast Function - it was a nice add and one of the reasons for me to use plex.
I will never use the new functions at all so I am not amused… I am afraid of Ideas like using HDR only with PlexPass and so on. I will see what kind of “great idea” comes next…
I was caught completely off guard, when after the Plex update the whole podcast section just was gone.
If you sent a mail about this, it must’ve gone to my spam folder or something.
I usually read all Plex newsletters and announcements.
Thus I am not only sad to see the feature go, as I was using it on a regular basis, I am also a little angry at having it ripped out of the player suddenly like that.
The info that I can inform myself in some other way using that new feature is also a small slap in the face, as obviously I want to hear the people talk that I’ve listened to for the last two years.
Anyway, thanks for letting me blow off some steam.
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They didn’t send an email about it. Also caught off-guard, here, and in the middle of a podcast playlist.
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I was wondering what happened to the Podcast listing both on my tv and desktop. Searched about any news of podcasts I missed and learned Plex decided on its own to excise it among all the content offerings. I would have rather Plex got rid of its live TV, which is a joke to me. There are plenty of ad-filled “live tv” offered by tubi and PlutoTV, to name a few of the more popular channels, along with Roku’s own channel.
I listen at least 3 hours a day of a block of MSNBC programs (as I am a cord-cutter so don’t have access to MSNBC otherwise than some youtube uploader with videos littered with youtube ads which to my knowledge, there’s no ad-blocker available for streaming on tv).
Guess I’ll have to search around for a streaming podcast provider elsewhere.
I love Plex, but I would have loved Plex more with the podcasts intact - and without all its other forays into content I don’t need (meaning with additional fees as the case is with the so-called music channel). Bummer!
(Sorry for using your post to reply, beckfield, I know you were just passing on the announcement).
I was really upset when I logged into Plex on my Roku just now to find I had lost podcast support. Thanks for catching me off guard…on Easter Weekend no less!!!
Being one of the earliest lifetime Plex pass adopters, podcast support has become one of my favorite features. Whether it has been using plex to listen to my podcasts while driving in my car, when I needed a break from music (I wish you would add audible support for audiobooks) or at home, unwinding either on my veranda in the evening or in bed most nights, with the quality sound not coming through computer or phone speakers but through my TV audio via the Roku App (I have no stereo at home).
Having all my carefully curated podcasts (except Rogan whom I did not follow to Spotify) has been just a part of my media consolidation into Plex as all my digital movies and tv shows (don’t ask me how many drives I am using for full uncompressed video on my home server), both my personal audio collection and my Tidal subscription. Some were irregular podcasts. Others were ones I would listen to when certain topics would be covered. And then there was my daily fixes, where I received my news of the world from an alternative perspective that would acknowledge their biases.
And just like the rest of my collection, I carefully curated my podcasts in Plex too. Unified across all my devices, whether at home, on the road, in hotel rooms, at my vacation home. All in one place with the rest of my media.
Plex had given me the ability not to be stuck sitting at a computer or listening to a podcast through my phone, wherever I was in my house in much higher quality than through either of those devices could provide me (each of my tvs are fitted with a Roku Streaming stick) or on the road in my car. And now, that has been taken from me.
To say I am more than disappointed in an understatement. And no, most of my favorite podcasts are not available in the Discover section. In fact, it is a feature I did not want nor would ever use.
So I would like to heartily thank you for ending the only decent podcast player for Roku, that did not involve me having to buy a subscription, or having what I was listened to actively tracked by profiteering third parties. And thank you for replacing it with a feature I will never use.
So, how long until you discontinue support for my locally hosted media???
Get it together guys and understand, many of your core users are here because we don’t want our data going to streaming services, Google, Apple or any of the other big boys. We wouldn’t be self-hosting our video and music collections if we did!!!
Can someone please kindly remind Scott and Elan of that?
Thank you.
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Podcasts was the primary feature I used Plex for. Laying in bed watching TV, start to feel my eyes getting heavy and it was sooo simple to use my remote to get a podcast to play while I drifted off. I, for one, am royally pissed about this decision.
Now I need to research an alternative that supports all my media. Bye, Plex.
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Good suggestion.
With me, faced with that prospect of casting which I used to do with playing videos on Firefox (requiring the Firefox channel added to Roku and the videos have that capability to cast), I would be more likely syncing my Bluetooth speakers to the phone and listening on the external speakers.
I did like podcasts playing on the Plex app with Roku on the tv as background noise. With the phone and external Bluetooth speakers, if I played podcasts as regularly as I used to with the Plex app on tv via Roku, the batteries will be draining far more. So more frequent recharging will be needed.
I did find a website with the programs I listen as podcast - and seemingly with more consistency of their up-to-date episodes availability. Oftentimes, the Plex app’s collection of the podcasts would be several days delayed.
Sometimes life forces change for a better offering elsewhere, though as Plex was my daily go-to for watching my videos and listening to podcast, it was my one-stop go-to media app.
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Love the bait and switch. Same week they “remind” us that podcasts are going away they push their next failed idea called “discover” and highlighted their progressive propaganda channels. Disgusting.
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In the interest of remaining positive, a “Podcasts” library is really a “Music” library + software to keep new episodes downloaded on your server.
Would love positive feedback on software you recommend to build a DIY podcast library here:
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Did they seriously discontinue this with one weeks notice. And that notice was only on a forum. WTF?
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I never thought about plex as a company but reading the comments and other shame stories and abandoned features blaming the (paid!) customers for not using such buggy features and ignoring them in the forums like they do, I came to realize how crap of a company they are. I’m already looking for FOSS alternatives and wish them a painful death full with economic debts and bad critics.
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