@jjrjr1 said:
IMHO. I think the Pandora interface, Amazon Cloud projects (and others such as Nvidia as a server) are total waste of time and certainly should not be a focus (or lack of LOL).
DVD is cool but should take a back burner till Plex gets their priorities in focus…
I was joking around about the Pandora interface. I was just trying to make a joke about the next new feature that Plex releases and all the current bugs and betas are still being ignored.
LOL
Now I feel a little better… But not much.
The scary thing is… the way things are going THAT would not surprise me!!!
There is a thing called “Top down programing.” Maybe Plex has implemented it in a slightly different form; “Top down screwup.”
I agree that many, maybe most, Plex developers are frustrated by the limits thrown at them by higher ups. In fact I think some have been hired to get them to quit making the lesser platforms/developers look bad.
Guidance from the top is good but restrictions based on the inability of some platforms/developers to support some features is wrong. That is preventing one platform from advancing because another platform or developer cannot keep up is wrong and is an indication of decay in the creative process.
Again I say WOW!
Who wants a working Collections system? Who wants working per user Server side bandwidth limits? Who wants PlexPy or similar integrated into Plex’s Web App? Who wants sync on the desktop client? Who wants LIVE OTA streaming within the Plex suite?
If even one of you reading this answers “Me” then this entire thread is aimed at YOU! And not the device you run Plex on… Because if you see any of these important to your environment you aren’t using a client device or network infrastructure device to run Plex Media Server on… you are using a device that has the nuts to do the job!
NVidia Shield isn’t ready for prime time as a server. You are wasting your time in this thread. The Netgear X10 router isn’t ready for prime time. Again, more wasted time… You aren’t part of the whole Plex Infrastructure and don’t understand Plex’s requirements to even contribute to the discussion.
It is PAST TIME for the loyal users of Plex on MAIN LINE HARD CORE systems to say ENOUGH! We want our FEATURES! You asked for our input, and we gave it. Where the H! are the features we have requested?!?!
@MikeG6.5
Right On!!
I join your WOW!!+1
lol
I forgot about PMS on a Router. Geeees. ridiculous…
How about a Plex Server running on my iPhone??
Ooops. Should not have said that… It might happen next!!!
@jjrjr1 Well, technically you are running a Plex Server on your iPhone when you are viewing synced content. Albeit locally on the phone. I haven’t tried it myself bur according to info in other threads here you can use on iDevice as remote control to another iDevice.
@clnr said:
@jjrjr1 Well, technically you are running a Plex Server on your iPhone when you are viewing synced content. Albeit locally on the phone. I haven’t tried it myself bur according to info in other threads here you can use on iDevice as remote control to another iDevice.
Yes, you can do this with most Android devices, too. the thing about it is, though… The iOS and Android device you stream FROM has to have the media exactly in the right file container and codecs. They can’t transcode at all.
But regardless, the point is, what has made Plex what it is today is the features that have set it apart. Be that devices that have client apps written for them, or the other features that the community has asked for, and received. But now we’re no longer getting the features we have asked for in a very long time.
It all comes down to perceptions… If a joke is perceived to be non-PC to one person, it’s non-PC and you have to watch the audience… The joke is now being played on Plex users. And a lot of us don’t think it’s funny any more.
What I see is they are launching new features that never work right, increasing the range of features for those who are plex pass, offering new features that do not work well, and old ones that no longer work well by getting down to the bottom.
We are testing the features that are not ready, and we loot the forums with problems related to them, and always with no solution, just a lot of explanation why they are not working.
The ad is always beautiful, sign the plex pass and have this amazing resource, just do not say it is flawed and has no solution …
You are right!
However most of us know the solution just Plex management does not really listen for what ever reason.
I have offered a solution… You think Plex will take a chance and try it???
@MikeG6.5 said:
To say I’m disappointed with the way the whole suite is going is a huge understatement at this point.
@MikeG6.5 said:
I can’t type the disgust I feel here as I’m sure the censors would get involved.
And this is why I haven’t been around a whole lot lately. It just frustrates me to no end the corners they cut to add limited features when they could spend an additional 10% of time and really have powerful outstanding features.
@MikeG6.5 said:
How much development time was spent on the photos and music instead of finalizing the most requested Feature Request in Plex’s history?
How about giving us music videos and then loosing the contract for them? Lots of wasted time on that one.
@Elijah_Baley said:
@TwistedEndz said:
The Shield is both a poor server and a poor client but it is a pretty good Android based gaming platform. Plex wasted their time making it a server and that just shows what Plex is getting wrong. They seem to think more is better when the reality is that only better is truly better.
It was released before it was ready and it never worked well for a moderately sized library.
It chokes very badly on my library as well.
@MikeG6.5 said:
Again I say WOW!Who wants a working Collections system? Who wants working per user Server side bandwidth limits? Who wants PlexPy or similar integrated into Plex’s Web App? Who wants sync on the desktop client? Who wants LIVE OTA streaming within the Plex suite?
Me, Me, Me, Me & Me.
But that should be no secret. I’ve started broadband threads before with many ideas the devs/management could use as reference to the types of things users really want and can use and how the features sets would work together instead of at times against each other.
Carlo
PS Good to see some of you guys are still fighting the “good fight” 
CARLO!!!
GODS man, I thought you had died or something! Glad to see you back!
And yeah, I know, too much of what we lack now is the same stuff we lacked with your “Venting” thread. Nothing ever seems to change in that regard does it?
@cayars said:
@MikeG6.5 said:
To say I’m disappointed with the way the whole suite is going is a huge understatement at this point.
@MikeG6.5 said:
I can’t type the disgust I feel here as I’m sure the censors would get involved.
And this is why I haven’t been around a whole lot lately. It just frustrates me to no end the corners they cut to add limited features when they could spend an additional 10% of time and really have powerful outstanding features.@MikeG6.5 said:
How much development time was spent on the photos and music instead of finalizing the most requested Feature Request in Plex’s history?
How about giving us music videos and then loosing the contract for them? Lots of wasted time on that one.@Elijah_Baley said:
@TwistedEndz said:
The Shield is both a poor server and a poor client but it is a pretty good Android based gaming platform. Plex wasted their time making it a server and that just shows what Plex is getting wrong. They seem to think more is better when the reality is that only better is truly better.
It was released before it was ready and it never worked well for a moderately sized library.
It chokes very badly on my library as well.@MikeG6.5 said:
Again I say WOW!Who wants a working Collections system? Who wants working per user Server side bandwidth limits? Who wants PlexPy or similar integrated into Plex’s Web App? Who wants sync on the desktop client? Who wants LIVE OTA streaming within the Plex suite?
Me, Me, Me, Me & Me.
But that should be no secret. I’ve started broadband threads before with many ideas the devs/management could use as reference to the types of things users really want and can use and how the features sets would work together instead of at times against each other.Carlo
PS Good to see some of you guys are still fighting the “good fight”
Got more involved with Emby, or took a step back altogether? I wish Emby had a PlayStation client, I have lots of people I share with that use that platform… as of now I can’t really give that a real try.
Nope to Emby, just took a step back for a while. Plex and the forums were getting to personal to me and I just needed some time away. I was to often getting disappointed by the choices being made that to me didn’t/still don’t make a lot of sense. 
Note about Emby as it pertains to this discussion:
Periodically I take a look at alternatives to Plex and among them is Emby. I looked closely at Emby about a month ago and concluded that Emby is very far from moving up to even the worst of Plex.
It does do a few things that Plex does not do but the core (presentation and playback of the user’s media) is so far behind that the need to evaluate the fringe features is unnecessary.
Plex has problems but, on the Roku at least, Emby looks like it was written by a child just learning programming. Plex’s problems and weaknesses are minuscule when compared with the crap that Emby exposes its users to. Emby users should sue Emby for excessive mental duress and visual agony.
However there seem to be some folks that like it. There is no accounting for taste.
I think that Plex has moved and is moving in the wrong direction but they would have to drop a VERY long way to be at the same level as the bottom feeding Emby.
One thing I do have to say positively about Emby is that it seems to be able to run OK on less powerful hardware and it does play everything I have about as well as Plex. But while playback is the most important thing a system like Emby and Plex can do it is not the only thing and Emby’s visuals and presentation is absolutely horrible.
Plex is far from perfect and in many areas far from good enough and they need to be, in my opinion, called out even more than they are on their weaknesses and questionable choices but to offer Emby as an alternative is like offering spam as an alternative to steak at a top restaurant.
still waiting on my movie collections… now for 5 years 
To all: Do NOT misunderstand my ire and frustration with Plex. I personally LOVE the product. I feel it is the best choice anyone has for a client/server suite for streaming media, bar none. I also feel that Plex’s direction has taken a radical departure from the core users, just for the sake of marketing the brand.
I can get pretty darned vocal here. And angry. And it all comes from the route Plex is moving. Investors put a huge influx of funds into Plex Media Server and client apps development. That investment wouldn’t have come about if not for the features we asked for, that made Plex what it is now.
I honestly never expect @elan or any of the other developers or Team members to set foot in this thread. They might READ the discussion, but I seriously doubt any of them are willing to comment on anything said here. I think that’s because they are aware that there has been a lot of disillusionment of late, and their participation is likely to fan the flames higher.
In April, @Elijah_Baley and I had almost 2 hours talking with some members of the Plex Team. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere at least a couple of times. @Elijah_Baley and I were the FIRST Community Roundtable. I honestly thought that the Team was going to give me a Cease and Desist because of how vocal I had gotten prior to this roundtable. As I’ve said, I bounced things off of others on these boards before I went to that roundtable. I came prepared, with a list of things I wanted covered. Almost every one of the things on my list were Feature Requests that existed then, and how those requests could leverage each other to make the whole experience vastly better than it is now.
The truly sad thing is, I came away feeling we had done some good. 7 months later, and I realize that it was all smoke and mirrors. We drank the KoolAide and were happy to have done so, because we honestly thought someone had heard, and there was change in the wind. @elan and the Team listened to us, commented on some of what we had to say, but then NOTHNIG HAS HAPPENED SINCE on any of the features discussed with them!
I was personally told during that roundtable that 2016 would be a great year for Plex. They have less than 2 months to make it happen, I guess…
@don.alcombright I know I personally mentioned Collections as per the request with the great mockups. And @elan shared that something like this was also his vision. But he must be using a Time Machine to view it, as it’s not here yet… 
@MikeG6.5 said:
To all: Do NOT misunderstand my ire and frustration with Plex. I personally LOVE the product. I feel it is the best choice anyone has for a client/server suite for streaming media, bar none. I also feel that Plex’s direction has taken a radical departure from the core users, just for the sake of marketing the brand.I can get pretty darned vocal here. And angry. And it all comes from the route Plex is moving. Investors put a huge influx of funds into Plex Media Server and client apps development. That investment wouldn’t have come about if not for the features we asked for, that made Plex what it is now.
I honestly never expect @elan or any of the other developers or Team members to set foot in this thread. They might READ the discussion, but I seriously doubt any of them are willing to comment on anything said here. I think that’s because they are aware that there has been a lot of disillusionment of late, and their participation is likely to fan the flames higher.
In April, @Elijah_Baley and I had almost 2 hours talking with some members of the Plex Team. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere at least a couple of times. @Elijah_Baley and I were the FIRST Community Roundtable. I honestly thought that the Team was going to give me a Cease and Desist because of how vocal I had gotten prior to this roundtable. As I’ve said, I bounced things off of others on these boards before I went to that roundtable. I came prepared, with a list of things I wanted covered. Almost every one of the things on my list were Feature Requests that existed then, and how those requests could leverage each other to make the whole experience vastly better than it is now.
The truly sad thing is, I came away feeling we had done some good. 7 months later, and I realize that it was all smoke and mirrors. We drank the KoolAide and were happy to have done so, because we honestly thought someone had heard, and there was change in the wind. @elan and the Team listened to us, commented on some of what we had to say, but then NOTHNIG HAS HAPPENED SINCE on any of the features discussed with them!
I was personally told during that roundtable that 2016 would be a great year for Plex. They have less than 2 months to make it happen, I guess…
@don.alcombright I know I personally mentioned Collections as per the request with the great mockups. And @elan shared that something like this was also his vision. But he must be using a Time Machine to view it, as it’s not here yet…
Is that the #1 roundtable video posted on these forums,or a private discussion that wasn’t recorded?
Cause a while back I looked at the roundtables and I felt that while some people are able to mention a few things, it was basically Plex talking about how great they felt the ShieldTV was, making sure their Dvr announcement would be well received and showing us they do have QA people.
It felt more like a PR move than a real discussion.
@KarlDag said:
Is that the #1 roundtable video played on these forums,or a private discussion that wasn’t recorded?Cause a while back I looked at the roundtables and I felt that while some people are able to mention a few things, it was basically Plex talking about how great they felt the ShieldTV was, making sure their Dvr announcement would be well received and showing us they do have QA people.
It felt more like a PR move than a real discussion.
As far as I know this one was never recorded. Because @Elijah_Baley and I weren’t really that PC I would be surprised if it ever sees the light of day again. Here is the list I brought with me to discuss in April:
[ ] - Server side per user Bitrate limits, including transcoding limits.
[ ] - Viewing the user’s on deck for the OM feature to be used, if needed.
[ ] - Settings to adjust the OM feature for levels, speed, quality, etc.
[ ] - Rolling PlexPy or PlexWatch into the Web App.
[ ] - Collections groupings for movies.
[ ] - White List / Black List for filter across the whole of Plex, not just user permissions.
[ ] - Combined TV and Movie categories for one off’s.
[ ] - Tandem playback. For “family movie hour” when the family members are separated (useful for Servicemen serving overseas!)
[ ] - User notifications of new series, new episodes, new movies. scheduling the messages, once a day, week, month, etc.
[ ] - User Groups. (Family, friends, administrators, etc.)
[ ] - Permissions based on groups. Can set the permissions or even admin access to a group of accounts rather than one at a time.
MOST important point of all!
[ ] - More and better communications from the team.
(OM Feature is the Optimize Media feature we got about the first of the year or so. Probably one of the best features we’ve gotten in the last 18 months, IMO. But this still needs a bit of work, yet.)
The attendees to this were: (added some ??? to stop someone from spamming them, etc.)
Charles Angelis (Market for Plex)
Keith Sherry (developer)
jim48t@???.com (might be the Apple James?)
Elan Feingold (yep, we know this guy)
Josh M??? (another user?) (I think this is @Elijah_Baley)
@Elijah_Baley talked mostly about the Roku clients, as this is his heavy focus. He did contribute to the discussion on other points, though. And I’m afraid that I kind of monopolized the discussion when we started talking about my points. I’m not sure the Team knew what to think as I went bullet by bullet down the list… I could see there was a bit of confusion at times, as I built on these ideas.
As you can see, most of these points in some way relate to existing Feature Requests. (Except for the 2nd and third.) I personally didn’t use filtering much, but was building on @cayars comments in another thread, when @elan made some comments about it, naming me specifically in that thread. This suddenly turned me from “eh…” to that feature’s newest and staunchest champion… And I pointed this out to him during the Roundtable…
If they happen to choose me for a future round table, I intend to bring this list with me to ask WTF?! happened to this discussion, as well as a host of new bullets.
@KarlDag said:
@MikeG6.5 said:
To all: Do NOT misunderstand my ire and frustration with Plex. I personally LOVE the product. I feel it is the best choice anyone has for a client/server suite for streaming media, bar none. I also feel that Plex’s direction has taken a radical departure from the core users, just for the sake of marketing the brand.I can get pretty darned vocal here. And angry. And it all comes from the route Plex is moving. Investors put a huge influx of funds into Plex Media Server and client apps development. That investment wouldn’t have come about if not for the features we asked for, that made Plex what it is now.
I honestly never expect @elan or any of the other developers or Team members to set foot in this thread. They might READ the discussion, but I seriously doubt any of them are willing to comment on anything said here. I think that’s because they are aware that there has been a lot of disillusionment of late, and their participation is likely to fan the flames higher.
In April, @Elijah_Baley and I had almost 2 hours talking with some members of the Plex Team. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere at least a couple of times. @Elijah_Baley and I were the FIRST Community Roundtable. I honestly thought that the Team was going to give me a Cease and Desist because of how vocal I had gotten prior to this roundtable. As I’ve said, I bounced things off of others on these boards before I went to that roundtable. I came prepared, with a list of things I wanted covered. Almost every one of the things on my list were Feature Requests that existed then, and how those requests could leverage each other to make the whole experience vastly better than it is now.
The truly sad thing is, I came away feeling we had done some good. 7 months later, and I realize that it was all smoke and mirrors. We drank the KoolAide and were happy to have done so, because we honestly thought someone had heard, and there was change in the wind. @elan and the Team listened to us, commented on some of what we had to say, but then NOTHNIG HAS HAPPENED SINCE on any of the features discussed with them!
I was personally told during that roundtable that 2016 would be a great year for Plex. They have less than 2 months to make it happen, I guess…
@don.alcombright I know I personally mentioned Collections as per the request with the great mockups. And @elan shared that something like this was also his vision. But he must be using a Time Machine to view it, as it’s not here yet…
Is that the #1 roundtable video played on these forums,or a private discussion that wasn’t recorded?Cause a while back I looked at the roundtables and I felt that while some people are able to mention a few things, it was basically Plex talking about how great they felt the ShieldTV was, making sure their Dvr announcement would be well received and showing us they do have QA people.
It felt more like a PR move than a real discussion.
I do not believe that it was recorded and since the promisees and projections that Plex made in that conference have mostly come to nothing I “think” that Plex is unlikely to make it public even if a recording exists.
Part of the reason for my ( and Mike’s I think) negativism toward Plex comes from a feeling that we were called into that conference primarily to shut us up, and it worked for a while as we waited for Plex to move in a positive direction in many of the things discussed.
Mike had a long detailed list of things to discuss and, to be honest, most of them were not things I had much interest in but they were things that I had seen numerous requests for and/or discussions of.
I had a shorter list primarily focused on two things:
Plex explicitly promised better communication and there was some appearance of movement in that direction but that stopped and what has come out of Plex has mostly been meaningless drivel or lack of substance announcements. The poor communication skills of Plex has reall shown up in the handling of two projects.The “Shield” which has been much ballyhooed but has failed in that it cannot handle even moderately large libraries among other flaws without Plex even acknowledging that they have the flaws.
The other is the “Plex Cloud” which does not work but was announced globally in such a way so as to make it appear that a full launch was right around the corner. While I understand that “things happen” Plex has made no further general announcement and people are still thinking that the release is in a final beta stage.
Plex has NOT improved communication! In fact the pretty much have lied to their user base in a greater or lesser manner. Intentional misleading is just as much of a lie as an outright falsehood.
I like Plex (the software) a lot but Plex (the company) I like not so much. Plex is misleading their users and misrepresenting what their priorities are. I understand Plex wanting to be profitable but they do not have to lie to get there.
I have rethought my involvement in the upcoming bogus conference because I do not want to be mislead or lied to again so, should Plex have a moment of insanity and invite me, I will not accept the invite. My time is too valuable to allow Plex to waste it again.
The more this thread goes on, the more I wish I didn’t pay for a lifetime pass. There is no way for me to cancel it now and get money back. I should have went month to month because then at least I could stop it if I didn’t agree with how the devs are pushing this product.
That round table discussion post makes me weep that nothing has been done about it all year. Promises have been broken. Plex employees going back on their word.
This is not how you run a company. Maybe if you were Google or Microsoft or Apple then maybe because you know people will still buy your product but Plex is small time, not big time.
All it takes is for someone else to code a new product that does what Plex does but better and make customers happy.
