I have to say that I am quite happy plex user. However I found some flaws in the approach that make me think twice before going for a plex pass account:
I am using a Samsung TV: the plex app is not supported by Plex but by a very kind developer. If this person for any reason stops doing any development, my entire plex solution is broken.
I am a big fan of photos but plex is simply useless for photos: no keyword management, no “transcode” option for slow network, no research on keywords…In fact I dream to have the same functionality as for movies. Unfortunately it is not there and Plex shows no intention to support photos. Even the latest Windows 10 application is very bad for photos. On top, the photo scanner is impossible to change making it impossible for anyone to develop those functionalities.
Price is for sure an issue for an application that might be useless without notice (see first point).
I do not expect this post to change anything but I might not be the only one…
@m3xiz said:
I have to say that I am quite happy plex user. However I found some flaws in the approach that make me think twice before going for a plex pass account:
I am using a Samsung TV: the plex app is not supported by Plex but by a very kind developer. If this person for any reason stops doing any development, my entire plex solution is broken.
I am a big fan of photos but plex is simply useless for photos: no keyword management, no “transcode” option for slow network, no research on keywords…In fact I dream to have the same functionality as for movies. Unfortunately it is not there and Plex shows no intention to support photos. Even the latest Windows 10 application is very bad for photos. On top, the photo scanner is impossible to change making it impossible for anyone to develop those functionalities.
Price is for sure an issue for an application that might be useless without notice (see first point).
I do not expect this post to change anything but I might not be the only one…
All of these are you issues. Not something Plex much about really. It’s primarily a video player, above all else.
I am using a Samsung TV: the plex app is not supported by Plex but by a very kind developer. If this person for any reason stops doing any development, my entire plex solution is broken.
No one with any experience will recommend depending on the built-in clients found in things like “smart” TVs, blu-ray players, etc. You really want to free yourself of these under-powered, poorly-supported clients and use some sort of dedicated device (Roku, Raspberry Pi, NUC, etc) as your client device. That way you won’t have to upgrade your whole TV every 6-12 months just to get hardware that can keep up with the Plex client changes.
@m3xiz said:
I have to say that I am quite happy plex user. However I found some flaws in the approach that make me think twice before going for a plex pass account:
I am using a Samsung TV: the plex app is not supported by Plex but by a very kind developer. If this person for any reason stops doing any development, my entire plex solution is broken.
Why? Unless they unpublish the app and it’s force-uninstalled from your TV it’ll keep working. Also, surely that’s no different to the risk that Plex stop supporting a platform.
Personally, I’m using Orca’s app on my Samsung TV and am completely unconcerned. In the event that Orca’s moved on when Plex make enough changes that the app doesn’t work, there’s no shortage of other options as sremick suggests.
No one with any experience will recommend depending on the built-in clients found in things like “smart” TVs, blu-ray players, etc. You really want to free yourself of these under-powered, poorly-supported clients and use some sort of dedicate device (Roku, Raspberry Pi, NUC, etc) as your client device. That way you won’t have to upgrade your whole TV every 6-12 months just to get hardware that can keep up with the Plex client changes.
Yeah, I learned that lesson with my Vizio TV. The company has no loyalty to product owners in the long term.
I remember the old TV/VCR combos that often ended up being a huge VCRs if the TV broke.
And Internet/computer enhanced devices are even more likely to have these issues. Computer and Internet technology moves much faster than the technology for other devices. They say you should replace or update your computer or laptop every 3 to 5 years to have the hardware necessary to use the latest software. So that means that any Internet/computer enhanced device you buy will need to be replaced every 3 to 5 years to have the latest hardware you would need.
I definitely do not get why anyone would by those new WiFi refrigerators. You would have to buy a new refrigerator every 3 to 5 years just so its WiFi technology will still work with your new phone app.
I bought Plex Pass because I like the product and wanted to show my support. The list of features for Plex Pass membership are listed in the Plex Pass support documents. If you do not see an advantage to the features listed, you do not have to get a Plex Pass membership. You can still use and enjoy Plex for free (or at least the cost of the app).
I am quite surprise that nobody reacts on the lack of photos support. Despite what it is said above, plex is not only a video player. On the home page it said: “All your movie, TV show, music, and photo collections at your fingertips”. The last point is false promise.
I really do not understand it: everything is in there to make it perfect. If plex does not want to develop it for- let’s say lack of demand, why is it block in such a way we cant change the scanner…Sad! Very sad! And there is no software approaching this functionality. Imagine: you could just search all your photos based on keyword(s), than sync the result on any client for offline viewing. You could look at your photos having plex resizing the photos on the fly in case of slow network (and today the size of the photos makes any wifi very slow)…anything you could do for movies…apply to photo. I cannot imagine it would be so complex to develop giving all the work already done.
I think you’d have better luck buying a Plex Pass and THEN asking for photo support
I bought my lifetime Plex Pass after using Plex for twenty minutes. I felt like if I waited they’d take it away as an option. You also don’t know what features will change over time, and I just figured I wanted to have the best experience on Plex.
But I would love to see more photo features:
— Filters to sort photos by date in the web app
— Preload several images ahead so that as I’m clicking through, I never have to wait. (Lazyload slideshow for photos)
— Automatic sorting of events based on time and geolocation (similar to what OS X Photos.app does)
— View a Map of Photos (Similar to what the OS X iPhoto.app used to do).
— Combine photos and videos into one album.
The reason I never renewed is cause I have a Samsung TV and there is no support. I also had issues with Transcoding it took months for the release to fix it. I use sync once a year and can convert the files on the fly and the whole process is much faster and easyer than using plex, Search for sync issues on here and you will see.
if you do as texflix says then don’t expect anything to happen anytime soon as there are loads of Plex pass people asking for stuff and the plex team don’t offer anything in the way of indication as to what may occur on the next release. Infact the plex team are always very quiet IMO there is a massive post in the plex pass General section going on about it.
@davadvice said:
The reason I never renewed is cause I have a Samsung TV and there is no support.
Of course not. The CPU in your TV is akin to that in a cell phone of several years ago. The token crap clients on “smart” TVs get supported for a few months after release then abandoned. No one recommends using them, as doing so pretty much ensures you’ll have one of the worst experience possible.
Get a separate dedicated client device (Roku, RasPi, NUC, etc) so it doesn’t suck and you don’t have to upgrade your TV every 6 months just to get an updated Plex client.
