Is Plex dead or is it slowly dying?

Have You tried Sonarr which can check for ability of show and download it with desired quality, language etc. There You have calendar with planned air dates and it can nitify plex after download of particular episode. Its multiplatform, i use it on qnap x64 version but can use it on linux, windows, docker

Yes, I have Sonarr, Radarr, Sab etc… On my server where I only have shows and movies I want to watch it’s not an issue at all as everything is ā€˜a favourite’. So going to TV shows and Movies is the perfect display. Shows what I have, how many are unwatched etc…

The problem comes when you have access to another server that has exponentially more content.

So having access to a server with 10k+ TV shows and the solution is to use unwatched?? Surely you can see the problem with that.

I honestly don’t understand why this is such a hard concept to comprehend. Take amazon prime for example. I’ve just heard about a show, I find it and click on add season/show to watch list. That’s it, I don’t need to start watching it then an there for it to register. In a few weeks time when I get around to i I can go to my watchlist and see all the shows I have tagged to watch. This is essentially a favourite system. Same with Emby. I don’t have netflix but I assume this will have a similar setup also.

For ā€˜on deck’ to work you first need to start watching a show/movie for it to register and even then it’s not the best of interfaces compared to a simple filter of ā€˜my favourites’ on the main TV / Movie list. It’s really that simple.

Sonarr is great for this and maybe in the future Plex would have a ā€˜future favourites’ which would be even better. I feel that explaining that might be a step too far though :wink:

I love Plex but it’s not perfect and never will be. Simple changes like this make it incrementally better. As it’s been said, ā€œImitation is the sincerest form of flatteryā€

Albeit minor as in general I like the way on the deck and unplayed function with plex I can see the merits of having a watch list which could be almost like a secondary filter on top of unplayed.

as examples:

  1. I have stuff on my server that the kids watch which I have no interest in myself. They still appear in unplayed when I filter and it would be nice to remove that without having to mark them as watched.
  2. Also, I have currently 82 shows unplayed. It would be nice to add say my top 10 to a watch list for what I want to start next. I had recently forgotten I had The Witcher to watch as it was buried in the list of shows to start :slight_smile:

I suggest this be taken out of this thread and a feature request be raised for it. Maybe @WoodyJ007 would do that :slight_smile:

I’m glad someone else gets it. It’s already on the feature requests in multiple forms. It however keeps getting ignored in favour of things that no one seems to be asking for. Which I think was one of the starting points of this current thread.

Ah, I understand. That is the MAJOR frustration folks have with plex. You spend the time raising a bug which is a regression from a previously version or give constructive feedback and it goes ignored for weeks/months …

sigh…

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So I’m just gonna chime in because why not. Plex isn’t perfect but it’s a solid platform. As a dev (of other things) and a user of Plex I can see it from both sides of the coin.

What seems like a basic feature or bug fix may not be so basic to re-work in the code. It may be an edge case with a certain type of graphics card or a bug in the handling of a specific type of encoded file. Whatever it is that you take issue with, the Plex team has a massive backlog of features and bug fixes to work on internally. Plex isn’t just some two bit piece of media software, its a massive server+cloud+client platform so much coordination has to go into keeping things going smoothly.

Back in the early days, the software was essentially xbmc with a bit of a server back end and minimal cloud/streaming integration so adding a feature would be a relatively easy task. Now they have a large platform to maintain. They also have other obligations like finding ways to generate revenue (to pay the all the hardworking people who make this possible) and legitimizing the platform to the world without bumping the user rates too much so they’ve had to put some extra time and effort into things like DVR and streaming movies & shows with ads. Things I don’t use but I have an appreciation for why they exist and have had a lot of time put into them.

So I get it if you feel like it’s become too large and the user base isn’t ā€œheardā€ as much as it used to be, but as long as I’m still getting regular updates and seeing the Plex machine chooch right along then I’m not complaining. They make a great product that has flaws and thats ok with me. If you want something else, complaining isn’t going to do much - just find a different platform and support them. If that doesn’t exist for you then please, go out and build one yourself.

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I tried Plex like two years ago and within 3 days purchased a lifetime license. I was coming off TVMobili which was difficult to use and maintain. During this time I have migrated my music and video library and have been using the DVR function for over a year. Most issues have been due to local hw hiccups. There was one major sw issue which required me to retreat from a beta release. I now only update public releases, and I do a disk image before to avoid having to rebuild library meta data. So, trust but verify. For me, the interface while not perfect provides tremendous functionality for what I paid. It has become as indispensable as Netflix and other similar services.

I’ve got to agree with this too. I have yet to see a ā€œSmartTVā€ that lives up to the all the promises on the box. Whenever you’re working with an all-in-one product there’s got to be compromises in the design, functionality of the equipment. The big apps like Netflix, Prime, maybe Vudu stay function well and stay current, which is attributable to the user base.

Plex users are on the fringes of technology and are largely categorized as cutting edge in the eyes of consumer products manufacturers.

Further TV manufacturers — in my experience— stop publishing OS updates shortly after the next generations of devices are released. I think this further compromises their functionality and long-term viability.

To solve this problem, I’ve created a ā€˜to watch’ playlist and I add content to that.

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Oh, someone reads my disqus comments. I feel famous now. Still this is sad nothing changed since that comment and at least for me its a huge drag to move a massive library to emby even though I agree their software leaves Plex behind. I honestly hope Plex goes bankrupt for their lack of communication with users. Learn all of you developers out there, hear out what your users want and do it if you can.

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I’ve been working with Plex for several months on the issue of music scans and large libraries. Multiple fixes in the current beta and probably some still to come are due to them communicating with me.
Could they do more? Sure, if they had more money to do it with. But I seriously doubt that they do which is why you are seeing all these revenue streaming products. Without that, they can never get big enough to afford a full time larger support staff.

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Somehow Emby does that without this extra crap Plex pushes on us. I regret only not starting with Emby. A lot of cool features were proposed that do not require an army of developers and a billinares wallet. Almost all are to this day ignored.

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Emby focusses more on the core, that is probably correct. They have to, since they don’t have the man power.

As to why your media buffers on LG, there is a very comprehensive article about that on this site someplace… if the Plex creators had to baby every person with this problem who can not find the article, they would never have time to develop.

The truth is that every version of TV and variants (WebOS) version supports different codecs differently. The container type, Audio Stream type(s), Video Stream codec, and subtitles all contribute to whether you will see buffering.

I have two LG TVs, and they seem to be mutually exclusive on what content they start buffering on!!! I’ve had to encode certain HD/HDR video’s twice!

Basically you need to check on the info if your video is DirectPlay-ing, if not then something is needs to be encoded differently.
Basically, stick to standard def

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I believe Plex should too, I mean its fun and stuff to add things no one wants or requests but I would love for example for Plex to auto-convert my media when I add them to a selected type and quality, I would love to have more personalisation with prerolls (for example to have 1 sequential and second random), to import home users DB from ldap or some other source, to have an equalizer for music, locally stored preroll that allows for movies to buffer while they are playing etc. Those are just some random features requested on this forum I had on the top of my mind right now that never got even a consideration.

Plex is dead.

I’d say it’s in a coma. Hopefully it’ll wake up soon.

I too am getting really frustrated with the bugs and feature suggestions that just get ignored for years without any comment from the Plex team. All the while the effort goes in to new features that no-one’s interested in. Seriously look at these ā€œfreeā€ films Plex are offering they’re free for a reason, they’re all utter rubbish that no other service would pick up.

I might start looking at alternatives if things don’t improve soon.

It really does make me laugh when I see comments regarding Plex concentrating on features no one wants/asked for.
Is there anything to back that up. Did those who like to use such quotes do some kind of survey that I missed? Or is it just simply hyperbole.

For me, music has always been a weak link in Plex.
Plex Amp for desktops came along and all that changed.
I don’t recall anyone asking for it though.
Now the Plex Amp mobile app. That is truly incredible and the only music app I will need to use.
I don’t recall anyone asking for it though.

I haven’t had the chance to do much with Plex Dash yet but at a quick look, there are features in there not available in Tautulli remote or Varys.
I don’t recall anyone asking for it though.

Yep sure there are things added that I personally don’t want or use added. The free movie stuff is a prime example. It was heartbreaking that it took a full 60 seconds to disable them. :rofl: I will never get that minute back. Yet I have read several posts from users who don’t run a server or even have access to a friend’s server and only use those free movies. Because well they’re free.
I don’t use them others do. Just get over it. See you all next week/month/year when your ā€œlook for alternativesā€ has yielded nothing.

@elan and the various devs and everyone else who dream up all these cool features (that no one allegedly wants). Please don’t stop adding them. I would be pretty happy if only 20% of these features were personally useful. I’m delirious that that rate is more like 60-80%. Happier still that those I don’t find useful are useful to others.

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Really appreciate your kind and thoughtful post. My view has always been that Plex is a really broad platform, and people generally care most about their little areas/clients/platforms and can occasionally see everything else as a distraction or proof that we’re losing focus (with ā€œfocusā€ being defined as the part of the platform they care the most about). But in the same breath we do realize that focus is important, and we know there’s always room for improvement… :sweat_smile:

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