Plex HTPC feedback

Plex Players Desktop Players
954

Version 1.9.0 has been released for Plex HTPC for Windows and Plex HTPC for Mac previews.

New

  • Enabled audio stream selection for Plex Movies & TV titles with multiple audio streams
  • You can now switch to recently used Home users when plex.tv cannot be reached

Fixes

  • Fixed count not updating after refresh in library grid
  • Fixed inline details sometimes remaining when switching to an offline source
  • Live TV: Fixed navigation to some items on What’s On view
  • Show success/failure indication after attempting to reconnect to Plex
  • Fixed cast items not showing role for Movies & TV
  • Search: Fixed filter tabs showing for disabled online media sources
  • Library Screen: Fixed items not showing when a server becomes available (e.g. after a zero state Retry)
  • Search: Fix playback of mixed playlists from search results
  • Fixed empty header being focusable
  • Allow managed users to use premium themes if the home admin is subscribed
  • Fixed an issue where the app can get stuck on the Plex logo on startup
2 Likes
955

New to Plex HTPC, been using PMP for years.

My feedback:

Stuttering video playback on both newest release versions on x265 HEVC content on all Video Playback Quality settings except Low.

Hardware Decoding and Refresh Rate switching both On.

Running Windows 10, Intel(R) Core™ i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz 3.10 GHz
AMD Radeon HD 5450

PMS on same machine.

Video is fine on PMP, VLC etc

Love Plex, this is a great addition.

EDIT: HD terrestrial TV tuner channels stutter on these settings, SD seem ok

956

Refresh rate switching enabled - black screen with sound.

Disabled and all content plays fine.

AMD Ryzen 2700x 16GB Ram with RX580X

Windows 10 21H2

Plays through a Denon 1500H to a Samsung NU80000

Brothers gear.

Searched and found common refresh rate switching bugs in PMP and Nvidia Shield.

Can’t easily get his logs.

957

Testing ‘plex HTPC’ on fresh windows 10. It’s working pretty well but I cannot reproduce a setup I have with ‘plex for windows’.
I cannot found an audio setup that allow me to control the sound volume remotly.
It’s a pretty simple setup sending audio to the TV though HDMI.

It’s working by default on the for windows version but it look like the HTPC does not support it.

958

Also I’m used to use the old plexhometheater client to have a screensaver displaying photo when nothing is playing (which is half of the time the usage of my TV) but the new slideshow screensaver do not display them.

959

That’s weird - it has been very reliable on my Win 10 HTPC. Photos screen saver always kicks in when it is supposed to.

960

@gbooker02 Is there anything new on the resolution switching/matching idea?

961

Nothing new. It’s one of those back-burner idea especially since it likely requires a set of preferences to be done correctly (whitelisting of which resolutions should be used). Lately we’ve been busy getting the Linux version ready.

2 Likes
962

Are there also plans for an embedded image like you used to have? So the Linux client built into LibreElec for example?

Also, how does it look with SW audio decoding? Which of the newer formats will be supported, Atmos for example.

Can’t wait for the Linux release!

963

No. See Plex Media Player 3.0 feedback - #131 by gbooker02 for some of the rationale.

Atmos contains a bunch of fun issue. Generally if you want to use Atmos you should be using passthrough so your AVR does the decoding and not perform the decoding in the computer.

964

i can’t play 4k hdr movies or sdr tv series without screen stuttering i’ve a i7 3770k 16 gb ram and a gtx 1060 6gb i 've tested with win 10 and win 11 always and i repeat ALWAYS when i watch series h265/h264 after a certain amount of time video start to stutter, I’ve to pause and play and then continue play fine, next episode same thing, i’ve tested with h/w acc on and off / refresh rate swith on /off, if i play with kodi and plex for kodi all is good, but i don’t like the “old” graphic of the interface.
so what i’ve supposed to do?

i wanna use plex htpc but can’t!

2 Likes
965

Same here, we only test plex htpc on one of our pc’s at the moment until the bugs are worked out, and keep the other two running with kodi and external player for madvr.

Agree plex for kodi is too old of UI, we actually switched to composite with Estuary skin for a very minimalist feel. not the plex uno ui we wanted, but will work for now.

966

sadly it been like this for many months for many of us,the devs time seems to be spent most on new features and pushing to new platforms but little effort seems to be made to get it working to a decent very basic standard on windows.
if the devs let us adjust things like buffered frames sent to be rendered and other buffers etc it would properly help immensely… but not happening

967

Clearly someone hasn’t read my past posts where I describe what is being done. After all, that would require work when it’s much easier to make incorrect assumptions and complain. Why should I continue to spend time going into great detail when it’s generally ignored? Perhaps this post and the many others like it are why I’ve not bothered lately.

I always laugh when people who don’t understand a system suggest “doing X would solve Y.”

2 Likes
968

Unfortunately @gbooker02 , this is a 2 way street and the same can be said in reverse.

I have a number of topics that I have created recently, both of which are being actively ignored by Plex bods.

And so I appreciate your frustration in users not reading your previous posts, however comments like that are also not helpful, and will only help to elevate overall frustration.

You need to set a higher bar than that.

3 Likes
969

I really enjoy your technical posts and do hope they will continue. I’m certain there are other people like me who read them and learn a lot but remain silent because we don’t have much to add. So I hope you keep making them when you can. Anyway, greatly looking forward to the linux version!

3 Likes
970

apologies you seem to think this is a personal attack on yourself and sorry i could have worded things better,my irritation is that enough resources and time arent being placed to develop things to a standard many other players have as a basic standard, i get the impression the devs are simply told to keep pushing out features.

I dont know for certain if the problem would be solved by letting users increase buffers/render present ques etc as im not familiar with mpv but id guess it could help smooth things out and reduce the instances of it happening.
I have no dev or mpv experience though im only speaking from experience with players such as mpc with madvr etc

many of us have requested external player capabilities so we can use a mature player such as mpc/madvr so to gain the benefits of HDR smooth playback and superiour upscaling but we always seem to be ignored,which is frustrating

2 Likes
971

True and well said, especially considering external player was an option years ago. And i think Plex is the last of the mainstream UI that doesn’t have external player option.

It would help if readers didn’t create context to other users words and read them as an attack or in a hostile manner, because in most cases it is not.
it is simply a way to communicate and share. true in rare cases some inappropriate words maybe used, but that is not common for most everyone just looking to help each other.

1 Like
972

I’m trying to see how the claim that “enough resources and time arent [sic] being placed to develop things …” is not a further attack when I had previously went into great detail on the work being done (which constitutes months of work).

Perhaps you are keying too much on this. The features added to HTPC’s UI are done by the team that works on the UI for TVs and that UI is what is used in HTPC. It is not the same people who work on the non-UI aspects of HTPC.

I can only guess you are referencing PHT/OpenPHT which was a fork of Kodi (which would have the same issues I outline below).

This hadn’t been brought up in a while but I guess now is as good a time as any to address this. I looked into this a few months ago and concluded that, as an external player, madvr is a completely unacceptable. Since you aren’t a developer, you should have one you know look at the so-called API that madvr provides. A very abbreviated list of where it is falls very very short (from memory of when I looked at it months ago):

  • The documentation of any API, if you can find it, is extremely poor.
  • It doesn’t have 1 API but 3 different ones which operate very differently from one another and each contributes very little.
  • It is missing some very basic functionality such as programmatically fetching the current playback time.
  • Overlaying anything on top of the video, such as controls, is excruciatingly difficult and only available in one of the “APIs” provided.

There’s far more to the list but that’s enough to completely kill the prospect. In reading through its poor documentation, I gained the distinct impression that it was never intended to be an external player to anything. It’s much more akin to a standalone player that supports being started with a particular URL. The “APIs” it presents does a bit more than that but not much. In contrast MPV has an extremely rich and well documented API.
If you think that I’m wrong in this assessment, the good news is you have the ability to prove it. One way is leveraging the fact that MPV is a dynamically linked library, mpv-1.dll, and its API is documented via my previous link. Simply write a new library that implements that API and does your own playback, replace the library in HTPC with yours, and run. Another is to implement it the opensource Plex Media Player. Though given that no one has done this in the years it was available should speak to the feasibility of using madvr as an external player.

1 Like
973

Not sure, but i believe if you are referring to madvr for player functionality? if so then that is the wrong pathway, madvr is the render, it works via media players like mpc-hc, daum, zoom, etc, just not mpv. and I have no issues with fetching current playback time, or overlay controls or stats with madvr via mpc-hc

but regardless if i read your comment wrongly, I think point is users want video playback performance over most all other functions, as noted in the poll above.

I don’t disagree, that mpv is a decent option for some users, but for videophiles and folks with 65" and above screens , especially 85" and above, mpv is not a good options as it lacks the quality and is a far inferior video render compared to madvr,

Madvr is the leading pathway for HTPC, which i feel is what there is some let down, as this product is marketed as PLEX HTPC, not PLEX Zappitit app, not PLEX Laptop app, etc.

Correct I am not a software developer, on this forum i am a customer and users of Plex looking better video quality for Plex HTPC, as today it is not comparable to madvr, we look to the future and hope it gets thereat some point, but just not there right now,

but if your saying there is options, but as users we need to configure on our end to use with the plex UI, by all means share a guide and I am sure many of us will flock to it and try it out.

1 Like