I ordered an Xbox One during the recent Black Friday deals to use primarily as a Plex/Streaming/Blu-ray player, and have been following the progress of the app on this forum (started a new plexpass sub just to do so...). I haven't had a chance to unbox it yet, so I'm reaching the decision point of whether to return it or hope for the best.
Unfortunately, I've seen this pattern before (FireTV Plex app), where there are just too many issues with Plex on a platform, and they'll never fix all of them before they announce their next incomplete app on a new platform with great fanfare. Plex keeps developing for new platforms, before making their exisitng apps fully functional. They'll try to place all the blame on the platform, when other apps somehow manage to work things out. Maybe it's time for Plex to abandon its strategy of relying on the native media player apps, and start including one with their various apps. I was hoping the Xbox One would finally be my "one box to rule them all", but forced transcoding on blu-ray rips, no HD audio, no subtitles, are all deal-breakers for me. Plex is GREAT at streaming content to mobile devices....but every big-screen experience, except for Mac/PC, has been hopelessly broken. :(
I'll check back in 6 months to a year, but based on the rate of progress for the FireTV app and the Xbox One app so far, I don't expect much to have changed...
Sorry to hear that mate, I can understand why you feel so frustrated with this, sadly with the xbox one app plex is really stuck on what it is allowed to do and not to do, and it takes more time to push out updates as well. Best of luck.
On a side note, have a look at one of the intel nucs and running openelec/plex on it. Seems to work quite well for a lot of users (myself included). It does everything you're wanting.
To each their own, to be honest besides some minor annoyances (many of which were fixed with the most recent update) my experience has been great. The Xbox One is the exclusive plex client in my main room and has performed very well.
I wouldn't mind you being critical of the app (we certainly should be to keep plex on their toes), but griping about it having never used it and just going on the threads from a forum where people come when they have problems certainly seems a bit dim. Obviously the issues will shine here as people are wanting them fixed, but many issues don't affect everyone.
In short, bummer you didn't even try it, the Xbox has been great in and of itself and the Plex app has for the most part been great as well.
I really don't see the point in posting this. What do you expect to happen as a result of venting? Do you think the devs will heed your advice and slow down their development on other platforms? Did you expect to have sympathy and/or create a healthy discussion over your personal plight?
Posts like this always scream intimidation to me. In other words, you better do what I want or else; in this case it's: Cancel my subscription. The title of this post says as much, but then the content says "I'm reaching the decision point of whether to return it or hope for the best." Which is it?
To make matters worse, you haven't even used the app. Yeah I get it—you read posts with other users and their problems. But are you seriously going to complain about something you haven't even used yourself? Do you not see the fault in your logic and reasoning?
The problem with users like you is that you expect/demand too much too fast. As early adopters we need to have an understanding that things move slowly but surely. We have to be patient with the devs but also be aware that we are integral to the progress of what we are supporting; i.e. we help the Plex team by submitting logs, bugs, etc. We make the product better by testing it and running it through the ringer. If you cannot understand this simple concept then you really shouldn't be using a new product before it becomes widely used. You should have waited your "6 months to a year" before making this post.
Getting an Xbone mainly for Plex/Blurays is crazy. Should have just gotten a Samsung BD player for a fraction of the price and with a much more mature client.
For me, the plex app represents about 70% of my Xbox one use, with YouTube making another 20%, and the remaining 10% split between hdmi passthrough (with some voice control interaction) to my WDTV for playback of HD files using dts audio (as my NAS lacks the processing power to transcode these particular files on the fly) and the very occasional game.
Subtitles work, most media works, and most transcoding is fine (720/1080p x264 with 5.1dts is the only thing my atom based NAS struggles with - flac transcodes seem to be peachy).
There were some minor gripes with the first release, but the latest plex update has most of it covered. For everything else, either MS unrestricting dts support or my getting a more powerful transcoder would take care of the rest.
Anything else is more “feature request” than bug, and it will make its way there soon enough.
IMO, unless your PMS is running on really low end hardware, you shouldn’t have any trouble at all with having it transcode whatever files don’t support direct play.
If you got a good enough deal with black Friday, take the plunge, try it out, and I think you will be pretty happy.
For what its worth, the voice controls that the plex app also support are pretty sweet as well
For me, the plex app represents about 70% of my Xbox one use, with YouTube making another 20%, and the remaining 10% split between hdmi passthrough (with some voice control interaction) to my WDTV for playback of HD files using dts audio (as my NAS lacks the processing power to transcode these particular files on the fly) and the very occasional game.
Subtitles work, most media works, and most transcoding is fine (720/1080p x264 with 5.1dts is the only thing my atom based NAS struggles with - flac transcodes seem to be peachy).
There were some minor gripes with the first release, but the latest plex update has most of it covered. For everything else, either MS unrestricting dts support or my getting a more powerful transcoder would take care of the rest.
Anything else is more "feature request" than bug, and it will make its way there soon enough.
IMO, unless your PMS is running on really low end hardware, you shouldn't have any trouble at all with having it transcode whatever files don't support direct play.
If you got a good enough deal with black Friday, take the plunge, try it out, and I think you will be pretty happy.
For what its worth, the voice controls that the plex app also support are pretty sweet as well :-)
I am going to play devils advocate, I have the xbox one and sure it works but only as an apple tv replacement or the sort, for me it can't replace my htpc as of yet due to no HD audio passthrough as well as no 24p support. Once those happen maybe it can be my full time plex box but until then not for me.
I've replaced rasplex with plex for xbox one. Although the rasplex is at this stage more mature than Xbox plex. I'm happy enough with the xbox client for the moment.
Obviously there's still work to do, but the client is approx 2 months old?
Maybe wait till next black friday, or buy a more suitalbe client
Getting an Xbone mainly for Plex/Blurays is crazy. Should have just gotten a Samsung BD player for a fraction of the price and with a much more mature client.
This is confusing. First the guy buys Plex Pass, we can assume he had already read some the pros and cons about XB1 + Plex and had probably made up his mind it wasn't for him.
THEN he buys the XB1? And without unboxing it decides he doesn't want either???
So it looks like he's blaming Plex for his impulse shopping habit. Dude, just leave your wallet at home!
I do believe it supports 24p for the bluray app but not for anything else, at least not yet, in regards to the HD audio, that's a different story because the xbox hijacks the audio so it can mux in it's own system sounds and such into what you're watching for any app, not sure how that one is going to get handled.
You get Cinavia with BOTH Xbone and Samsung BD. Whats your point?
It was you talking about an MATURE alternative Player...
BTW: Are you absolute sure about Cinavia and XBox One? Never heard any Problem playing Cinevia protected Content. I thought the Xbox one only "supports" Cinavia with optical Media...
It was you talking about an MATURE alternative Player...
BTW: Are you absolute sure about Cinavia and XBox One? Never heard any Problem playing Cinevia protected Content. I thought the Xbox one only "supports" Cinavia with optical Media...
The Samsung BD players are mature. Regardless of Cinavia. OP obviously accepts or doesnt mind it since he choose this sollution in the first place. Cinavia is a requirement for ANY player incorporating a bluray and should be enforced regardless of how the file is served (optical media, streamed, USB etc..) Thats why the Xbox One enforces it, while the Xbox 360 does not.
If the Xbox one does infact only enforce Cinavia with optical media, it will be the first bluray device Ive heard of that works this way. Even so, Id still recomend Samsungs BD over the Xbox One if your main use will be Plex/Netflix. Id take Cinavia over forced transcoding any day.
Several LG Players will detect Cinavia with optical Media only.
Once the the Xbox App will be updated to a “more mature” Version, it will be possible to compare both Players. For me the comparison at this time is not fair (but even at this status i would prefer the Xbox One App for sure)
I can only say good things so far about the Plex app on the X1. It was pretty unstable at first, but with the last update I don’t have problems watching a whole movie anymore. None of my movies have hd audio at the moment as I’m still stuck partially in the iTunes/Apple TV world but it plays everything I’ve thrown at it so far. I would at least inbox the thing and try it before returning it.
The Xbox One app works fine, some minor growing pains but nothing major. But then I still go back to the Roku 3 version fairly frequently as well.
I will agree that the Fire TV / TV Stick version of Plex is horrible though. I'm not sure if that's on Plex or Amazon, but it is the worst version out there despite being far more feature rich than some other versions.
