Hi there,
i am a very pleased User for nearly a year.
PMS had get many improvement over this time, but it seems to me that there is „Construction“ at too many places.
— Alexa not working in other Language.
— Hardware transcoding still beta
— DVR also beta
I Wonder why they will not get one thing running before starting the next.
What do you think?
There’s not a software company in the world, at least with more than a few employees, that works that way. There is always more than one initiative in progress at any given time. Is Plex spreading themselves too thinly? Only they know. Armchair CEO’ing is rarely an informed exercise.
Successful CEOs realize that customer perception is reality.
Up to a point, perhaps.
Too many irons in the fire? Perhaps. Too many new pieces interacting? To me that is what the problem really is.
The additional problem is that there are many bugs and unfinished parts of the whole that makes up Plex. That means that one or more than one 'fix" might break something else and it is hard to determine what effects what. This is particularly true as systems get more and more complex.
In the Apollo program there was a relay in the air processing system that delayed a launch for months. It was not defective BUT if it was in the process of engaging when a communication system was initiating a fuel system temperature sensor would give an “out of range” message causing an injector to shut down. Not one of the parts was actually defective or even out of tolerance but their interaction cause real problems.
Plex has become so complex that it often seems that problems to other systems get added when “extras” are added somewhere else.
Up to a point complex systems are manageable with proper testing and, in these modern times, good (real good) version control for integration of all the parts but it is not either easy or cheap.
Plex is at the tipping point and all the additions produce a perception that it is a case of too many irons in the fire. That is what I believe @latweek meant by “Successful CEOs realize that customer perception is reality.” (I could be wrong because there was little elaboration.)
Plex is seen as developing too many separate but integrated parts while at the same time having several bugs that have gone unfixed and other parts that are only partially finished.
It may be that there are sufficient people working on everything and good enough version control properly implemented and enough people testing both the parts and the combined product for everything to work out in the end BUT that is not what is being seen by those of us in the outside world. What we see is a system development in a degree of chaos where many parts do not work correctly, are unfinished and/or incorrectly interact with each other.
Because Plex is so secretive and shares so little with the user community the perception of doing too much is pretty pervasive and that will continue for the foreseeable future or until some policies at Plex change.
If I am correct plex has different teams. (could be wrong) irrelevant to that plex works perfect here (on diff hardware and kinda complex environments where it gets throw sometimes the worst encoded files at it yet it works perfect and when you look at the big picture every 6 months over the last years plex has made soo much progress and does so much that i think plex is heading the right way.
Is plex made for the masses ? Totally not yet , lets admit we are all geeks (and geeks complain allot, we do) but its making good headway and progress.
Do i prefer a beta DVR then no DVR (absolutely), do i prefer a beta of anything ? I do. Kinda why i signed up with plex.
But again just my opinion (just stating that as lately its dangerous to post here without getting flamed, so again its an opinion)
One thing i do know plex never really shared is a roadmap (but then again i do understand why they dont)
Yes, we have different teams working on different things. Also, big Beta projects like hardware transcoding and DVR can stay in beta for 6 months to a year or longer just to soak.
If you are having specific issues, please let us know.
