huh…
So the ONLY device that supports Atmos is a shield, right? Do you realise how insane it is to ask people to buy a very specific hardware device to play an industry standard “codec” that we already have on our HTPCs? Especially when we are running our HTPCs as home cinemas for that specific experience.
And as @Bun-Bun kindly replied for me. Network stuttering and buffering is very much a thing. Try playing a 80gb 4k HDR Atmos file over a network VS playing on your HTPC. The difference is night and day with “buffering”. So you have that playback issue when using any of Plex’s non-HTPC players, but on top of that you have no player that supports Atmos at all (except the shield, of course).
I can’t fathom how you guys think that all us guys who have championed Plex for years and provide the PMS’s are going to be happy to just go out and buy a Nvidia Sheild ™ © Plex INC 2020! to play our media in our home theaters.
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I’m extremely upset with this change.
No more direct audio passthrough, no more tv interface, no more remote support = you just lost a customer.
Your new desktop app is useless crap. I already have the web interface.
I’ve been an advocate of how awesome plex was, and now you’re killing my favorite interface and want me to use a crappy streaming box to stream content 4 inches across the room.
My htpc is my plex server, and my netflix player, and my music player, and my gaming pc, and my rediit browser, and my web server, and many other things. I use it to watch and listen to everything. everything.
There is no one device that can replace it.
I will be moving my entire setup to another platform and telling everyone who will listen to do the same.
Without power users like me to setup and maintain plex servers over the years, your company would not exist. My wife and my mom might play content from a streaming box or a phone, but without power users like me building the servers and setting everything up and maintaining everything, they would not even know what plex is.
“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations.” -Steve Jobs.
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It’s here https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/privacy-preferences/#opd
But opting out might not be enough, as it looks like you’re not really opting out of much at all. And allthe important things they get regradless of the setting.
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No, I’d preferably opt out of all of them but I can’t. Privacy is more important, but it looks like I can’t have the cake and eat it. It looks like I can’t even have the crumbs anymore.
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To be truthful … PMP was not that good of a player for HT anyway … no HDR passthrough, no 3D, god knows how its doing tone mapping
With players that can pass HDR metadata at least you have a choice whether you want external device to do tone mapping for you (upcoming MadVR Envy?)
MadVR seems only renderer that can really squeeze your GPU for every inch of available power (admittedly there is point of diminishing return where large increment of GPU power resulted in only puny increase of video quality) … and most server/client based players have ditch it (kodi, emby)
I am glad I jump to JRiver that still has MadVR baked into its WIndows player … the learning curve of JRiver is very steep but I am happy that I in their camp now (3D, HDR passthrough, audio passthrough, MadVR scaling/tone mapping, DSD, cue sheets)
In my environment, I test all platforms and clients capable of Direct Play. Our go to client is always the embedded PMP installed on NUCs. To do some catch up on feature function parity check, I am not using our embedded PMP appliances for today.
Already ran into a showstopper on my Shield today but its not due to a Plex deficiency—but a regression caused by Nvidia’s Shield Experience 8.0 update.
The number one reason I like PMP is because I use the embedded version on a NUC. Its an appliance that I can count on for rock solid stability and always works. The living room Embedded PMP NUC has been running for about two years without a reboot.
However there are dependencies with several moving parts that makes updating embedded PMP quite difficult. Lack of 4K HDR10 passthrough for native playback is a weak point for PMP. On Linux, HDR is a work in progress however Intel engineers are making leaps in its development. The roadmap for HDR is still in a state of TBD.
I can understand why Plex has decided they need to EOL it.
Since consideration for alternatives is now a reality, I would not call the Shield reliable as its constantly going through cycles of break/fix updates. I would say the AppleTV is much better in this regard. Plex has done quite a bit of commendable work on their app for the iOS/tvOS platform.
The shortcoming on the AppleTV is that no app developer can passthrough HD audio codecs until Apple allows it. Secondarily, unlike PMP and the Shield, tvOS only supports switching to 23.976Hz and 59.94Hz refresh rates. In the past, this would not necessarily be an issue but nowadays some studios are mastering content at 24.000 fps and 60.000 fps instead of the traditional 23.976 and 59.94fps. Netflix and Amazon is guilty of this with some of their original content.
There is no perfect solution today with or without PMP. I am quite saddened with the EOL announcement. A year or two ago I had high hopes that all the FOSS projects would evolve and culminate into the perfect mix of software to support the latest and greatest codecs and HW to process them. This is what all AV aficionados want for our content consumption. Call us fanatics, die hards or zealots but its this type of consumer that pushes the boundaries for product development—be it a car, computers, displays, home automation, networks and software.
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How the times have changed…
Introducing the Plex Media Player
If you’re still with us, and you’ve been around for a while, you know how seriously we take Plex in the living room. If you’re like us, you have a plasma TV whose size and sticker price your friends mock (but your cat gladly sleeps next to in the winter), more speakers than you can count (note to kids: they’re speakers, not climbing equipment), and a subwoofer that stresses the dog out every time it growls and rumbles below 20Hz.
We took a long, hard look at our current flagship for home theater enthusiasts, Plex Home Theater, and asked ourselves which bits we wanted to take to the next level and which ones we’d be happy sacrificing in a leaner, meaner, more beautiful, purpose-built high end Plex experience.
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Very fair point about HDR (I personally never had too much issue with 3D). So i use MadVR and MPC for my HDR movies, but Plex is my goto for everything else. Having to use MPC for HDR is one thing, but in 2020 I am going to be unable to play atmos, period, Plex become useless to me because I have no way of playing any new media outside of purchasing a Shield.
I think that may forever be my favorite Plex client. Everything else is “good enough” at best. Embedded Plex on the NUC was my first replacement for Media Center.
I also did, but a different one: My frustration that the Shield accidentally killed VC1 direct play with the update. Happily it should be resolved in the upcoming update.
Yep. When I saw the news that it was being killed, I sighed, but had previously seen the writing on the wall, hedged my bets, and moved in other directions. I’m not thrilled about it, but have accepted it. There is just no perfect client on the market.
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This blog was why I came to Plex
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RIP in pepperonis
This has made me scratch my head several times over the last 18 hours or so!
How is it that you DON’T have the biggest badass Home Cinema setup out there? How is that even possible?
To me, that’s like a petrolhead who doesn’t own a car!
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@Cafe_Diem VC-1 is fixed in the second hotfix released 2-3 days ago. You may need to sign up for it with your Shield’s SN. I posted the link a few days ago in another thread.
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i am grateful I didn’t spring for the lifetime pass. Without a 10’ UI I need to navigate the “improved” desktop client with binoculars. I hope the blowback from this is sufficient to give us back a 10’ UI.
Kill the UWP Windows client. I can understand that. Kill the HTPC aspects of Plex and they kill off more of their user base than they might imagine.
By the way to the people who are asking why I don’t just get a ShieldTV appliance, I use my HTPC for encoding blu-rays and DVD’s and playing AAA games. I challenge folks to do that on a ShieldTV or a Firestick. 
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Sign up here:
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Unfortunately, when HDR was becoming a thing and PMP users were asking about HDR support 2-3 years ago there were multiple Plex devs commenting in threads about how they don’t have the setups to test anything, with a few having little understanding how HDR was even implemented as a base on Windows, OSX, Linux etc, period. We are long past anything other than front end dev and the incorporation of corporate partnerships.
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Which for me begs the question… Who is the target audience for the new Plex app?
Who was is designed for?
I did at least try it out last night, and indeed found that it was not passing through audio, playback was choppy, etc, etc… But still… Who do you expect to be using it?
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In other words, there are very few (if any) Plex devs who actually have a passion for Media consumption, and to them, it’s just a job!
I know the size of companies vary, and I know that Richersounds as a company may be fairly large in comparison, but my local store has a dedicated soundproofed showroom so customers can see and hear things before they buy.
Even if Plex employees don’t personally have kick ass setups at home, you would have thought that the Plex offices would have something that they can use to test and experience the differences in devices and apps.
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It appears they have a passion for selling Shield boxes instead.
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