Lets see how long this post will survive or if it will be deleted…
Well well, to be honest when I checked your new blog entry on train from Berlin back home that weekend and I read that you will ONCE MORE kill all apps for one version, I was already shocked when I finished the topic. I knew from that text line on that there will now be some excuses and some “the features needs no one” and some “the new app will be way better”. Suuuure…
Question: Better for who? The customers who pay your income or yourself?! You URGENTLY need to learn one thing. The real boss of a company is the customer! He can cause fireing anyone in every section of the company up to the boss. I am here for years now and with every time Plex decided to change things to become “better” it got WORSE! I witnessed the app based on XBMC, any of countless steps in between, the store app and now THAT code of evil. I use Plex on three PCs:
One has a 4k screen and when the app first started I had the urge to fetch my glasses. Then I realized that I don’t have any! No Scaling? SERIOUS? And this is the solution you worship in your blog post? Then you send your poor customers to the env vars to guess a nice scale factor? WHY?? Yeah I forgot. Your SDK does not allow scaling… Then you chose the WRONG SDK! This is 2019 and not 2005 here! There are Surfaces, 8K Screens and way more funny stuff!
Next: I have Dolby Atmos movies on your Plex Server thingie and 7.1 DTS HD and way more stuff. Now? Where is Audio Passthough? I checked the forums and you call that a totally useless HTPC feature being canceled… and the worst, YOU ARE SERIOUS HERE! You are providing a MEDIA PLAYER to your customers, if you didn’t know! Or maybe you forgot… dunno. Sure, let’s transcode anything to PCM and let my media server glow in the night thx to heat generation for useless decisions of ppl having no clue how to keep a compaony in business and what their product is! And that works sooo well for Atmos aka does NOT WORK btw!
Next: TV mode. I used it only for one thing, activating sync screen Hz to movie and enabling audio passthrough because even the former app was a mess and we all know. So here I expect nothing, only the real media player MANDATORY features to work and EXIST when you dare to dump all semi working apps for a MESS!
SO what now? Your forum posts suggest that you don’t wanna spend work on a useful media solution anymore, but you still want money every year for some easy to meaintain sub par crap of code? Not much IQ is needed to see that this is not working and WILL NOT work.
Luckily I never decided for a lifetime subscription… I renewed my Pass a few months ago, so there is still some time left before I have to renew it after a year. In the current situation you will not only loose me as long term customer, but WAY MORE ppl. + The very positive word of mouth you will get in the internet.
Forum mods: Get your deciders in here, let them read what they did! Only ONE TIME and not as in the past where critics were ignored by everyone unless ppl start to get too loud. Remember the party over at Alexa app localization? This was a mere joke compared to what will come next. I hope you know that and are prepared to lose about 20% of your customers!
I for my part will now retry Emby as plan b. Last time I was mad at Plex it still was not very useable. Maybe nowadays there are the ones understanding and supporting their customers and are the ones worth to survive… We will see.
Server Version#: HEAD REV
Player Version#: So called media player app for Windows with 20% of the former apps features.
Next: I have Dolby Atmos movies on your Plex Server thingie and 7.1 DTS HD and way more stuff. Now? Where is Audio Passthough? I checked the forums and you call that a totally useless HTPC feature being canceled… and the worst, YOU ARE SERIOUS HERE! You are providing a MEDIA PLAYER to your customers, if you didn’t know! Or maybe you forgot… dunno. Sure, let’s transcode anything to PCM and let my media server glow in the night thx to heat generation for useless decisions of ppl having no clue how to keep a compaony in business and what their product is! And that works sooo well for Atmos aka does NOT WORK btw!
We direct play TrueHD + Atmos and DTS; there’s no transcoding involved. Will you please, kindly, explain how you’d like to use pass through for a desktop media player?
One has a 4k screen and when the app first started I had the urge to fetch my glasses. Then I realized that I don’t have any! No Scaling? SERIOUS?
There is way more screw up. Check the other threads. Anyways… time to cool down a bit…
Playing Atmos, DTS, DD or whatever else with my Yamaha Receiver says PCM as format. So the Atmos etcetc container format was tinkered with. Previous app does what to be expected, the receiver does the work it was made for by detecting the format. It was played in exclusive mode to minimize audio desync btw. All gone. Audio sounds like a mess (big hello to my audiophile brothers!), all receiver calibrations made are useless. And yes I have Windows set up for Atmos output. But if the receiver does not say that then it is NO Atmos. Atmos is a bit more than 7 channels you put into PCM stream. In theory almost infinite audio objects with coordinates are sent to the receiver, that is Atmos! Same for the other formats. The receiver does magic for specific formats and this is not possible anymore because the container was destroyed for ease of development. Any more questions?
EDIT: To be more precise to what your app does: Atmos is less than a sec sent as “DD TrueHD”, then it hops back to “PCM” aka total loss. Any DTS or DD format does similar things. Right would be: “DD Atmos” or “DD” or “DTS-HD” or whatever staying there as detected and taken care of. Even VLC can do that.
EDIT 2: Yeah got the update. OK that fixes that problem. Even a window trnsition from a HD to the 4K screen works rather fine. (Window top still stays too small, but the player at least works fine now). Now give us back audio passthrough and many ppl will be happy. Except the TV mode ones of course ^^
Our app isn’t performing any of the container shifting you outlined. I may be incorrect but, I believe what you’re seeing is the system outputting PCM. Regardless, there’s a good chance we’ll bring the ability to skip the system mix and output directly. High quality audio goes a long way for an immersive experience.
Is this a receiver setup connected to your desktop computer? Or, is this connected to a television / 10ft experience?
The screen is big enough to allow both. It’s 5m away of me and thus can be used as 2nd screen and for movies. Connection over HDMI and a Receiver in the middle.
HTPC user here. Been here from early days of plex. HTPC mode is my primary use. Without that, plex would be useless to me. Please re-consider not getting rid of that.
To be 100% sure that your question was answered correctly:
PC has a 24" Screen connected as primary via DVI for standard home office and browsing or coding work. And there is a HDMI connection to the Samsung 55" TV 3m in front of me. In between as audio splitting and output device is a Yamaha RX-V5XX (dunno right now from work) with 7.1 OR Atmos capability. I have Atmos speakers above me and a 1500€ 5.1 speaker system from the german company Teufel. Typical problems I was able to fix with the former app aka a) direct output via HDMI setting for close to zero audio lag. b) Micro video lags by selecting to change screen refresh rate to video file’s. And these are the last things I would need to be happy. Audio is more urgent in my case ^^ @alirz 's case is a lil different as it seems though ^^
