I’m curious how people are using Plex now to get the most out of it as I feel like I’m missing some of the pizzazz I was hoping for.
My back story on this. I played with free Plex years ago and while interesting, I just didn’t have a setup that made use of it. As time went on, I’ve always thought about using Plex as my gateway to my viewing pleasure. The other day I saw Plex Pass on sale and decided to jump in. Admittedly, I had not dug into the current iteration and strictly was going off of what I knew from years ago and assumed it had only gotten better since. I bought an HDHomeRun Quatro because I had saw that it was supported on the Plex Pass. So I have all of the parts and pieces and I have a old (but decent computer) to run it on and I get it all setup and I start looking for all of the cool plugins that really allowed me to customize it to how I wanted…a quick look at the forums reveal that this key feature has been stripped out. I was pretty disappointed in myself for not doing my due diligence.
So I now have a few old movies that I had ripped to a hard drive years ago and some songs. I have the TV tuner hooked up and have a schedule and can DVR. But that’s about it. I can’t even use Trakt without a premium account (not that my handful of old movies matters that much). What I was hoping for was a central place that I could have all of my content (online and offline). I was hoping that I’d at least have a (single pane of glass) dashboard that would have my Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney+, etc… While I’m sure it’d be a stretch, what I was really hoping for was that Plex had evolved so much that I could do a search for a movie or TV series and it’d pull up an aggregated list showing that I could watch it on THIS, THIS, and THAT service and link straight in (or at least pop open that app with said search term loaded). Obviously that’s a pipe dream. As it is, I’m having buyer’s remorse.
So I’ve told you where I’m at and what I was hoping for, I’d like to know how else you’re using Plex that I may not have realized. Also, is it possible to still get an old version of Plex that still supports plugins (not that it’d do everything I was hoping for, but I think I’d like it more)?
Disclosure - I am a Plex Pass user and pay the annual subscription. In my opinion it is a steal for what you get for the price on an annual basis. All of what I discuss below comes with Plex Pass.
I use Plex for the following:
I own a massive library of movies from DVDs and Bluerays that I have purchased over the years and ripped. I use Plex to watch them whenever and wherever I want.
I own a massive music library from CDs that I have purchased and ripped (and admittedly some files I have copied from friends before I had Plex user library sharing). As with movies, I get to listen whenever and wherever I want.
I have a TV Tuner card in my home server and via a proxy through tvheadened I get a ton of local channels and have incorporated a number of IPTV streams into my personal channel lineup. So now I can record TV and then watch it whenever and wherever I want.
I back up my photos on my and my wife’s phones to save our content and not have it living in the cloud. I organize my photos about once a month and then get to look at them and share them with friends and family whenever and wherever I want.
I subscribe to a collection of podcasts and you can probably guess… I can listen to them …
Lastly I have some old TV shows that I ripped off of friends DVDs and do the same with movies.
Plex is a fantastic platform and provides the freedom and control of my content and I can enjoy it whenever and wherever I want. I travel a lot for my work and having access to my personal DVR in my hotel room is great and the ability to save what I record from the TV is also important to me. I like control! Plex gives me this control.
Here is the trick - setting up your own home entertainment and media server environment is not for the non-technical person. You read a lot on this forum about folks having all sorts of issues and based on my understanding of them by reading lots of posts that a good number are self-inflected wounds. If you take your time, do your research and understand how to properly administrate a SERVER then you will get what you want from Plex. If you can’t then you will be disappointed. Buy a cable package and move on.
I do subscribe to Netflix for their content and do also have a Sling account for sports. I am not happy at all with Sling. They offer a DVR feature but a ton of stuff you can use DVR with!. Now if the Plex devs could figure out an integration with Sling or Hulu or the new Disney+ that would be way cool.
Thanks for the responses. I’m actually a server administrator for the last 20 years. This may actually be part of my problem (and why plugins appealed to me). I like to customize the crap out of everything. Out of the box solutions are plain and boring to me. There are so many free media server options out there that can do virtually everything you listed that I guess I assumed Plex could do more since it was a premium product. It’s 100% my own fault for buying the lifetime pass without researching it deeper. The funny thing is that I’m the person who normally researches everything to death before buying. In this case, I was afraid to miss out on the cheaper lifetime deal and felt confident after using it before.
Thanks again for confirming that I’m not missing some awesome feature. Live and learn.
You can scrobble to trakt without a paid trakt account. You will want the Plex Trakt Scrobbler.
To get it, you first have to install the plugin WebTools. WebTools comes with the Unsupported AppStore where you can install the Trakt Plugin. Than you configure the plugin on this site: trakt-for-plex.github.io/configuration.
