I just wanted to give some feedback about the Plex app that I’m using on my LG smart TV. First of all, it feels a bit sluggish and it often needs to restart itself to free up memory. I don’t get this with any other app, think of Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube, they work way more smoothly. Isn’t it a good idea to develop a Plex Lite app for people who only want to stream free movies and series, without the TV channels and other stuff?
Also, it’s very annoying how you guys have implemented ads into movies and series. I think the way that Freevee (part of Prime Video) does this, is the best. It will show ads every 10 to 15 minutes, and those ads will perhaps play for about 1 minute. And you can even see it on the controlbar when those ads will appear, they are displayed as little dots. Also, those ads are smoothly integrated into these movies, it doesn’t need to buffer everytime the movie is interrupted or resumes to play.
With Plex, these ads will sometimes take up to 4 minutes (like on cable TV), and you will even get to see the same ads multiple of times repeated in these minutes. So I don’t really enjoy watching Plex at the moment I’m afraid. In fact I would even be willing to pay you guys to get rid of the ads. My advice is to look at how Freevee and YouTube have implemented ads into movies and series, it just works more smoothly and less annoying. YouTube even let’s you skip certain ads, but I understand that this wouldn’t be in the interest of Plex.
We make one app that is used on many platforms. There are some platforms like Comcast X1 which our contract with them does not allow Media Sever access so only has access to the free streaming stuff, but is it the same app. We don’t have the recourses to make different versions of apps which would generally expected to be customized for the individual platforms/brands. and some platforms simply won’t allow us to have two different app in their app store. If we could not make one app spread across many TV platforms that loads dynamically then there would likely be no app at all for smart TVs.
FreeVee is owned by Amazon which is a multibillion dollar company that can afford to limit ads or lose revenue to gain viewship. Their influence can make better terms for themselves as far as ad revenue they need to pay to their content partners. To get any particular show or studio content on Plex we need to make deals with those studios based on the ad revue % they will receive based on viewship. If they don’t get those revue dollars they have no reason do include their content in Plex at all. And the advertisers will not pay to have their ads play during a certain show or in a certain region if they don’t feel enough people are watching and they will pay more if more people are watching. These ad systems decide in milliseconds during a viewing if they are willing to pay the ad cost during at a particular time or region. Sometimes some are willing to pay for repeat ads because other advertisers may not for that spot in a particular time/show/region.
I am simplifying this but at the end of the day the more folks who watch a channel/movie/show in specific regions the more the ads are worth and the less ads need to play so we can give the content partners their cut. Again we are a small outfit in comparison to outfits like Amazon FreeVee , Google Youtube, etc so generally can’t get as favorable terms since our usage is no where near as large as theirs yet.
Thanks that you took the time to give some more info. And yes I understand that Plex isn’t as big as Amazon or Google of course. But it would be nice if the app worked a bit more smoothly like the YouTube app. And it would also be nice if ads could be implemented in a less annoying way. So let’s say 90 seconds ads every 10 or 15 minutes, would that be acceptable? And this should also clearly be displayed on the controlbar. And no ads when you start a movie or serie, would be nice too.
Hi, guys i have different but very annoying problem with the LG app.
When i play some HDR files on my OLED LG C1 the plex app subtitles color can’t be changed. I hope you know that white subtitles on HDR picture played on OLED = burned eyes, retina etc It’s just impossible to watch it that way. So i try to change them to gray but they stay bright white. With different hdr file doesnt have any problems. I don’t understand which format cause the problem, yet.
Example1: With this i can’t change the subtitles color, size.
With this file everything work fine.
For the both files subtitles are external SRT.
Pls try to fix this annoying, terrible issue …
Also i have question about the audio stream.
Does thruehd atmos stream is pass-through or converted to different format on Web OS app when play original quality?
Vosub and PGS are image based subtitles not text. They are bascially photos overlayed on video, not text characters that were typed out like an SRT file is.
By the way, another annoying thing that I noticed is that when you select a movie from your watchlist, you can’t start or resume the movie because it’s first checked on what platforms the movie or show is avaliable. Can this be changed? And I think I will start another topic about the ads on Plex, it really is too annoying, I don’t even feel like watching movies on Plex anymore, and isn’t the whole point that people will actually look at those ads and still have a good time?
I’m closing this because it is not turning into every issue possible topic. That is never going get issues or questions solved. If you are having an issue post in an existing topic about that issue or create a new one. You are welcome to ping me in them
