This topic is now one year and three months old and has several likes...
Why doesn't the Plex Crew answer this?
This topic is now one year and three months old and has several likes...
Why doesn't the Plex Crew answer this?
The plex crew have no obligation to do so, and haven't promised to anyway.
Feature voting is a suggestion for future functionality. It is non-binding and Plex should only come and answer if
1.-They decide they'll consider it or already have and it's on its way
2.-They decide they won't pursue it definitively.
3.-Would like more details or clarifications to decided on #1 or #2
Since they haven't replied here, it's safe to assume they're nowhere in those three. If I was them a sure way to make me lose interest in a feature would be having the interested parties bugging me about it though so I'm personally happy they haven't replied here yet. Not as happy as if they'd decided to include it but much happier than if they decide they won't.
The plex crew have no obligation to do so, and haven't promised to anyway.
Feature voting is a suggestion for future functionality. It is non-binding and Plex should only come and answer if
1.-They decide they'll consider it or already have and it's on its way
2.-They decide they won't pursue it definitively.
3.-Would like more details or clarifications to decided on #1 or #2
Since they haven't replied here, it's safe to assume they're nowhere in those three. If I was them a sure way to make me lose interest in a feature would be having the interested parties bugging me about it though so I'm personally happy they haven't replied here yet. Not as happy as if they'd decided to include it but much happier than if they decide they won't.
I know they don't have any obligation to respond, but this issue has been around for several years (I found posts about this issue from 2010).
It would be nice if we could get some feedback from the Plex Crew.
Just to know where we are on this. I use Calibre for now but it would be great if we could have this implemented in Plex as I'm using it everywhere.
I have altered the photo scanner to look for cbr, cbz and epub files but I don't know how I can use that section with those files from within Plex...
Any pointers?
It seems to be fairly low in popularity in comparison to other feature requests. I, myself, am very wary of trying to make Plex into a do-everything app. It does a great job with movies, tv shows and music. I have no interest in degrading the usability of any of those to incorporate e-reader functionality or (worst of all) some form of integrated store.
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It seems to be fairly low in popularity in comparison to other feature requests. I, myself, am very wary of trying to make Plex into a do-everything app. It does a great job with movies, tv shows and music. I have no interest in degrading the usability of any of those to incorporate e-reader functionality or (worst of all) some form of integrated store.
It's up to the users to decide if they want to use that functionality, if you don't use it everything should work the same.
I'm not talking about some store, just have all your ebooks and comics in some sections and read them on your mobile client :)
I can't say enough how much I would use this feature. I am a completely digital reader now (books and comics) and if Plex could manage these as well as they do my music, movies and tv shows I would lose my mind.
+1 for ebook, comic reading!
It seems to be fairly low in popularity in comparison to other feature requests. I, myself, am very wary of trying to make Plex into a do-everything app. It does a great job with movies, tv shows and music. I have no interest in degrading the usability of any of those to incorporate e-reader functionality or (worst of all) some form of integrated store.
It seems this functionality would be one of the easiest things to implement and wouldn't affect the functionality of something like movies. It's just a matter of having plex recognize them and make them accessible.
It seems this functionality would be one of the easiest things to implement and wouldn't affect the functionality of something like movies. It's just a matter of having plex recognize them and make them accessible.
Development resources are finite, though. This means that you would have to find a developer interested in it and then it would likely take away from other projects that would no longer have them contributing. Is there an online database that would be of some use in cataloging this content?
True but seems like more fine tuning of late then new features... as for a catalog perhaps http://openlibrary.org not sure on terms but seems to have a wide array of data for books and comics.
I would love this feature same as others, read books and comics or watch movies or tv shows or listen to music... it's like the last piece of media for a media server, just makes sense.
I'm not sure about a scraper/catalog. I hadn't really thought about it. I was more thinking of it the same as I think of pics or something. Just some way to serve it up even if I have to place my own titles in or have it read the file name etc.
I'm not sure about a scraper/catalog. I hadn't really thought about it. I was more thinking of it the same as I think of pics or something. Just some way to serve it up even if I have to place my own titles in or have it read the file name etc.
It's two separate things.
One part holds what you have already, in the same way home movies or pictures or music would do. This is basic sharing. Every "section" type does this.
The other part is how to present this data. There are webs that have APIs for the proper information (no scraping) like comicvine. It just makes sense to do the same with comics as we currently do with TV Shows: Allow metadata to be used for display and ordering. Same as with TV Shows, this would help Plex know what the next in a series is, what to sync next, etc.
For books it's the same as with Movies: If there's a web with an API then it can be used.
Plex already works at the basic "serve this files as-is" level. What makes it great is the cataloguing and ordering and internal logic. Otherwise it would be no different than putting your stuff in dropbox and reading it from there with ComicBookLover or GoodReader.
It's two separate things.
One part holds what you have already, in the same way home movies or pictures or music would do. This is basic sharing. Every "section" type does this.
The other part is how to present this data. There are webs that have APIs for the proper information (no scraping) like comicvine. It just makes sense to do the same with comics as we currently do with TV Shows: Allow metadata to be used for display and ordering. Same as with TV Shows, this would help Plex know what the next in a series is, what to sync next, etc.
For books it's the same as with Movies: If there's a web with an API then it can be used.
Plex already works at the basic "serve this files as-is" level. What makes it great is the cataloguing and ordering and internal logic. Otherwise it would be no different than putting your stuff in dropbox and reading it from there with ComicBookLover or GoodReader.
Mine won't recognize PDFs etc. Only certain file types. While I get your point, my goal is to have all of my media in a central location. If it comes down to having the functionality without metadata or not having the functionality at all I'd rather have what I can get. Using a different app defeats the purpose.
Buuuuuump
I know this a topic that has a lot of argument over - personally I'm on the side of "I want to be able to read stuff on my phone/tablet" but I completely understand the view of it not being 'media centre-y'.
Currently I get around it by exporting key comics and PDFs as images and having a photos library entitled 'Books' but it's obviously far from ideal.
I would gladly donate/pay money for this feature if it were to become available with reasonable format support (PDF / CBZ for me, but obviously mobi and stuff for ebooks makes sense). Even better if it had Watched status (or rather Read status).
Metadata would be impractical and frankly I'm perfectly happy with it just using file names :D.
Would be great for older family who are simply dangerous on computers :)
My grandmother and mother, for instance, cannot login to a computer without signing up for something or clicking on ads they shouldn't. Trying to get them to read on anything handheld is tough as well, all I hear is how no matter how big the font, they have issues reading it.
This would solve each problem. No requirement for a computer and they could read directly on a big screen. Honestly, I could teach my daughter her homework lessons with it - much easier to see a book or examples from a book on a large tv than it is on a small monitor. Just a thought...
In either case, I know they sound very specific - yet I think this would apply to more people than you may originally assume.
Just my two cents...
+1
I would really love to see a comic book reader, i use plex for everything else right now and it would be that much sweeter to not have to close out the app and setup a whole diffrent server for the purpose of reading my comics on the go. comic reader +100
I would really love to see a comic book reader, i use plex for everything else right now and it would be that much sweeter to not have to close out the app and setup a whole diffrent server for the purpose of reading my comics on the go. comic reader +100
I have to agree. I use plex for essentially everything and would very much like to have access to my comics and ebooks via Plex.
Do you really need Plex to be the media player? Why not use Netflix and YouTube for your videos and Pandora for your music?
There's no way right now to build a library of your books (comic or not) on a central server you control and view them in a decent app on desktop, laptop, and mobile devices. I'm not sure how QoS comes into this, and Plex has photo channels already, which also don't require constant streams.
You can always use this: http://comicrack.cyolito.com/
It has a plugin for scraping comic book metadata from ComicVine and they also have iOS/Android app that you can use to sync comic books from the desktop app.
You can always use this: http://comicrack.cyolito.com/
It has a plugin for scraping comic book metadata from ComicVine and they also have iOS/Android app that you can use to sync comic books from the desktop app.
But that is not available to sync over the internet? (Well without a VPN)
You can always use this: http://comicrack.cyolito.com/
It has a plugin for scraping comic book metadata from ComicVine and they also have iOS/Android app that you can use to sync comic books from the desktop app.
You're replying to a comment that clarifies why having stuff grouped into Plex is convenient with a suggestion to use an external tool.
I assume the assumption is that those of us requesting this don't already know about the options out there. This assumption is incorrect.
Advantages of using Plex's current library management to comics and ebooks:
1.-Support for "On Deck" for continuing series.
2.-Support for playlists for cross-overs
3.-Support for "transcoding" (in this case, converting from the "native" format into the optimal for the device)
4.-Support for multiple platforms, with ideal controls for each
5.-Support for dynamic, local or online, metadata
6.-On-demand as well as synchronization loading (over wifi and internet)
7.-Friend sharing
8.-Tracking views through plugins (like trakt today, but with comicvine and goodreads)
9.-Server support in a slew of platforms (Comicrack is Windows-only, for example)
This is a pretty far shot since Plex might be angering a whole new industry and that may be a line they don't want to cross.
Some of these you can get by using other tools. You can't get all of these that way, though.
