And that’s more cynical (at best) than sceptical.
At this point I wanna add to my previous comments.
I own a Shield and ATV 4K only because of HDR. I had really high hopes for PMP on my HTPC.
(embedded at least, if not on Windows.)
Its not to be and that became apparent more than a year ago.
But here is an interesting quote from a surprising source in reference to Plex abandoning the HTPC
“This is really a reflection of where the htpc market is now.”
In fairness he did go on to say they had no plans to follow suit by abandoning the HTPC whilst actually agreeing that the HTPC is a pretty dead market nowadays.
The way I see it is that the head honcho of Emby could see this as an opportunity… But he chose to state a hard fact.
R.I.P. the HTPC as sad as that personally makes me.
I can understand Elan’s explanation about the few HTPC users we are. But what bothers me the most is that we, the HTPC users, are in my opinion the so call “power users”. People in general don’t care about codecs, containers, RGB levels, dropped frames, direct play,… They just want to turn on their streaming boxes and play anything. We are the users who care the most about these things and yet we’ll be the ones who will suffer this decision.
I don’t want to repeat myself but this will be a big change for us. I hope we are able to find a replacement so good and so simple for Plex.
Right now that just doesn’t exist sadly.
Visually the ATV 4K matched PMP (Same MPV player) of late. However the ATV suffers from Apple’s stupid audio limitations.
The Shield…well no real issues at all on the audio side of things…and that’s just about the only positive thing that I personally have to say about the Shield. The Shield UI sucks and the UX in Plex is by far the worst I have ever seen in any media player ever.
Actually that’s not quite true. The Shield is a superb client for flinging to (from Android or iOS)… and then the UX isn’t such a major issue.
We were also the ones who paid for the Plex passes early on to help support the company who is now giving us the finger because it’s just plain “easier” to not have to worry about app development anymore.
Something I mentioned the other day.
The average HTPC user will, like me be “old school”. The type of user who long since bought their lifetime Plex Pass.
I suggest a lot of these guys that fall for the party line, rush out and buy every Shield on the shelves, lock the doors (from the outside) and hide the luggage. When they hand a Shield Controller to the little woman to watch TV with - she’s gonna move back to Mother’s.
I don’t need to spend 200 bucks to find out how crappy UNO is on Shield. I have a FireTV - currently running neck and neck with Shield to stand upon the podium at the World’s Worst UI Competition.
So I have a Chromecast, an Apple TV, the LG Plex player NONE of which can play Dolby Atmos movies correctly and force me to wait for network traffic.
So with axing PMP, @elan and the Plex team are effectively telling me that I cannot consume my media in the way it was designed unless I go out and purchase the ONLY very specific device that can do it (outside of our PMP HTPC’s of course) in a Shield TV?
It doesn’t really matter how many people are using PMP vs all the other apps, the bottom line is that there is no other SANE solution for playing 4k HDR Atmos movies effectively.
Hmmm windows application replacement that is only missing 3 things to keep everyone happy
Handle 7 keyboard keys, 4 arrows, enter, space bar and escape
2 sizes of thumbnails and text, standard and large
Start in Full screen
You need to sack your programmers
They can’t even add 7 keyboard keys, 4 arrows, enter, space bar and escape to software.
Or allow 2 sizes of thumbnails and text, standard and large.
October 20, 2015 the future of premium media consumption in Plex
So when you say lifetime you really only meant 4 years.
If it is the base of the software that is the reason for not including these 2 things then the base was a huge mistake
Sounds like duck speak to me. You are never going to be able to compete in the world into which you are heading. All this move will do is alienate the community influencers that have been steering less tech savvy customers to you. I for one will never recommend Plex to anyone again. I will have to freeze my server and PMP apps to preserve the functionality I have while you abandon power users like myself in the hopes getting to a mainstream market that will crush Plex like a tin can.
By looking at our playback metrics over time. Numbers don’t lie.
@elan No, they don’t. As an MBA, I realize that. But what those numbers don’t show are how many of those casual users that are only on your product because the advanced power users you are abandoning steered them towards it. Those kind of casual users don’t set up Plex servers on their own. Someone like me helped them do it. Someone like me told them about it and told them the Plex Pass was worth it because it was a great product. Your HTPC power users are your community influencers and if you abandon them then they will abandon you and your metrics will eventually reflect that.
I woke up, grabbed a coffee, watched an episode of Rick and Morty (Picke Rick!!!) then spent the last 45 minutes or so reading the 80+ replies since last night…
Now its been around 2 days since this thread started and…
Completely agree. Plex’s messaging here is seriously tone deaf to bring up how well it works on Shield when we are complaining about losing PMP on Windows.
I don’t have a Shield and I don’t give a flying f about it. I do care about Plex taking feature away from me on the hardware that I own.
