Yes, it’s nice to see the community voice their objection to having this forced upon us with no way to disable it. As someone above stated, its advertising via stealth on our personal servers.
I’m however skeptical plex will do anything but I hope they prove me wrong. I’ve some holidays coming up so a full review of emby/jellyfin will happen if plex remain stubborn.
+1 voted. Doubt they’ll listen though.
Quickly take into consideration the opinion of your users, at least those who have paid to make you grow…That would be a real new feature !
I hope this post makes a difference, but after having a look at the newly updated Plex website it´s pretty clear where their priorities lie.
It´s just a matter of time before they drop support for private content altogether and become a full on streaming service/streaming hub.
lol Last possible thing on the main page… “Got personal media? Plex does that too!”
Dead… last…
I installed Emby yesterday (immediately after seeing the new discover crap), but Emby seems to be even more buggy than Plex unfortunetly. But I´m very impressed with the devs, I posted a question and got an answer within one minute. A lot of things seems to go unfixed for years though, just like with Plex.
“Who’s to say where it ends, otherwise? In a year or two they might change or remove something far more important even.”
It will most likely end in Plex removing the option of viewing your private content altogether.
They literally can’t do that since that would break all installation metrics from all the other content holders such as Net, Dis, and such.
Do you think all those platforms would allow that considering how much money they already threw away at app development, that’s not going to happen.
Yeah, I noticed that too. Without saying it out loud, I can’t think of a more obvious way of letting us know that the personal media system that we’ve been supporting for so long is now relegated to an afterthought.
It just stinks to watch it happen. They were once the undisputed leader in this field… and now they’re trying to branch out and be part of so many other fields that they’re losing their original focus. NOBODY did serving up personal media better than Plex.
Now… they’ve muddied their reign as the personal media leader with so many other things that are only mirrors of what everyone else is already doing. Literally EVERY other free service out there has streaming channels and commercial laden On Demand content.
This latest add on is a novelty. I can see the Watchlist getting use, especially for stuff I already have… but once the hype dies down, you’ll see Discovery fall and possibly become the newest Plex News or Plex Arcade.
Then there will be yet ANOTHER new feature that moves even further away from being the once great leader in their field that will have some initial fanfare, but will also fall to the wayside.
Plex… You used to be the best there was at what you did. Own that. Stop trying to be something else, because either everyone else is already all over it, and if they’re not… then it’s probably not worth doing.
Yeah, I agree the marketing makes this important aspect of Plex look like a bit of an afterthought.
Which is weird, because it’s the rich set of features allowing me to host my own media that made me a Plex customer.
At first, I was searching for a way to manage my huge music collection and stumbled upon Plex. I then saw it could also manage my personal collection of movies and TV shows. I tried it and then immediately fell in love with the software. I spent a lot of time organizing everything. Except maybe for a web browser, Plex has been my most used software for some time now, and by far. I don’t know what I would do without Plexamp, the Plex client on my Apple TV, and my Plex server.
Without the solid set of features allowing me to manage and consume my own media, I wouldn’t be a Plex customer. It’s as simple as that. I look at the front page of the Plex website, and the vast majority of what’s in it doesn’t represent the reasons I’m a customer. Sure, the new Discover features are great, but that’s not why I’m here. If Discover never happened, it wouldn’t have made a tangible difference to me.
So yeah, seeing the most important part of Plex to me and the reason I’m a customer seemingly becoming a kind of afterthought in both the marketing and development priorities does give a kind of sinking feeling.
And like I said in previous posts, the lack of customization options in the newly released Discover features doesn’t help (we really need a way to turn off the “More Ways To Watch” section from search results).
Let’s see what the future holds, but I am a bit worried.
That’s almost identical to my story. I loved Plex so much when I found it, that it probably didn’t even take a month for me to go Lifetime. I put all my chips in this basket.
If it looked like this when I found it, I’m not sure I would have invested.
Is… Is this the start of Skynet? Has it begun? Are we all now going to burn?
Ditto… I joined plex in 2014, payed yearly for a while and then purchased lifetime. Have remained loyal to be point of being an advocate, encouraged others to join up and helping folks on the forum. However, in recent years its more and more frustrated me.
I almost left when they pushed the continue watching and forced the 20 item limit. Add to that the bugs & regressions which keep coming. This now could be the final straw if this remains which would be a real pity as many aspects I love.
Comes down to what I can live with and this I just cannot. The alternatives are well documented and have shortcomings of their own, but not this.
My media, my data, my server and my choice.
The primary issue with Plex moving so far off being a personal media streamer is that there are about 20 users that would not be here if I hadn’t directed them to download the software.
To them, “I” am Plex… so when they make a move further and further away from me, I have to explain to them how it’s not me. I’m not the one putting commercials into what they’re watching. Therefore, I feel like I’m their voice and advocate here as well. They don’t know there’s a forum, realize that Plex is a company with interests of their own, nor do they care.
I get they want to move away from being purely a platform for personal media, but forcing the ‘new’ stuff on the people that have been here for years is a bit crap. The ideal solution would be to have them separated and if we want to include it, we can.
I’ve got a few friends that I recommended over the years that have already started considering shifting to something else, the convivence of Plex is just what’s keeping a lot of people, like myself, in the eco system.
My family uses Plex and I’ve had questions asking why things aren’t working, and they’re not even streaming from my server, they’re streaming from the ‘free’ plex service
I feel that this short but intense fight is pretty much over. Plex, by its failure to provide even a marginally sensible explanation and thereby acknowledge that the guess that people have made about this being only, or at least primarily, a revenue generator that really does nothing to enhance the experience of a lot of people is even more than correct; it is the primary purpose for Plex. And by not giving any option to hide or suppress results that have no bearing on what the user can actually stream Plex has shown that they have no real concern for their users.
It is OK and in fact it is often good when a company pays real attention to their bottom line but Plex has stepped over the line…
“Greed is eternal.”
Also the “say” it is a beta but it is rammed down every admin’s throat without permission or even them being in any beta program. It is NOT a beta if it is in general release. That is Plex has lied to some of their best customers once again. It is a lie to promise one thing and then do another as Plex has done several times.
I have been posting about this simply because of the fact that Plex was so good in the past I had hopes that they might return to being a company I liked and really wanted to do business with.
Plex has changed. They are no longer friendly to deal with and they no longer hear what the customers say. They listen but ignore anything that does not agree with what Plex wants.
This last indecent and the pathetic responses Plex has given has convinced me that completely removing Plex was the right move for me and earlier today I helped two other people to remove Plex and install Emby.
This will, thankfully for many I’m sure, be my last post on this subject unless someone addresses me specifically. I have said all I feel I need/want to say on this so I guess I am done beating this particular dead horse.
Just to add to the fun…
Remember, Plex didn’t add Discover to managed users because they couldn’t restrict the content. So instead… they added Discover to it anyway. WTF Plex?
For me what is worse is that Plex does not allow “friends” to setup Managed Users accounts and grant those managed user accounts access to a shared Plex server. My “friends” need to allow their kids full access to their Plex accounts to allow their kids access to my Plex server. So, those kids have FULL ACCESS to ALL the features of Plex’s outside content, with NO content controls.
This isn’t just a new problem with Discover. It is a problem that has been around for sometime now and Discover/Watchlist/Search Results is only adding to it.
