Plex - Death Spiral?

General Discussions
1

Open question here, have noticed significant lack of activity on the plex blog and a lack of responsiveness to repeatedly requested items. Some observations (definitely not an exhaustive list):

  • Plex blog hasn’t been updated since early December
  • Undecided on strategy (self-hosted server? streaming media aggregator? partnering with 3rd tier content providers?)
  • Photos is basically unusable, especially iOS upload very unreliable
  • Music features removed (plex mix), promised to return in forums but no timeline or evidence
  • Lifetime subscription model is cash accretive at outset but a drag later on

Basically I’m wondering how much longer this company and software is going to be around? I hope it survives, because I love the software (please fix the bugs!), but the signs I’m seeing aren’t good. Welcome any comfort that can be provided to counter what I’m seeing.

2

well, have to say that with them taking out services for an hour GLOBALLY tomorrow, with nothing more than a “tough sh-t, live with it” …

points to some pretty shoddy infrastructure.

what kind of public outfit either doesn’t care enough (or doesn’t know how to do IT plumbing enough) to deploy a resilient database instance for their core product?

meh. with less than 24h notice for this “scheduled” maintenance … sounds like pretty piss-poor planning.

wasn’t Agile supposed to save the world? LOL.

what an embarrassing display of incompetence.

smh.

3

You do realize Plex core home application works just fine without the servers, right?

So what exactly is the issue without all the drama?

No Plex is not dieing in fact it is very heathy and growing as evidenced by the investment of a major media company in the streaming service.

2 Likes
4

You are right that I’m not too fussed about the 1 hour shutdown, plenty of online portals do need to shut down periodically and it is only for an hour. Can live with that.

More the lack of communication, features, and fixes recently. Just speaks of a company that is cash poor and struggling to fund new investment.

Investment from the media company is I think a red herring unless they also injected cash. Just providing a library (of 2nd or 3rd tier content) is a minimal cost option for them (i.e. if it works, great, if it doesn’t, they haven’t invested much).

I’m more than happy to, in fact I hope I can be, proven wrong. Having said that previously the company was open about the direction, investment, and features with their user base, and I feel that has dropped off significantly recently.

5

With that kind of toxic costumers (know them from here) , i would go out of business anyway. ignominious

I dont mean you by that andrewhhale, but wanted to state that for a long time…

Plex should at least double up the price for lifetime.

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