Recent Design Choices From Plex

General Discussions
41

@NedtheNerd said:

But you don’t have to settle for some ‘middling, crippled client catering to the lowest common denominator of the most limited devices’, stick with OpenPHT, most of the long standing issues and features have been already addressed, with more on the way.

Regards

I use OpenPHT and am very impressed with what was done in a short time. However I have not seen a road map, and from past experiences I am worried about depending on a 3rd party client. No offense to the RasPles/OPenPHT team intended.

42

@pjmorley said:

@Elijah_Baley said:

@pjmorley said:

Recent developments have almost moved me to the point where I will try Emby again to see how they are coming along. There are advantages to having a lot of truly free time and being old enough where going out is difficult. I have time to test whatever peaks my curiosity.

I haven’t tested Emby in a long while, would love to hear what you think of it. Sadly between work and caring for a disabled spouse I have little time to play with software anymore - moving way from Plex would represent a huge investment in what little spare time I have.

What do I think of Emby? (note: Unless something is just horrible I do not judge on appearance at all.) After testing again I find that Emby works and that is about the best I can say about it. Functionality trails Plex in almost every category and Emby cannot even generate index files for any but a limited subset of video files.

Finding and playing videos is harder and the overall usability of the interface is poor. The web interface is MUCH harder to use than Plex and fixing matching problems, well, sucks.

As I said Emby works. It plays all the videos I tested just fine and it did not choke. (note: I do not really have videos that strain any playback system)

One further note: I have a video that causes my Roku to reboot if I attempt to play it through Plex on my Roku. The video plays in VLC on my computer. That same video does not crash the Roku when played by Emby but it does not play either. The Roku uses a new video player and Emby uses the old one.

Bottom line: Emby is NOT ready to replace Plex in my usage and, even with the poor choices Plex has made lately Emby is not close in usability to Plex. Plex is moving backwards in my opinion and Emby is moving forwards but the gap is wide and both movements are very slow at this point. From what I have seen I think it will be a long time before Emby catches up, if it ever does.

Emby’s lack of faster movement to close the gap is, in my opinion, a bad thing. It means that Plex is under little external pressure to improve so the only real pressure applied to Plex will come from those of us that ■■■■■ about what we don’t like and praise that which we do.

They can take away features and functionality but they cannot take away our God given right to ■■■■■!

43

Judging by the latest round of VC investment—$10 million in Series B funding from top Silicon Valley venture capital firm KPCB—Plex as a company seems most focused on growing the brand. As mentioned above, one way to achieve this growth is to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Making Plex’s appearance uniform across all platforms is one way to achieve this. In doing so, power user features are sacrificed for the “greater good” of mass-market apeal.

We’ve seen it before with Apple: each new iteration of their software removes features geared towards professional users in favor of no-nonsense seamlessness in order to cater to a less tech-savvy, yet still tech-reliant, audience.

44

I totally agree that this trend is across the board in technology and content right now. It is far more profitable to cater to the lowest common denominator.

Which makes me appreciate my collection of classic movies and ancient, deprecated Plex version all the more :).

1 Like
45

I guess I’ll stop updating Plex altogether until I see an improvement in features and functionality. I reverted my PMS back to the version right before the new Web/Dashboard went live and have to say, I prefer the old dashboard still.

  1. Not only can you choose what you want to see on your dashboard, It just looks much better in my opinion.
  2. And now I don’t have to see the annoying “continue watching” at the top every time (hate that).

And although I want to like PMP, theirs too many missing options and settings for me to use it at this time. A few that are deal breakers for me are:

  1. Can’t hide TV show thumbnails (can sometimes see characters killed off before you even watch an episode)
  2. Can’t hide plot for unwatched episodes (gives away key plot points)
  3. Can’t change view modes per section
  4. Can’t disable Pre-Play for episodes

These are not “tinkering” features, these are features that are beneficial to any home theatre setup. The iOS app even has the ability to hide episode thumbnails and disable episode pre-play in a way. No reason desktop should be worse than the iOS app in the settings department.

46

I personally like the direction they are going… What we had before was a huge mess where you had no idea how each app would look and work. I do miss a few of the features and customization but I expect those to be re-added over time as they get constructive feedback.

47

Why do you need ‘features and customisation’ to be re-added when all you are going to be doing is streaming third party content?

As soon as the deals are done then they will cripple it so that local media can’t be played, as intimated in the ‘interviews’.

Regards

48

Here is the kind of comment that Plex seems to be trying to avoid as they push further into mainstream:

I’ve already canceled my subscription. I have enough headaches without a channel giving me another one. It’s suppose to be entertainment not work. They should write the book, PLEX for Dummies or make it more user friendly like Netflix, HULU, CBS, YOUTUBE, and many others that I receive on my Roku3. Get a clue PLEX.

Edit: The above block of text is a quote from another thread, not my own words or thoughts, just in case anyone cares.

1 Like
49

I’ll just jump in with a few comments; been here from day 1, still here. Still rock my khakis with a cuff and a crease.

@MovieBuff44 said:

my hopes for Plex being what it used to be are pretty much gone. Seems to me the company is not looking to be what it started out to be

Out of curiosity, what were your hopes for Plex which are gone? We’re still very much the same company with the same people and hopes/desires/passions. Are we looking to make our product easier to use? Absolutely. Are we also looking to add features which appeal to heavy/power users? Absolutely. These things can be done at the same time.

If they want Plex to offer me content from other sources then I have no use for Plex anymore. This is not what Plex started out looking to achieve and not what I signed up to support.

Sure, some people have their own content and that’s all they’re interested in. Others, e.g., love using channels inside Plex and would like a better/fuller experience with not-owned content. I really don’t see why it’s an all or nothing sort of a thing.

@latweek said:

In the end, it always comes back to harvesting and monetizing the good old user base.

Well that’s a totally cynical view of things. Are we a for-profit company? Absolutely. But like I said before, we’re the same core group with the same core beliefs, and we’ve always valued our community highly, and we’ll continue to do right by you.

@MovieBuff44 said:

So from what I see here, the people who are OK with Plex becoming less user friendly and more simplistic in it’s approach

I’m not even sure what this means. Yes, we’re trying to improve the user experience across our products. In some cases this means simplifying. In others it means successful disclosure of features. In others it means prettier pixels.

Can’t hide TV show thumbnails (can sometimes see characters killed off before you even watch an episode)

I think this relates to the “can’t disable pre-play” (since at the higher level we tend to display show poster), so see my answer below.

Can’t hide plot for unwatched episodes (gives away key plot points)

There’s an internal UX issue to add this.

Can’t change view modes per section

True; a fairly advanced knob, I’d argue.

Can’t disable Pre-Play for episodes

On all the apps I use, it’s totally possible to play the episode right away and skip the pre-play screen. I use this feature all the time on the Apple TV, e.g. Is there an app you’re using where this isn’t possible or it’s hard?

50

@elan said:
I’ll just jump in with a few comments; been here from day 1, still here. Still rock my khakis with a cuff and a crease.

Thanks for being here so long Elan and joining in on the topic.

@MovieBuff44 said:

my hopes for Plex being what it used to be are pretty much gone. Seems to me the company is not looking to be what it started out to be

Out of curiosity, what were your hopes for Plex which are gone? We’re still very much the same company with the same people and hopes/desires/passions. Are we looking to make our product easier to use? Absolutely. Are we also looking to add features which appeal to heavy/power users? Absolutely. These things can be done at the same time.

Sure I’ll share. Let’s start with how I personally use Plex and have used it for many years. My main HTPC setup consist of having PMS and PHT run on the same machine in my home theatre which allows me to direct play all my media via external hard drives. I rarely stream but when I have to the iOS app works 98% of the time and UI is actually pleasing. Although Plex has channels I never had a use for them. So for me Plex has always been about bringing the best HTPC experience For YOUR content. So when I see the focus shift from that, I get worried especially reading interviews from the founder and co founder saying they are looking to make deals from different content providers. If Plex is about sorting and presenting YOUR content then why change the focus to compete with Netflix and Hulu? My libraries have both of them beat by miles :slight_smile:

If they want Plex to offer me content from other sources then I have no use for Plex anymore. This is not what Plex started out looking to achieve and not what I signed up to support.

Sure, some people have their own content and that’s all they’re interested in. Others, e.g., love using channels inside Plex and would like a better/fuller experience with not-owned content. I really don’t see why it’s an all or nothing sort of a thing.

Not all or nothing, but before adding these things how about make sure the core experience is where it needs to be? I welcome new features but what you guys have done lately is replace and take away features. Like Web/Dashboard functionality for example.

@MovieBuff44 said:

So from what I see here, the people who are OK with Plex becoming less user friendly and more simplistic in it’s approach

I’m not even sure what this means. Yes, we’re trying to improve the user experience across our products. In some cases this means simplifying. In others it means successful disclosure of features. In others it means prettier pixels.

To me improve means to ADD TO what’s already there. Not take away things and replace them with something less desirable. Take iOS for a positive example. The old app was great, the new one once the bugs were ironed out was also great. It presented a pleasurable and familiar experience to most iOS users. It improved upon what was there and seemed to be a well thought out design. For bad examples look at PMP and PHT, or old web dashboard and new dashboard. In these cases users felt the experience they had become accustomed to where not only altered, but downgraded in function. At least in my view.

Can’t hide TV show thumbnails (can sometimes see characters killed off before you even watch an episode)

I think this relates to the “can’t disable pre-play” (since at the higher level we tend to display show poster), so see my answer below

No in PMP weather or not you reach the pre play screen, you will see the thumbnails of each episode as soon as you click the season. This option I have in PHT regardless of if pre play is disabled or on.

Can’t change view modes per section

True; a fairly advanced knob, I’d argue.

In PHT this was removed and added back as users screamed for it afterwards. I would’ve hoped Plex took that into account with PMP.

Can’t disable Pre-Play for episodes

On all the apps I use, it’s totally possible to play the episode right away and skip the pre-play screen. I use this feature all the time on the Apple TV, e.g. Is there an app you’re using where this isn’t possible or it’s hard?

PMP you can’t do this unless I’m missing something. PHT you can and even iOS this is possible.

51

So when I see the focus shift from that, I get worried especially reading interviews from the founder and co founder saying they are looking to make deals from different content providers. If Plex is about sorting and presenting YOUR content then why change the focus to compete with Netflix and Hulu?

(To be clear, I’m a co-founder of the company.)

If we could hypothetically offer giant content catalogs for users out of the gate, I would argue that would be a cool thing, because not everyone has giant collections of their own. Not a change of focus, and we’re not looking to compete with Netflix and Hulu.

Like Web/Dashboard functionality for example

What you saw there is a few steps forwards and one step back ~ we added the amazingly cool new search functionality, and discovery within the dashboard, and sizing controls, and (for the moment) removed the old ability to customize the different regions. We’ve heard on other platforms that people want to be able to customize the discovery aspects, and I’d expect us to offer something along those lines in the future. Now you might argue that we should NEVER take any steps forward unless every single feature is preserved, but I would say that would be a rather limiting approach to things. The majority of feedback appreciated the steps forward we took.

The old app was great, the new one once the bugs were ironed out was also great.

I’m glad you see the progress and the hard work we’re doing to continue to make our apps great!

No in PMP weather or not you reach the pre play screen, you will see the thumbnails of each episode as soon as you click the season.

I’ve just confirmed that the ‘P’ button or whatever the play button is on the remote you’re using plays an episode/movie directly from where you see it (e.g. from the dashboard). There’s no need to go through pre-play always, that would be pretty annoying.

(And we are discussing other views for areas which might not show thumbnails and would provide additional density.)

52

If we could hypothetically offer giant content catalogs for users out of the gate, I would argue that would be a cool thing, because not everyone has giant collections of their own.

Oh cool!! You mean, free, like now…right? I hear a subscription coming… :))

53

@elan said:

So when I see the focus shift from that, I get worried especially reading interviews from the founder and co founder saying they are looking to make deals from different content providers. If Plex is about sorting and presenting YOUR content then why change the focus to compete with Netflix and Hulu?

(To be clear, I’m a co-founder of the company.)

If we could hypothetically offer giant content catalogs for users out of the gate, I would argue that would be a cool thing, because not everyone has giant collections of their own. Not a change of focus, and we’re not looking to compete with Netflix and Hulu.

Does this mean that the content I have on my machines would potentially get dumped into a pool for people I don’t know to stream my content? NO F-ing WAY! I don’t want my content shared out with people I have no control over. And as for offering something like Netflix, where there is a huge repository maintained by Plex, I thought that this idea was out of the question. I didn’t think Plex was interested in providing content, but more interested in providing access to existing content.

What you saw there is a few steps forwards and one step back ~ we added the amazingly cool new search functionality, and discovery within the dashboard, and sizing controls, and (for the moment) removed the old ability to customize the different regions. We’ve heard on other platforms that people want to be able to customize the discovery aspects, and I’d expect us to offer something along those lines in the future. Now you might argue that we should NEVER take any steps forward unless every single feature is preserved, but I would say that would be a rather limiting approach to things. The majority of feedback appreciated the steps forward we took.

While we’re talking about steps forward and backward, and controlling access, where are the tools and controls we have been asking for years to get? I personally could care less about discovery. I know what content I have, as do my users. They know what I can provide for them if/when they want it. If you want to improve Discovery, then have it show other movies or TV shows similar to what the user is currently looking at. Whether it’s on the library or not. (But make this an option for the admin to toggle on and off, not an always on! Give the admin the option.)

What some see as progress others don’t agree. Progress assumes that there is forward motion. And there hasn’t been any forward motion on the aspects of controlling the users as they use the media on our devices. The client apps still have more control over how the server responds to requests than the server itself does. This is a massive negative to running a PMS installation, IMO. When 2 or 3 users can basically shut down a PMS completely by requesting too much at the same time, there isn’t anything good about it. We’ve had hints that some of these things are in the pipeline, but those hints are now at least 4+ months old. (BTW, where is per client streaming caps? Still not working as intended? Guess too much time spent on Discovery to get something functional.)

A lot of really great third party app developers have gotten sucked into the void that is the Plex Team. @ljunkie got drawn in (likely for his work on the Roku client) and PlexWatch still hasn’t been integrated. @moussa.uk also got sucked in. and no functionality of Transmogrify ported to the base Web App. @drzoidberg33 is also now an employee, and PlexPy isn’t worked into the Web App either. Working any of these into Plex Media Server would be seen as progress by a lot of people. And some of those same people are the ones that are now frustrated with where Plex seems to be going.

I’m glad you see the progress and the hard work we’re doing to continue to make our apps great!

You want to make things simpler for the masses. And in some regards that’s fine. But those that want the minutia and level of detail are left gasping for air in the vacuum left. It’s not progress when you take some of the brightest developers out of the third party arena and then stop them from creating what they did to get into that arena.

Lifetime Pass holders no longer have a voice to influence the road Plex is going down. We shot our wad when we signed up for Lifetime. Our vote (money) is now null and void. Because there won’t be any more coming in from these subscribers, their opinions no longer matter. Yet for many, it was because their investment was helping to secure Plex’s future that they made the investment. Many of us weren’t investing in a piece of software, we were investing in the future of the whole Plex infrastructure. The thanks we get are not in the features we have requested, but in the fluff Plex is becoming. The priorities have changed within the Team. And the users aren’t getting their features as requested.

And now that infrastructure is falling into a most common denominator situation. Where simple minds and ease of use outweigh functionality and reliability. The features many hard core Lifetime Pass holders have been screaming for still aren’t incorporated into Plex. And instead of adding those features we get fluff and pretty. Functionality and reliability be damned, as long as it looks nice…

If you aren’t a Lifetime pass holder, you still have some voice left. You can vote with your pocketbook. Remember the features you feel are still missing the next time your Pass comes due, and vote according to your expectations of those features coming on line. It is the only leverage that seems to carry weight with the Team any more. Money talks, and I guess past money got what it got… :frowning:

54

I see now, its about control.

Plex attracted me, and others, because it delivered control over our entertainment. I moved to Plex in 2008 because I saw where streaming was headed and didnt want any part of it. I wanted to cut that cord, and cost by DIY.

So, THAT is the fork in the road, the elephant in the room. The roadmap that I’m not seeing, that we’ve not been shown, is to swing control 180 degrees away from user side, over to Plex and their partners.

Plex isn’t focusing on the admin or tweaker controls because my original use case (outlined above) can’t be monetized very well. At least with the cost of the lifetime pass being trivial for now.

Got it. Elan, I really respect your work and Plex, however…I see what’s “been in store”, and I want no part of it.

Best of Luck to you with your endeavors.

55

Wow, there’s a lot of misunderstanding.

@MikeG6.5 said:

Does this mean that the content I have on my machines would potentially get dumped into a pool for people I don’t know to stream my content? NO F-ing WAY!

That would be completely insane, and in no way did I mean to imply that would EVER be the case. What I meant was, if hypothetically a new user coming to Plex had access to content right out of the gate, that would be pretty cool. (E.g. kind of like what channels provide.)

BTW, where is per client streaming caps? Still not working as intended? Guess too much time spent on Discovery to get something functional

You have to trust that we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

A lot of really great third party app developers have gotten sucked into the void that is the Plex Team.

That is a massively negative way of putting it. @ljunkie has done amazing work on the Roku app. @moussa.uk has done great things on the Xbox One app. And @drzoidberg33 has been doing a ton of great stuff in the server and the web app.

Lifetime Pass holders no longer have a voice to influence the road Plex is going down

That is, for lack of a better word, bullshit. I’m in here right now talking with you, and I guarantee you that we are working on things that are near and dear to your hearts.

Where simple minds and ease of use outweigh functionality and reliability…

That might look nice on a t-shirt, but it’s not true. There is a difference between dumbing things down and making them easier to use.

@latweek said:

I see now, its about control.

What???

…is to swing control 180 degrees away from user side, over to Plex and their partners.

No.

Plex isn’t focusing on the admin or tweaker controls because my original use case (outlined above) can’t be monetized very well

You have to understand the realities of developing software for millions of people. There is a prioritization process which needs to occur, and we can’t possibly make everyone happy all the time.

But let me be super clear: Better admin controls are near and dear to us as well (we realize how important they are), and we have people working on them. I’m not going to go into detail, or give a date as to when they’ll be available, because we don’t do that, but we hear you, and we’re not ignoring you, I promise.

56

@elan said:
What you saw there is a few steps forwards and one step back ~ we added the amazingly cool new search functionality,
Partially added the “amazingly cool” (jury is still out) new search functionality.

As I mentioned in another thread, for usability’s sake you should have withheld the new search functionality until the entire search functionality was updated. Now, users have to put up with a partially-finished search function that is confusing, because the search results in the dropdown are incomplete by design, yet more complete than the full search results.

“Release early. Release often” SUCKS from the end-user’s point of view, especially when it’s done badly. We never have a stable, functional UI to work with for any length of time. And for the record, the entire quote is “Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers”.

57

@elan said:

So when I see the focus shift from that, I get worried especially reading interviews from the founder and co founder saying they are looking to make deals from different content providers. If Plex is about sorting and presenting YOUR content then why change the focus to compete with Netflix and Hulu?

(To be clear, I’m a co-founder of the company.)

If we could hypothetically offer giant content catalogs for users out of the gate, I would argue that would be a cool thing, because not everyone has giant collections of their own. Not a change of focus, and we’re not looking to compete with Netflix and Hulu.

If you “hypothetically” want to offer giant catalogs of useful content out of the gate, then yes that’s competing with Netflix and Hulu. I’ve even read interviews were Plex mentions their name alongside Hulu and Netflix as if they want to become more like that.

Like Web/Dashboard functionality for example

What you saw there is a few steps forwards and one step back ~ we added the amazingly cool new search functionality, and discovery within the dashboard

Yep all the while not giving us the option to turn off this discovery option the many don’t care for. Like others have said I know what content I have and although suggestions may be goof for some, I need the ability to turn them on/off.

The old app was great, the new one once the bugs were ironed out was also great.

I’m glad you see the progress and the hard work we’re doing to continue to make our apps great!

App(s) is a stretch. In that quote I was referring to iOS which I think functions well and is stable. PMS/Web and PMP are so inconsistent I’m now scared to update either as each new one seems to bring along something I dislike. It’s very hard to get used to a great user experience across Plex when thing’s are constantly being taken away, changed or made more “simplistic”.

I don’t mean to be so critical as I’m not trying to down the work you’re doing, but with software you can’t just keep changing the user experience over and over again. That would drive anyone mad to have a software company do that. I’m a cord cutter and I rely on my own media collection and Plex to present my media to me in a way that’s STABLE, RELIABLE and CONSISTENT. I can’t stress those 3 things enough.

(And we are discussing other views for areas which might not show thumbnails and would provide additional density.)

The iOS app would be a good example to use as that app accomplishes this well.

58

At one point Elan, on the old forums, we had the ability to see which Feature Requests were the most voted for. After I made reference to it in @cayars “Venting” thread, that ability was turned off. (As in within the day…) After the move to this forum it was never enabled, either. So all any of us “users” can do is search for individual posts and do a count check.

So, please, remind us how many votes the new search function had on it’s requests? Can you link to the posts? How many votes did the new Discovery get in it’s request? Again, can we get a link to that request, too? As much as I like the OM feature, I’m still wanting to see the Feature Request for that one, too. I’m sure you have counts on it as well?

I don’t consider bug fixes as work on features. It’s fixing things that got broken in one patch or another, not working on new stuff. As far as chewing gum and walking at the same time, yeah, sorry, that does remain to be seen. When updates seem to break almost as many things as they fix, it’s questionable at times… I think I might be the ONLY person running a Vizio TV with the Plex Client that has had no problems running my media on my TV, based on the forums for that…

I’m all for making things easier to use for our USERS! Most of them seem to be lucky to find the power switch on their computer more than 3 times in a row. But for those of us that have 2 computer keyboards within 12" of their hands 90% of the day, well, we don’t need simplifying. We want CONTROL so the simpletons don’t cause problems for everyone else on our systems.

And for control… Well right now the users have more control than the server has. They control the bitrate sent to them, transcoding if needed, but only if the user knows to change the settings on their client app. Otherwise they get buffering and then they get fed up and turn the thing off completely…

If you think that doesn’t hurt the Plex Name by having people stop using a client app because it buffers for them, well, guess again! No matter how pretty things look, it’s not being seen if the experience the first few times around is less than stellar. But if I had the ability to set someone up for a 3Mbps connection and they watched that movie and it was flawless streaming to their TV, well, that reinforces the brand, doesn’t it?

And since the updates are only from Plex and the Team itself, yeah, it does strike many of us as control. That the value of Plex and the whole environment is in the Team’s control, and not the server admin’s. YOU determine what features the server gets. You also determine just how much control the client apps have over the connection to the server. You are in a position to change that. Not any of us admins. The best we can do is restrict our users and then follow up with a third party app to make sure they aren’t exceeding what we told them to do. Or implement a complete QoS package that restricts everyone the same regardless of who they are, and what they are running.

Near and Dear to our hearts? And to the Team’s hearts? I guess that remains to be seen, doesn’t it? Hell I would be willing to sign a NDA if I knew things were coming that would benefit people more than the fluff we’ve seen so far this year. Beta testing it, if that’s what you wanted… At least then I could be sure it was something that was working as intended, and would work well from the start of public release. It would HAVE to work well then, because my name would be on it…

Elan, you and I have jousted with words before, and you know I give kudos where kudos are deserved. And I’m also vocal in my critiques. But the bottom line is simple. No matter what has been brought out so far this year, I’ve never been more disappointed in Plex and it’s current path more than I am RIGHT NOW! I know I’m not the only one, by far…

59

@Elijah_Baley said:

Bottom line: Emby is NOT ready to replace Plex in my usage and, even with the poor choices Plex has made lately Emby is not close in usability to Plex. Plex is moving backwards in my opinion and Emby is moving forwards but the gap is wide and both movements are very slow at this point. From what I have seen I think it will be a long time before Emby catches up, if it ever does.

Emby’s lack of faster movement to close the gap is, in my opinion, a bad thing. It means that Plex is under little external pressure to improve so the only real pressure applied to Plex will come from those of us that ■■■■■ about what we don’t like and praise that which we do.

They can take away features and functionality but they cannot take away our God given right to ■■■■■!

Thank you, very appreciated.

60

Well, I’m definitely hearing your frustration loud and clear. Pretty sure there’s nothing I can say here to help that, so I’m going to bow out of this thread for now.