The dev team could list potential features while users would pledge money to features they'd like to have. Any requested feature that meets its funding goal gets put on the roadmap. Funding goals and timelines get set by the dev team.
It's basically just a pre-purchase system that guides or informs development. Lots of people want parental controls, they should be able to pay $5 to solve that problem. I want to be able to listen to the audio from my TV on my headphones through my phone, and I'd pay $5 for that. I expect some features would be core and baked into the stock release while others would be one-off purchases as plugins.
If user comes up with a really cool and original idea, share some of the profit with them, this would encourage better suggestions. Users submit ideas, devs evaluate how long it would take / how much it would cost, people either chip in or dont.
I also expect it would focus development while increasing both user loyalty and revenue.
Lots of opportunity to work with third party developers, too. And the plugin model keeps the stock install easy to use but extendable.
We help the Developers by being paid PlexPass members. I don't see why I or any PlexPass member should have to pay more for something we are currently paying for. None of this "$5 dollars for this and or $5 dollars for that" on top of what we already are paying to receive new features. And I am fairly certain the Developers are addressing parental control and headphone issues.
I don't think all updates should be set up on the "Kickstarter" system, however, I have a lifetime membership and it supports the developers and shows appreciation to the people keeping Plex alive and well. However, if some people want to give $5 here or there for some features they really want, then we all benefit. Set it up that you only pay if the developpers reach their goal like Kickstarter and then they can hire some people to do the job or prioritize some features. I am not against it as long as I still have votes on normal upgrades and it doesn't take over and only paid upgrades are counted.
I'll cough up an extra hundred dollars one time only for some decent playlist support within the next month or two. That's all I'm left wanting in Plex, it really does meet all my other media server needs. I don't want to have to use iTunes, it's crap, but I need playlists and there's just no good way to sync a playlist of songs onto my iPod Touch right now to play offline. (My hack involves copying all the songs I want on a playlist in a separate folder, stripping all id3 data from the songs except the title, giving them some unified artist and album name and syncing that "album").
Hell, for the time being I would settle for just letting me list my music by tracks as well as artist and album. Then I could just sync the music I wanted to play at work where I don't have internet.
"let us pay you to build the features we care about" ?! isn't that already happened ?! We paid for the PlexPass - and with that we can vote here, on the members-forum for "features we care about".
I think the developers already keep an eye on what the PlexPass-community has to say (except of the PMS-TV-Support^^). They have to prioritize on the features THEY and WE want most. So even if someone is paying $10.000 , it doesn't represent the whole community.
You should visit the Android developer community.... this model of paying for features before they are developed (especially without a contract) typically ends in a very negative way.
I have to agree, this is a slippery slope. While I have all possible faith in the Plex Team, I’d rather not get into this “kickstarter” like system.
There are a couple of requests that (as I understand) are being held back because they cannot be implemented on all clients. Different systems, code bases, etc, I get it. Don’t exactly agree, but I get it. I’m sure the plex team won’t steer us wrong.
TV audio through you’re phone’s headphones? Hmm… That could be really cool, I’ve never even thought about that.
The dev team could list potential features while users would pledge money to features they'd like to have......
I have to disagree with you. I think you are confusing a money problem with a priorities problem.
The plex team, like any other team, has limits on man power. And throwing money around won't change that a whole lot.
So what they do is add features as they see fit, and if it's easy enough I'm sure they can satisfy even a few niches. And remember, different strokes for different folks. What is important to you to make your Plex experience all you could ever want, Isn't enough to meet other people's needs. And other users might not care that much about your feature.
I personally have many other things i'd like to have even before they add play list support, but again, that's just me.
Adding a playlist feature seems easy enough and i'm sure there's many people that want it. So if you haven't just request the feature and see how many +1's you get.
Check out http://airphonesapp.com when it worked it would stream audio flawlessly to an iOS device. I had Plex running on a Mac mini with the AirPhones server and the audio streamed great, the Roku 3 has a headphone jack on the remote which works now too. Sadly now the app has been abandoned. The man behind it isn't a developer and is open to open sourcing his server application because it would require a rewrite costing way too much. The server worked patched on 64-bit 10.6, but no more.
The headphones feature you're asking for could be had by having the Plex devs write a 64-bit kernel and raising some money to just buy out the AirPhones app so that Plex devs could copy-paste the code into Plex (at least the iOS version.) I can't imagine it's making money not working on 64-bit systems since day 1.
I’m coming from a similar perspective as the original poster; we’re old enough to have some cash around, busy enough that we can’t commit significant time to it, and not programmers of sufficient skill.
While it’s true that we pay for Plex now if we so choose, thatdoesn’t incentivize independent developers, of which there are many.
I think that itznfb has a point, where people who pay for undeveloped features tend to get really cranky if the feature doesn’t work how they imagined, and even if they only pay a dollar, however, I think that this could be alleviated through a system where we vote with dollars to create a bounty, and the money is charged only when a developer comes forth with the final result.
Obviously, some work would have to be done before hand to make sure that the requirements were crystal-clear, but there’s currently a lot of frustrated unrequited demand, and developers on the fence who are not being inspired. These two sides just need a method for pairing up.
I think the major challenge is manpower. It is challenging to find great people, and using incidental bounties to finance permanent positions is extremely challenging. So I can't imagine Plex going that route.
Thinking about it, it would create a division between people: those who can pay their way to features, and those who have to vote and hope they make it to the top of the priority list. All people hoping for their desired feature to become reality and need devs to do it.
Somehow I sense a backlog in highly desired features, and people craving for them to be realized. Perhaps we should ask ourselves how we can help the dev-team to get to the hart of the matter sooner...
I see both sides to the argument but my feelings are that the Pled team is doing a fabulous job with developing new desired features. However, where Plex falls short is in its channel functionality. From what I’ve read around the forums a lot of that has to do with licensing and that’s where I could see user financing having a major influence.
I personally have ditched cable and now have Plex, Amazon, Netflix and OTA digital TV serving all my needs but I’ve got to admit it’s a real pain! I’d be willing to pay a monthly subscription of $10 (like I do with spotify and Netflix) if it made my life easier and I don’t have to pay Comcast!!!
As one user pointed out, I’m older, have money but don’t have time to sit around and develop…so I’ll pay for it!
Disagree with this. With over 90% of the user base only caring about TV Shows and Videos it will sway the development in one direction only and the minority will have to fork out much more to get their features in.
An important factor for Plex must be how to position their product line in the market place and for that you may have to incorporate features that the majority of the current user base may not have interest in.
I agree with your consideration of positioning the product in the marketplace, but ignoring the majority of your base leads to abandonment and lower adoption rates by the greater population, which ultimately leads to less revenue and eventually stagnation of development when the audience and funds disappear. It’s only a matter of time before something comes along that does address the majority of the user bases concerns and they jump ship.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that Plex has done and excellent job, with the support of its community, of identifying and advancing functionality and features but let’s remember - this is only possible because of the more popular features that drove people to Plex in the first place. Having worked in IT bus dev for years,the type of functionality advances the minority desire are supported by the revenue the majority supplies.
I guess it comes down to what Plex wants to be - the worlds greatest media server, or the one that has a few different features a small audience of people care about.
