+1
I only use Plex on phones and tablets (Sage is on my TVs). I watch my shows in public transit and sync is a real timesaver. Having the same feature set for ebooks and comics would be great.
I use calibre at home and copy files to the iPad but the library management on the pad is horribly clunky and the plex app is sitting right there...
I would like a pdf reader built in. A lot of magazine subscriptions are now digital and supplied in pdf format. It would be a really nice feature to include them alongside the other plex sections all within one app.
would be great to be able to handle epub, pdf, etc inside plex in the same way we do for the videos/musics/photos...
I read a lot and for now I use torrent sync to have the books in all devices, this is ok, but inside plex having it remembering the page I was same as movies would be perfect.
+1
A comic book section would be futzin' awesome!
After many months of tidying my video collection and organising music, I've now moved onto the book collection. Starting with the audio books! But it makes perfect sense to me to have the readable version in sync with them. It is just another media, and for those books which we don't have a specific audio version, text to speech is another facet that dovetails in nicely here.
I would like to add my voice to those who would like a plex solution for e-books. I have tried caliber and it does not do what I want it to do and I find stanza a poor iPad app.
I want a solution that scans my e-book folder (filled with .epubs, .mobi and .pdf's) matches the titles, downloads cover art, author info, publishing info and so on (like PMS does with movies and TV shows) and presents it in my plex app on my iphone (which I am happy to pay for, and would pay for an update that did this) and then clicking on a book opens it either in a built-in plex reader (which I am happy to pay for) or based on file type opens it in the kindle app or the ebooks app of whatever.
Also, if the sorting feature could sort by author (easy) and by series (harder) that would be ideal. I am thinking something along the lines of how TV shows are sorted by season now.
An ebook and ecomic reader would be great, giving more coverage to more forms of media. This is certainly something that should be looked into.
To be fair you should include at least one option in your poll for people not interested in reader support.I for one, wouldn't be interested at all and have the Plex team rather focus on media support.
Exactly. This is a biased poll, as there are only approving options to choose from. I for one don't want or need a reader in Plex. There already are numerous other established readers to choose from (and compete with), and if you start adding more and more different venues into the media center, it will become bloated instead of focused on what it does best. I also think development resources should be spent wisely, i.e. on improving incomplete or buggy core stuff before venturing into adding yet another feature.
This is the a forum section where you vote for something. If you don’t like it, you just don’t vote for it. The popularity is not based on what people say about it but just the votes for it. So it would be unnecessary to add a non-wanting option as the simplest way to do that is just to ignore the thread.
There seems to be a plugin system for plex, isn't possible to develop a plugin to add support for ebooks??
The plug-in system is restricted to the formats that Plex can play natively, which is nearly all audio and video, but no support for e-books or comics.
Also, for security reasons, the Plex plug-in system is not permitted to access local files through the server. i.e. you cannot build your own library purely in a plug-in.
What do you mean "for security reasons"?
I mean, generally speaking, wouldn't it be better for everyone to have a plugin system that gives all access to PMS functions to independent developpers??
There's so many feature requests that will never be answered, simply due to the fact that not enough people want it, whereas a complete plugin API would have done the job.
I agree, and one of those requests I was interested in was Remember Posistion for Audiobooks. I set off to create my own plugin that would handle it’s own “database” of sorts, for times and what not, and pull files from a Plex section. But it was shot down before I started, because I was told “for security reasons” any plugins I wrote would not have access to the files my Audiobook section.
I agree that a more full featured API would be better, but I was just stating the reality as it is right now. Writing a complete API is yet another time-consuming endeavor, perhaps one that would be worth filling out a feature request for.
The primary state of plug-ins and channels as they exist right now, is to expand your media sources (i.e. online streaming). But not to venture into different types of media.
I came over just to suggest this and lo, I see a poll already going on (and, sadly, not winning much).
Handling comics or ebooks would require a new section and wouldn't be related to either music, photos or video. Where it would be great is that Plex already handles serving and organizing, handles metadata storage and filtering, already has a series of patterns for consuming sequential works or for consuming work in multiple sessions and, best of all, already can talk to major tablets and desktops.
This wouldn't be for TVs connected to Plex for tv shows or movies, neither would it be for music-only clients or for plex-enabled digital frames (still wishing for one of these). It would be a new section type.
In a way, it's a different beast, as no platform has CBR readers built-in and there's no "formats" in the way there is for video or music. This means players would need to implement the full reader in each case, which in turn should be able to read the state of the comic/ebook. In turn this means that the "streamed" formats would need to be built in-house (CBR/CBZ is easy, especially integrating the comicbookinfo or similar metadata standards, "eBook" not so much).
Still, I want this. Either this or its equivalent from a third party, but it would be a shame to see all the work already in place having to be redone.
that feature Is really worthless (if you don't believe me try a benchmark) when you zip/rar video encoded with some codec you are compressing an already compressed file so you're no getting more compression, maybe a tiny percent , but not even a single megabyte.I think they will as it's one of the coolest features of XMBC to play video rar and zip files. Think of the hard drive space that could be saved! If you already have the file support from XMBC I would think building the section would be alot easier. Most comic apps just show the first picture in the file (always a cover) and list file name. So I would think adding comics/books would add content for very little coding compared to other projects as most of the file suport will already be there from XMBC (less epub and PDF).
that feature Is really worthless (if you don't believe me try a benchmark) when you zip/rar video encoded with some codec you are compressing an already compressed file so you're no getting more compression, maybe a tiny percent , but not even a single megabyte.
It's funny how people have forgotten why large movies are in RAR pieces to begin with. The whole discussion about compression on RAR files is hilarious as it's based on made-up reasoning.
I think they will as it's one of the coolest features of XMBC to play video rar and zip files. Think of the hard drive space that could be saved!
Players play RAR and ZIP files not because of compression, but because they come as multi-part RAR/ZIP files from the source that initially uploads it. Large files come in multi-part RAR files for several reasons (depending on the scene, type of file, etc.)
1.-Because it's uploaded as it's being recorded, and parts are chopped off and uploaded as they're being streamed. This is automated and is how TV Series in HD are shared.
2.-Because it's shared in places that make it easier to do multi-part files (which minimize problems and errors and maximize multi-peer sharing with more basic protocols like FTP), where files can start being distributed before the whole file is complete.
Keep in mind, because it's important, that both RAR and ZIP are used in "STORE" compression mode, which means no attempt is made at compressing. RAR and ZIP (and actually more RAR than anything) is used not as a compressor, but as a packager (because, again, it supports multi-part on-the-fly chopping of a file, even as it's being written).
Now, players started supporting ZIP/RAR files started supporting it for a single, simple reason: Because people are lazy and didn't want to have to uncompress the files to end up with the same disk space used, for stuff maybe they'd see once or twice.
Then when HD files came up, people discovered a lucky effect of multi-part files: You can store multi-gigabyte files in FAT32 volumes (which can't hold anything above 4GB), which made it easy to use the most common disk filesystem in the world to move files around.
For these reasons, multi-part RAR carved a solid and profound niche in these set-ups, and won't go away soon.
But with it came ignorance by people who couldn't figure out why RAR was being used, and assumed it was due to compression. And on one side the proponents defend the format on merits it doesn't have and the haters complain about the format on arguments that have no bearing with reality.
I, personally, don't like RARs and always "uncompress" them. But I know where they come from and why they exist, and I'm OK with it.
Yes please!
I would love this. Nobody wants to read on the TV, but being able to stream comics, ebooks, PDF magazines, etc. to my iPad would be wonderful.
+1
My comics would look AWESOME on my 60 in HDTV (esp The Dark Knight Returns or my early Spawns)
