I was thinking about getting plex pass because the new preview was streaming all video files I previously had to use Infuse for. I love Infuse but Plex looks more polished and im a designer so I like a good visual experience as much a technically seamless one too.
But with this update it looks like Plex is trying to prioritize ads and their own content so media server features and personal libraries will get depri’d.
Should I just avoid Plex Pass for now? what do you all think? I dont even use Music so I won’t use Plex Amp which they could push to be a music streaming app like Spotify anyways.
I’m a Plex Pass lifetime owner and while I don’t have any true deep insights into Plex’s future plans - or let’s say as much as any other user - I highly, highly doubt that Plex is ever going to turn into a “Stream our media and nothing else”-kind of platform.
The whole selling point of Plex (I’m a user for ~8 years) is and always was personal media management. That is where they still lay their most focus on. And while some features of the past years may be more needed than others, some of them even were flops (Looking at you Plex Arcade) I don’t see the connection between they now offer ad detection to “they’re going to be interested in their own content only”.
Ad detection is an addendum. For people running PMS with optional live TV devices and live TV streaming Plex is inherently - and additionally - offering for people with DVR tuners and such. It has nothing to do with their self-hosted content.
There’s, by far, no need to anticipate Plex turning into some “Netflix 2.0”, meaning they only host their own content in the near future.
I’d totally recommend you stepping away from that assumption and either buy or not buy a Plex Pass, but as a long-term user I can almost guarantee it is not a thing Plex is actually planning or interested in.
On a second note: Why were you using infuse for streaming from Plex in the first place? You can and could’ve used the respective Plex app for your device easily, as Plex (apps) are capable of playing all major and some not major video files and formats
hope so! I’d love to support them for developing a great feature set and an experience for however users want to use the service. do hope for more customization options in the future or maybe a breakout app of features like Live TV (if it blows up) can live, while personal media can truly shine like Plex Amp. Lets seee
not true about Plex app able to stream everything. Current plex app does not direct play certain codecs. remux rips are a good example of that.
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PS. to Plex, if you need design support LMK! would be happy to lend a hand with the player. its jank. or just use native platform one please and thank you.
I don’t know how experienced you are with similar streaming services like Jellyfin or Emby, but Plex is basically the current and all-time king in terms of customization compared to their brothers (and sisters?). While I can see your feedback and some features and feature sets may be for the one, but not for the other (One man’s trash is another man’s treasure - one man’s pain is another man’s pleasure), you definitely won’t find any self-hosting-streaming-platform offering a wider variety in features and customization options than Plex does. And I can genuinely say that as a user of all 3 (major) self-hosted-media servers.
There’s basically no other than those 3 offering plex-like features, not even close.
As for the compatibility I don’t think I can shine with my experience in terms of remuxes, as I don’t have any remux on my server, but I highly doubt that this is something belonging to the category of Plex itself, but rather to your settings/devices/bandwitdth/used hardware for transcoding of the PMS/quality settings and literally a ton of other settings that can vastly impact the transcoder decision of a remote stream. As I said I’m not an expert for remuxes and I don’t know if they ever get played directly, but that as well belongs in the category of finding the right settings of your/the PMS server in general and/or the capability of files/formats/hardware in terms of direct plays.
I’d like to note the variety of good support articles Plex offers in this regard to get the maximum out of your transcoding hardware and settings.
As for the breakout of Live TV: I highly doubt that this is going to happen any time soon either, why would they? Live TV has been there alongside of personal media ever since Plex’ first PMS iteration (or one of the first). Why would there be a need to split the “all-in-one-package” into smaller “not-so-all-in-one-packages”?
The benefit of Plex and its features is that you have everything in one place. Why would they strart breaking their mission and seperate everything to dedicated apps? Live TV is nowhere close their main focus. It is - as most things are on Plex - an optional feature and I don’t have any exact numbers, but I doubt that the percentage of users that have a Plex Pass in whichever form to use Live TV on Plex only is higher than 10%, so there’s really no need in being afraid of it turning into their main focus - not only from an app point of view, but neither from a monetary unique selling point for their community.
I don’t want to sound patronizing or disrespectful by any means, but I’d recommend catching up with what Plex offers exactly, what it is and what it was created for
Those with remuxes, do not want to transcode when local especially. So having an app that streams it reliably is a huge deal.
You’re making good points on where it shouldn’t be split up but it’s to keep things simple and keeping individual’s needs over what Plex may think it’s good for them or over generalizing which what a lot of platforms run into. I love the amount of content management control we do have on Plex while integrating metadata into a streamlined experience.
On the note about keeping everything together, they’re splitting music out starting with the new experience already but you could argue separating video fron music isn’t a bad thing etc.
Regardless, if plex pass continues to be a great value. No reason not to take my moneys
Agreed with what you said There surely are more perspectives to it than mine and of course it’s always hard to find a balance between individual needs and the majority. You also have valid points and perspectives. I’m just trying to share my experience and views from what I’ve witnessed on and with Plex for the past years, as you asked for an evaluation and opinion of how the community sees it.
The splitting music into Plexamp and breaking it away from the main server part is also a valid point, so again, I of course can’t say what the future holds with 100% certainty, but that’s just my view of how it has been the past years. Splitting the music into Plexamp only is - probably as my guess would be - that even Plexamp isn’t only the best music player compared to the other music players (of Emby or Jellyfin), but even compared to the majority of local music players entirely (*Disclaimer, to be taken as a personal opinion from an audiophile, plex enthusiastic musician).
So, giving way more users the chance - or force them - to listen to music on Plex(amp) is potentially different than splitting live TV (or Plex’s self-hosted content or alike) into a dedicated app, as the dedicated app for music already exists and is probably their most underrated (and not very popular) asset of all.
Also, this step probably makes even more sense after they’ve parted ways with Tidal late last year.
If nobody wants to use Tidal music on Plex? Well, sure, let your admins become their own tidal - in good.
Look at the release notes. They do work on personal media features all the time.
If personal media was on the way out, they would not still be working on things like x265 transcoding. They would not release a preview of the photos app.
Everyone is worried because Plex has added social features and their own media services … But I don’t see any actual evidence that personal media is at risk.
Once they stop doing new work on personal media, then we have something to worry about.
Great point. Good to see commitment to those features.
To comment on social features, absolutely nothing wrong with the additions as long as they fund the experience we want and love.
I think where it becomes problematic for users that wants to stick around for the core use case which start to get undermined for profits. Not saying they’re doing that and hope they’re able to raise enough funds without doing so. No way to tell of course.
The benefit of Plex and its features is that you have everything in one place.
that would be cool again to have all in one place… I also have plex pass lifetime since the beginning, but needed to use infuse for 4K DV HDR video files which plex don’t want to play without stuttering, while Infuse can play it seemless smooth. I don’t know which update fixed this, and now plex play well all my files again, but I still don’t have anything in one place.
It’s not possible to include Apple Music into plex. It’s not possible to include streaming services for liveTV like zattoo, magine or MagentaTV into Plex. Also the universal watchlist broke to some streaming services like disney+ and magentaTV right now, so I need to use plex and the disney+ App or AppleTV App to start streaming the show because plex couldn’t find the show in connected location…
and some missing attention is kind of sad, that the watchlist should become customizable but still nothing happened. There is still plex.tv (I don’t want to use), or thematic playlists with christmas movies and many more within my recommended tab that I cannot delete/hide/avoid/customize as I would like it.
Plex is still the best experience so far over kodi, emby, jellyfin and many more I tried, but I’m also concerned about drifting apart from user wishes to undermined profit changes…
So many reasons many people have gone away from Plex clients, specifically on MacOS and iOS/iPadOS. From lack of offical audio codecs, through lack of features like Picture in Picture, to slow downloads on iOS, through to general stability (crashing) and plenty of other reasons.
Basically support for players in the Apple ecosystem is rubbish currently, my hope is this preview (that filled up on Apple straight away, so I’ve never been able to access it) starts to bring the Plex experience up to a reasonable level.
Speaking of Live TV and Tuners, does anyone know of any updates of using your own content to create your own tv channels? Some plex developers said they were looking at it awhile ago. Is that in the new beta?
When stating a device’s compatibilities with audio and video codecs, we are referring to native support. If bandwidth is not an issue, and Plex has to transcode the codec to play on the device, that device does not support it.
For those of us that rip Blu-Rays and want to Direct Play the content without transcoding, the Nvidia Shield is our only device option for full HD Audio and Dolby Vision (Profile 7) support. Though it still has some issues with some movies which has pushed me to start using Zidoo.
A big selling point of Infuse has been their longtime support of HD audio formats found on Blu-Ray remuxes.
I did a semi-technical write up of the state of HD audio on the AppleTV a few years ago (for now this information is still accurate):
I cannot say too much about codec support or stability issues on Apple devices, as I’ve never been using any apple device, but in general this isn’t related to the initial topic or worry that OP was having.
This would be the answer to the question if Plex is moving towards prioritizing ads and their own content over their original idea of providing a self-hosted media platform and to which the answer is most likely just: No.
If you want to discuss specific feature sets, codec support, stability issues or whichever of those aim it at the correct threads or posts, as this is somewhat unrelated to the original premise
Until someone from Plex says that the navigation piece in the UX is edit-ready and can be changed so that users can access local media easily then I wont believe anything they say about their “friendly-as-ever” attitude toward locally hosted media.
They are actively trying to hide it now and bury it in the UX behind multiple steps. How do I know that? Because it’s being actively hidden now behind multiple steps.
but you could argue separating video fron music isn’t a bad thing etc.
There surely are more perspectives to it than mine and of course it’s always hard to find a balance between individual needs and the majority. You also have valid points and perspectives. I’m just trying to share my experience and views from what I’ve witnessed on and with Plex for the past years, as you asked for an evaluation and opinion of how the community sees it.
appreciate your thoughts. Good to understand your use cases and confidence in the platform