I posted a topic a couple of days a go about Plex moving in the wrong direction. I’ve been a long time plex subscriber (monthly) and use Plex only to manage and make my movie library available on the local network at home.
I haven’t been much to the forum, but I’ve read a few since I posted, and I kinda feel bad.
I see people being mad about bloat, ads and podcasts, and then I see people being mad about podcast being removed again. It must be hard for the managers and developers to navigate without constantly having people fall off at every turn.
Plex might have good userdata to support their decisions, so I might be completely wrong, but the way I see it, there is a way forward.
Adding random sorting was awesome. Opening Plex suddenly felt fresh. My own collection looks new, movies I haven’t really looked at before just popping out. It’s a really good feature. This got me thinking.
From my perspective, I think Plex needs to focus on these things:
The most important feature of Plex is to play movies. Players needs to work, on all devices that is supported. It need to be robust and in the event of failure, it needs to give good error message. Make sure movies are shown with as good quality that the device is capable of. Make sure audio is properly decode to fit the output. Make sure subtitles work if available.
Focus on making the local collection look good. Random sorting is excellent on this, but maybe other features can be implement. One of the most awesome feature of having a local library, compared with Netflix and Amazon Prime is that you KNOW you have tons of great movies. People are tired of browsing Netflix to find something to watch. Make the local available stuff (that won’t get removed next year due to licensing) fun to browse. Suggestions. Rabbit holes. Maybe like a “Click here for a random movie by Luc Besson” or “Click here for the longest running movie on cinemas in your library”. Or even “Browse most popular scenes for some of your movies”. That would be awesome. I often look at scenes from a movie on youtube and wish I could continue watching the movie (which I have).
Be careful about your UI. Don’t abuse it. When adding features like streaming outside content or podcasts, then let people add it to the UI themselves. Don’t force changes on everyone. Some people would want it, some don’t. When you force podcasts on everyone, many will be annoyed, and when you remove it later then those who didn’t get annoyed the first time will be annoyed now.
Stop with the lifetime once payment. It can’t work in the long term. Maintaining software is not cheap and needs constant work. There is no way to do that with money that was paid 2 years ago. Stay on a low monthly or yearly subscription, but focus on what is important when spending it.
The golden age of collecting DVDs and BD is now. You can buy a bag of DVDs from a flee-marked for $10 or $20 bucks . It’s awesome. There are many (tens of?) thousands of movies that are really good, that have already been made. Be there and help people with their collection. Don’t go chasing short term ad revenue and piss people off and away from your platform.
always curious that this one gets brought up, i guarantee you Plex corporate understands the cost-benefit analysis of continuing to offer this option far better than anybody on this forum, the current CFO came from Eloqua. If this was a loser for the company it would have been gone a while ago.
if you are looking for a more substantive argument, while it is true many people use Plex for movies, music listening is far and away the #1 library in terms of HH;MM consumed on my server and has been for the better part of a year now. i know this will be a shock to many here but, with a userbase of scores of thousands, it is a safe assumption usage patterns are varied, and by consequence so are expectations.
I don’t trust business as much as you. One time payment for a lifetime subscription could very well be a short term money grab more than good business. They are basically exchanging two years worth of sub paid up front vs constant revenue stream. Some businesses are notorious on only thinking next quarter. Maybe Plex knows what they are doing, maybe not. I still think it will be a problem some time in the future.
About music being the most important, that could be true. But in that case they should be honest and say what their focus is. If movies is not a main focus, then just let us all know (we are starting to suspect it).
there was a whole feature created just for plexamp to scan the sonic qualities of local media to find similar recordings. this alone should be evidence that plex is not turning its back on local media. plex has never shared its roadmap and there is no reason to think they are going to start any time soon.
other than buying into speculation from people on the forum who repeatedly admit they don’t like plex anymore despite posting here daily, it’s entirely baseless other than they are adding features you specifically don’t want, however as noted before, the user base is more than just us.
Why so hostile? My post was posted with best intentions.
I even mentioned in my post that Plex might have userdata to back up their decisions. My feedback is specifically (and stated) just my perspective.
Why are you attacking feedback like this?
i feel i am responding to skepticism with fact, if that seems hostile to you i apologize however, if “i don’t trust business as much as you” and “don’t go…piss people off” are what you consider ‘best intentions’ i may not be the only one here who needs to address their phrasing
I agree on the point of skepticism, far too much of that goes on in the forums. It seems to manifest into a huge s…t fight over things sometimes so trivial. It can be disappointing and discouraging to say the least.
You don’t think those two statements from me is based on facts? I think they are.
Did you even try to actually look at the suggestions? maybe even come up with some of your own? wouldn’t that be better for this forum than what you are currently doing?
Silly me. I thought this could be a positive thread with suggestions on how to improve things, coming from the user base. With a good discussion around the actual suggestions.
Quit playing victim for two seconds, everything will be ok. This is a piece of software, nobody is going to face serious harm or injury over these trivial disagreements.
I did read what you wrote, #1 is pretty much how Plex works today, I have nothing to contribute to this suggestion because Plex handles these things quite well for myself and a majority of the user-base from what I can tell
#2/3 - UX things are highly subjective and not my strong suit anyway so I tend to not voice many opinions here. Your points around recommendations feel unclear to me as I do often get “Top Movies by [Director/Actor/etc]” and find it extremely helpful for discovery, this combined with the recently deployed Add To Watchlist accomplishes a lot of this. The scenes thing I don’t really understand, that is not a slight of you personally (which you seem to assume any criticism here is) I just don’t really see the point of jumping halfway into a movie to watch the remainder. If I really wanted to do that, that’s what the chapter markers are for.
Really?
You are seriously arguing… that on a Plex forum… in Generic Plex topics, that the topic is not “going to face serious harm or injury”? so it’s not worth discussing?
Yes, could be.
But I want to add that it’s really good to see Plex employees on the forum, and I understand if you can’t comment on specific ideas or suggestions. I’m happy to explain my suggestions if anything is unclear (someone just stated they didn’t really understand some of them, so I’m open to elaborate if it’s of interest).
Personally I think most Plex users are not on this forum on a regular basis (I know I haven’t been), and only come here when they are getting frustrated and would like to give feedback. Support options directs everyone here unless it’s a billing issue or similar. This might explain a bit on the “negative spin” on many posts here. Maybe it would be good to have someone respond to them in a professional way? I’m not sure some of these forum-residents are the best way to deal with (what is essentially) customer support.
Anyway, I hope my suggestions can give some constructive input, but completely understand that I’m just one dude here
I’m pretty sure movies and shows are still a main focus.
But I’m equally sure that “our personal movies/shows” no longer is.
I have no idea if it’s been altered (as I’m way past caring) but in a recent blog post of Plex latest and greatest 3rd party streaming headlines…there is/was a footnote along the lines of…
“Got your own media? Plex does that too”
The product that Plex once was and what it is now are chalk and cheese.
That is what I’m afraid of. Hoping it’s not too late for Plex to focus on home media. I really think home media has the benefit of quality, compared to endlessly browsing Netflix for something to watch amongst an ocean of mediocracy.
This may be just hearsay as I don’t particularly follow the forums anymore but I saw a comment earlier that the “FORCED beta” (so not actually a beta at all) that we all endured was because of contractual obligations with at least one of their streaming partners and Plex didn’t have time to fully think out/allow for who did and didn’t want to see those streaming services all over the UI.
As a side note that’s still on topic… I have seen a couple of comments regarding those who are leaving or already left Plex still being here making comments.
As far as I’m concerned I paid for my lifetime PlexPass (notwithstanding that was for a product that no longer exists) If they don’t like my/our comments then tough.
The sycophants always have the option of unsubscribing/ignoring threads like this it offends them.
Now for the off topic… Whilst all this streaming service stuff has been going on, we had 2 months of a broken Android client, including knowingly pushing a broken beta to stable.
It pushed me to only ever using my ATV 4K…and nobody with an ATV 4K would ever consider the Plex client on that device as being above mediocre. So that in turn pushed me to using Infuse full time.
Perhaps I should be grateful that Plex screwed up once more.
EDIT… it seems the contractual obligation comment was made by a “Team Member” and refuted by a “Plex Employee”.
But we’re clearly in the minority as Millions are using the feature according to their “anonymous” statistics.
