I am not sure whats going on but as of the past few months plex has been putting out ever bugger releases all over the place.
Just a few examples would be releases for free BSD that can’t be ported over to nas devices because they been read only in certain areas.
Updates to the client which make it a stuttering mess or not work at all on many android devices just to name a few.
There as been some finger pointing that this is devices are the cause but google own playback works perfectly fine and has so for sometime now. Not to mention the nonsense that its old hardware/software that’s the cause since some of these devices are flagship.
There always going to be bugs slipping through that that nature of the business but whats been slipping through in many different areas should have never made the light of day or made it past the most basic bug testing.
There of course can be the idea that its new untested cutting edge software/hardware that’s the issue which certainly can introduce issues.
But when you got devices which have had no problem using plex for a years suddenly are unable to its a problem.
It can be said they are now too old but when your talking about something like last years flagship phone that’s pushing that idea past any level of believability.
Its become the feeling of late that things are getting pushed too fast without enough testing and the buyers are paying the price for this.
When you got devices that used plex for the past year perfectly fine but now can’t its a safe bet something in plex changed.
Or when you have free bsd releases imcompatable with nas system like freenas which has been the same in that area for years now its a issue.
This has been a issue for many for the last four months or so with discussion popping up all over in places like reddit for example.
Plex has had a history of not talking about what they are doing or fixing but it appears plex needs to step back and find out why there has been a sudden increase in issues of plate.
Then before anything else address the issues so this doesn’t become a bigger issue then it already is.
Ok, so you have a couple of specific cases that you point out.
But for me (just saying me, since you are one person, if you mean more than yourself then I can say for many people) the last few months have been fine.
I am currently running PMS on both a Mac Mini and a WD PWP, both work great, in fact you might even say flawlessly.
I am running a total of 8 different clients (9 total, 8 different types of hardware/client) and have no issues whatever playing video. One of those is a FireTV, so maybe not the Android client you are talking about probably (but maybe yes??) but still an Android client. My other clients have also been very solid in recent updates (Rokus, PMP, iOS, to name a few others).
I have my favorites but they all play fine. I would suspect that Plex is fine for the vast majority of users. The reason you may think that “discussion popping up all over in places like reddit for example”, is that only people complaining post for the most part. If this were an issue for a large portion of the Plex user base you would see tens of thousands of posts. I am on Reddit and I do not see that many for sure. I also don’t see them here.
Sure, there may be issues, and you see them in your setup so you think they are widespread.
Plex has been making some great progress on releases lately. Are they perfect? No. But surely someone who has been around as long as you have can remember some of the total disasters of the past.
Here the thing what i mentioned can easily be tested and hell even googled as i ask no one to simply take my word for it.
Lets start with the freebsd version of plex which are useless for nas users for one simple reason the plugin library were made read only. The whole system for that hasn’t changed in years yet the last few releases from plex have had the same issue which should never seen daylight its such a obvious issue.
This was a issue reported by the freenas dev to plex but the issue still in the last release of the plex server.
As for the android client it does work for some but issues are being introduced which have been knocking it out on quite a few devices. Point in case would be my Samsung tablet which it works fine on but on my Samsung phone it doesn’t work correctly.
The scapegoat for this lately has been to point at there being issue with the devices and the google playback engine now but the same devices largely have no issues with the google apps using it.
With my chromecast it works great with rarely a issues and the same with the roku just like you mentioned and points to problems in some areas but not all of them.
its not like there one group working on everything but different people working on their own areas and this is most likely the reason for the problems of late.
As for people complaining about them its merely a google search away to find them or merely a glance in the reviews of plex in say the google app area.
You get those its working fine for and those it barely works at all with very little middle ground.
Iam not beating on plex there are people doing a amazing job in their area which is why some devices has very few issues but there are areas now where its become problematic.
The phone and tablet issues are the most telling in that they are fairly static environments as far as major software upgrades go. They get a couple of upgrades but quickly become last years model which is the way of things.
So plex that worked fine on it for say the last year suddenly doesn’t work anymore after a plex update makes it quite suspect that there a issue with the update.
Yet the very same devices have no issues with the google apps that use the same playback as the plex app does.
Lately there been too many simple to find bugs popping up in certain areas of plex showing there be very little testing being done before getting released.
Seriously a bug in the media-sever where the wrong scanner gets used should have been easily seen with a simple scan or the freebsd version being unusable would have show the min anyone one testing tried using it.
Bugs are to be expected its the nature of coding but bugs like these should never make it past the most basic of testing.
Hell anyone on our team would get fired if we let something like that reach the public.
I’m a happy camper, yah a couple bugs over the last 2 months. Big deal! To me Plex can not please all OS users with all the different hardware this world has tortured us poor peasants.
I really don’t know how Microsoft and the many,many thousands of employees kept it together over the years of windows and failed days of Nokia. But Windows 10 is the world’s savoir of modern Operating Systems, so I have been told. Therefore I believe Plex and there small band of Brothers have done a marvelous job considering most of the offerings are free for all to use.
So here’s ONE, for all the Plex Employees and volunteers . Hip, Hip, Hooray !
