I initially loved this but as I continue to interact with it the only consistent thing about Plex is its inconsistency. cant create the playback sessions, users cant access live Tv and more. The platform requires constant and too much maintenance to keep it functioning. Anybody else setting this aside?
Nope! I have a few “problems” with Plex but of all the alternatives Plex serves my needs the best. It is not perfect and, mostly, I do not like all the fluff Plex keeps adding and I REALLY wish Plex would actually fix the existing bugs before continuing the prettifying of the server and clients BUT it works good for me and the best alternative for me, Emby, is WAY behind in functionality.
The real trick to running Plex is using the KISS principal throughout and conforming to all the Plex imposed naming and structure conventions and using Plex mostly in the way Plex is designed to be used. Trying to force Plex into molds that Plex was not designed for is the source for many/most of the problems people have.
Fighting the great Plexosaurus is worse than Tokyo trying to resist a certain large lizard like creature.
BTW: You mentioned “live” TV and that is one of the “fluff” features that Plex has added lately. Although it is nice to have everything incorporated into one program it also adds to the many points of failure that Plex has. It would have been better and more reliable for Plex to have kept that and several other things outside of Plex.
Plex’s core is great, mostly, but I will admit that a number of the “extras” are unfinished at best.
@hackspy679 -
Nope here also.
The closest thing to Plex is Emby and I keep an updated version of that also, nowhere near what Plex is IMHO. I am going on the road again this Tuesday though and I plan on testing Emby for remote LiveTV and general viewing to see if it has gotten better recently.
I keep my two Plex servers rather simple though, I really just want a way to watch/listen to my media - nothing fancy.
I do have some good success with the DVR functionality, Live TV seems to be hit or miss. We use the Channels app on the ATV for Live TV.
My maintenance on it is very minimal. I am very rarely doing anything to it to keep it up or get it working. It just works. I usually wait a while before upgrading, to see what the issues are with the latest release and I never update going into the weekend or when I am about to go out on the road. I update from the web app and have only had to log in to my headless server to fix an upgrade issue once in the past 6 months or so.
As for your issue of
users cant access live Tv and more
It is known that the only user that can currently utilize LiveTV is the admin user. So that can not really be considered an “issue”, it is something that will most likely be added in the future (but no, Plex does not give timelines for development).
Not sure about your “more” issue though, I have not seen anyone mention and issue with “more”. Can you elaborate on what that issue is?
I have been following Plexx since when it forked from XMBC and was the only MAC media player worth a darn. it is so much more reliable now than in any time in the past. The client issues alone use to drive me nuts. I have not had any issues in a while except those that are self-inflicted.
As far as bloat, I love all the new features. You either lead or get out of the way and they are leading. The new Live TV feature gave me one of the last pieces I needed. I cut the cord about 6 years and I hated to have to which from App to App and no good clean way to get OWA, but now with Plex I have an all in one solution and it works great.
I am using FreeNAS and Jails to run my Plex, which works great,
Compared to other competitor Plex is still best. I tried Embry,inFuse,MrMc and couple of other media player.
Kodi has a nicely tweakable interface. I’m using with PlexKodConnect on a laptop with my plex server holding all the media. It isn’t available as a client for android devices, or IOS I think - only windows tablets and laptops.
@brucethevideobug said:
Kodi has a nicely tweakable interface. I’m using with PlexKodConnect on a laptop with my plex server holding all the media. It isn’t available as a client for android devices, or IOS I think - only windows tablets and laptops.
PlexKodiConnect is readily available and works fine on many Android devices. I know it works well on my Shield and on one Android tablet I have tested. It also worked fine on my Fire TV with Kodi side loaded until Amazon did something in an “upgrade” that has prevented me from getting Kodi to work at all.
Having said that I decided that PlexKodiConnect was not a good client for me. It, and everything else about Kodi, has actually gone too far in the “customizability” direction where it has become too complex to use. I like choices but the Kodi crowd has taken that too far.
All I want to do, other than watch movies which every client does pretty well, is watch TV shows in order from an “On Deck” type of system. It should play an episode and the mark it watched and then present the next episode for view but NOT automatically play it. Trying to do that in most Kodi clients is and exercise in frustration.
That is one reason why I find Kodi vastly inferior to standard Plex clients.
In fact, for my use case, the standard Plex client on devices like the Roku would be about perfect if it had posters about half the size it currently does (to fit more on the screen) and had vertical scrolling.
Plex has its weaknesses but it works and does not require a great amount of time to just get working.
Not my experience at all.
Plex server running on a PC, QNAP NAS as storage.
Naming conventions followed for all media and it runs sweetly.
Have 30 other users, 20 who use it regularly on various clients.
Max 8 concurrent transcodes.
Works like a dream.
Don’t use some of the newer features, but it does what it says on the tin.
once i got it up and running and figured out the little tricks plex has been MOSTLY going fairly smooth. there have been a couple updates over the last few years that caused temporary and generally minor issues that were dealt with sort of quickly. Plex support has been frustrating at times for me, especially in the beginning when i thought i was dealing with a company that HAD real support and not a company that had community support and that was it. I used mezzmo before and they have absolutely STELLAR support, i don’t know how they do it actually. REAL responses from real employees. but, at the time, mezmo only did DLNA so i moved to plex, now they have expanded quite a bit. i, as another has, recommend that you do not update right away, wait at least a week unless the update is directly addressing something that is significantly affecting you and even then i’d wait at least 24 hours and check the forums for issues. being aware of naming conventions is a must but once you are aware, its a simple thing to comply with, i very very rarely have to do anything to make sure my files are properly detected by plex. only the more non-standard libraries have issues and there are well documented solutions for those, although not great, they are fine. i as well have not tried live tv, it is something i am interested in, but its clear from monitoring the forums that its not ready for what i want. i’m not interested in only having access for the admin user, thats pointless imo. give it to all my users or why bother. i do use the plex cloud, but am not impressed at all. 3 simultaneous streams while logical, doesn’t work for me, so i need to come up with a better alternative which makes that “feature” useless to me. I have myself, my wife and 5 kids in my house… 3 streams… i don’t think so. so while that IS a “feature” its not one that realistically has any value whatsoever to me in practical use. not to mention that it errors every hour or so. but, the core features… work fine. 90% i’d say. i feel like the “extended features” are more like experiments…
