The Need to Vent :) - Better Communication Needed

General Discussions
161

Atrus,

  Bug tracking only is all I envision.  Nothing further. 

  I do not see where bugzilla would be used to expose any new feature (in-development) efforts.   It can be used, in 'internal access only' threads for such efforts.   I do see, at such time the Plex team & management deem appropriate, those who have been granted access (legal issues satisfied) to the beta downloads & reporting threads to interact with it within their specific access level.   Access on a read-only or read-write basis can be granted on an individual user or group basis.   I see, as an example,  the following bug report ticket flow  

1.  Technically proficient users, who've been granted create (submit) access (specifically, the volunteers who do the helping at the level before the Ninjas step in) collect the data and actually write the report and supply the data.

2. The Ninja team, or appropriate selectee, would review the ticket, jump into the thread as needed, and confirm the validity.   At that point, the Ninja would change state from 'submitted' to 'confirmed'.  If the ticket is in error and not a bug, he/she could report appropriately and 'close-not a bug'.  If more data is needed, the Ninja can follow up on obtaining what is needed before 'confirming'.

3.  Once the ticket has been confirmed,  it then will show up as something for the internal teams to evaluate and take the appropriate action.   If the bug has already been fixed but is in, for example,  Plex Pass only status,  the ticket can be closed-fixed and the upcoming release version could be attached.    This will inform the user community that the bug is fixed, and will work its way through the rest of the release process without disclosing any other possible feature enhancements of the specific version.  The key here is all actions taken at this point are internal-only and only internal staff can dispense the ticket's status.    The status can only be queried.

4.  During ticket resolution (working on the problem),  if the developer needs more data, the developer can post this (ask a question) to the submitting user through the system.    When the user supplies what was asked for  (the response), that action is relayed to the developer and work can continue when the developer is ready to pick it back up

All the appropriate staff internally can watch / be informed by anything within their responsibilities.

Have I answered your question or have I gone too far?

162

Atrus, we are talking specifically bugs or possible additions of features to EXISTING FUNCTIONALITY.

Nothing to do with requests for new features.

Bug is obvious.

Request to EXISTING FEATUREs could be something that is already mentioned in this thread:

Make configuration of dimming and blanking of screen configurable so user can choose the amount of minutes before both dimming and blanking occur. Preferable 0 (zero) setting to turn off feature.

That type of thing.

So it's mainly a way for users to know existing bugs and maybe feature requests to existing feature are being looked into and worked on.  I myself put in additions of existing features because a lot of the new stuff seems "rushed" and unfinished and in need of repair in some way.  In any event it's nothing new feature wise (I would not call admin or config or present features as a "new" feature but a fix of something missing to begin with).

Carlo

163

Thanks Carlo,     I left that use (feature request consolidation and quantification) out of my reply. :)

164

I just found Plex a couple weeks ago and I was so inspired by it I went out and bought a Mac Mini, setup a Plex server, and have moved most of my family's media collection onto it.  While I do think Plex is great, I do agree with many of the points outlined in the above argument.  I believe of all the points Carlo makes it is the general consistency and attention to detail that I would like to see focused on more than new features.

It is discouraging to find that sharing works at an album level in Music but doesn't work on an album level in Photos.  Or to find that you can play a genre of music on the web app but can't do so in Plex Home Theather.  Or that marketing says that members of a Plex Home should be able to sync even if they aren't the main account but in practice I'm unable to do so.  Somethings work here but don't work there. When new features are released you are left wondering if they feel that the old features are done even if they only work 80% as well as they could.

As a web developer of a platform that is far less complicated than Plex I can appreciate that it must be difficult to manage a complex product platform such as Plex.  But perhaps it is overly complicated.  Perhaps too many platforms are being supported?  I believe the products should be combed over and holes in minimum feature sets should be identified and Plex should commit to either fixing these or dropping support for the platform.. I believe a coherent vision as Carlo mentions of: "We must support a minimum of X features on a platform in order to consider the platform stable" would do wonders for Plex.

I was reading through the MediaBrowser forums on a post comparing Plex to MediaBrowser and what I learned is that people choose Plex because "it just works".. I believe this advantage is an important advantage to culture and grow.  

Again I do think it's a great platform, but only mention this because I believe it could be even better with the right attention to detail.

Too many platforms is on point. I bought my first mac-mini in 2011 specifically and only to run PMS/PMC. If I remember correctly, there was only an officially supported mac version then. 4 years later and it's everywhere. While I have very few issues other than the occasional head scratcher (I don't use the sync function), and I do love it, the fact we aren't even at PMS 1.0 is a bit confusing. As mentioned, the 'server' has very few actual serving capabilities in terms of options/management.  I understand it's a VC funded business where pushing forward and maximum exposure is going to be priority #1. That said, slowing it down a tad to play catch-up on some of the outstanding issues would be a good move IMO. 

165

I just wanted to agree with the previous posters that if the Bug Reports were moved to it's own system that would reduce some of the frustration people are having when things break and want some progress report on their issue...

As far as the future features it's less important to keep the masses up to date AFAIC because it's not something we have relied on in the past and really just want to see happen once everything else is working.

Truth is a majority of the issues seem to be client side as opposed to Server Side. Although lately the whole PlexTV login seems to have been a difficult transition. 

Google hasn't helped at all in this regard with their badly tested Chromecast and OS updates but there is nothing anyone (but Google) can really do about that.

A Bug Tracker would at minimum show everyone if they are the only ones experiencing it, If Devs have been able to recreate the issue or if it is something caused by a 3rd Party that they need to address and finally if any work has been done to look forward to seeing in the next release.

But as I said elsewhere it requires manpower to maintain them and that manpower could be better used on a coder than a Bug Report maintainer...

So perhaps we could get some volunteers to help with the maintenance of such a feature so the money spent can all be directed at code.

166

@chuckl @cayars Thanks guys. Now I understand what you guys have in mind.

167

Atrus,

   Glad to be of help. 

168

But as I said elsewhere it requires manpower to maintain them and that manpower could be better used on a coder than a Bug Report maintainer...

So perhaps we could get some volunteers to help with the maintenance of such a feature so the money spent can all be directed at code.

I have to disagree with you on this. A business model based on employing coders only is not the way things are done. A business where you ask for people to pay for your product should not be run by volunteers. Volunteers would be a nice add-on / a bonus and not the core function and the cost of support has to be part of the cost model for the business. A business with a $50M or more venture capital investment is probably worth 5 or 6 times that and should be able to cost support and bug fixing into the business model - including the trivial part of bug tracking.

169

I have to disagree with you on this. A business model based on employing coders only is not the way things are done. A business where you ask for people to pay for your product should not be run by volunteers. Volunteers would be a nice add-on / a bonus and not the core function and the cost of support has to be part of the cost model for the business. A business with a $50M or more venture capital investment is probably worth 5 or 6 times that and should be able to cost support and bug fixing into the business model - including the trivial part of bug tracking.

I agree completely.

The sad thing is, SA2000, with your 13000+ post count YOU are a part of the current business model...  And don't get me wrong, the wealth of knowledge you have, and are willing to share, has helped me more than I can express, so My Thanks! 

170

I have to disagree with you on this. A business model based on employing coders only is not the way things are done. A business where you ask for people to pay for your product should not be run by volunteers. Volunteers would be a nice add-on / a bonus and not the core function and the cost of support has to be part of the cost model for the business. A business with a $50M or more venture capital investment is probably worth 5 or 6 times that and should be able to cost support and bug fixing into the business model - including the trivial part of bug tracking.

For big companies yes I agree...

For small startups that are still subsisting largely on VC capitol to build the company perhaps not.

I have seen my fair share of Internet/Coding startups make the mistake to ramp up the workforce as if they were a profitable money making company able to sustain it and eat through their VC money before they could build a self sustaining business or product.

When what they should have been spending on was people who can finish and polish the product so the sheer number of coders was not needed anymore and you could turn some coder salary into Support salary.

50 Million seems like a lot of money to work with...But it goes pretty quick and once gone if you are not making a profit your product is dead because the VC is not likely to invest even more without taking the company away from the people who currently are driving it.

But I do agree with the previous poster regarding your contribution here and if they pay anyone to do support they should be sending you a check! LOL

That said...There is no reason why some of these early volunteers couldn't be offered positions with the company once the product is ready enough and profitable to sustain their salary.

171

You guys talk like it's going to be someone's full time job entering data into the bug tracker.  If that's the case we got "worse" problems.

If anything, it should simplify things as everything should be in a nice tidy format and the devs shouldn't have to go hunting for the info in the threads.

And before anyone comments that the devs have to check and update the bug tracker... Oh, well, that just part of the job.  Actual coding is only one part of the job. Meetings, planning, designing, project planning, forecasting, evaluating time needed for tasks, etc, etc, etc are part of the daily life of a developer at most organizations.

172

I must say I think I was happier with Plex overall a year ago (+ or -) then I am at present.  Yes we have many new features, but the percentage of things working correct is less than it was a year ago.  At a high level:

I liked your post just for this.

The reason I'm unhappy is that the Plex client for Google TV has progressively gotten worse since the new UI release (3.5). Navigation/playback is broken (and has been broken for a while) and the client keeps constantly crashing.

Also, afaik, the issue with the broken sync hasn't been fixed on Android for 2 years.

Finally -- the bug reports and wishes are collected in the same forum section and bug reports have to compete in the popularity contest with the wish requests, that's absolutely wrong.

173

Finally -- the bug reports and wishes are collected in the same forum section and bug reports have to compete in the popularity contest with the wish requests, that's absolutely wrong.

True that!

Yea, I'm surprised nobody pointed that out yet.  But at least if we had a public bug tracker this type of thing wouldn't matter as much.

174

...

I must say I think I was happier with Plex overall a year ago (+ or -) then I am at present.  Yes we have many new features, but the percentage of things working correct is less than it was a year ago.  At a high level:

...

I agree with this and, most regrettably, found out that what I used to cast to a ChromeCast from the iPad simply can't be used anymore.   Everything connects nice, but it just sits there, pegging the Syno at 97% continuously.  That shouldn't be on a device with a PM score of 2400 (Atom C2538 @ 2.4).   Video plays for 3-5 seconds and pauses more..  I've cross checked with the old and new version and definitely 'wrong direction', and that is the low bitrate video (5 Mbps).

Just to verify everything was fine,  Pulled up the DLNA side and it was marginally better but still forced transcoding..   Jumped over to my 'other' solution and perfect.  Even my insanely high rate stuff (30+ Mbps), 5-10% cpu utilization, no buffering, no delay starting.  Even the Synology free server (Video Station) worked without issue.   I even ran it through my iPad flawlessly.

175

We know your other solution is MB3 so you might as well say it as it's been mentioned quite often here anyway. :)  

In MB3 is it also transcoding or playing direct?

176

Ok.  Yes 'other' is MB3.   I'm also working with Synology and helping improve Video Station's metadata agents.   It's default metadata agents can't be edited currently, hence V.S. is used less often.  

MB3 will direct play everything it can.  The most common thing it deals with is TrueHD or DTS -> AAC.   Video bitrates are fine.

Video Station occasionally fails (as expected) because it can't transcode certain codecs (no runtime libraries for it yet).

I have one issue coming up with MB3 and that's libwebp.   It was recently upgraded to 0.42     My fedora is 0.31.   The next update will shut me down unless I go to FC20.

177

Yea, the MB3 setup has an advantage in this regard if you are on the same LAN as the server.  MB3 is letting you "cast" to the DLNA app built in on the xBox One.  Because the media file is being played back from a native xBox app it doesn't have the same limitations as the Plex app (or any 3rd party). MB3 is actually just saying "hey xBox here is the file I want you to play "d:\movies\blah-blah.mp4"

However, if you are trying to use an xBox at a friends house to access your MB3 server you are SOL.

178

My TVs, Rokus, Chromecasts, and computers are on 2 different local subnets.  I also run a 2.4 Ghz and a 5 Ghz wifi

MB3's roku app, while a bit buggy, works.   Roku Media Player is the DLNA solution.   Video Station has it's only variation of DLNA-likeness.

Another app (server) I use for comparison is the "Media Server"  (synology DLNA server) which is good,  albeit very vanilla.

I never could get the Plex DLNA server to be stable and simply 'Play'.   It thinks it has to transcode stuff which will direct-play otherwise.

As for remote access,   I can't use remote due to speed limitations even post upgrade.   I'm now at 24 / 1.5   ( aggregated ADSL2+ ).     It would be nice if I could use more remote but it's not practical.

When I take movies to a friend's house, I grab my 750GB USB3 drive. (very large files).   maybe some day there will be 10 Mbps upload here.  

179

...

Finally -- the bug reports and wishes are collected in the same forum section and bug reports have to compete in the popularity contest with the wish requests, that's absolutely wrong.

I do not see the problem with this. It is quite easy to differentiate which is which and therefore it is easy for Plex to pay attention to what they wish.

As I see it the problem is that Plex does not seem to pay attention to much of anything and that has been reported to be changing for the better. I hope that is true but words are cheap and the action following the words is what is actually important.

Next I do not think a public "Bug Tracker" or anything like that is a good idea as what I have seen in many cases is that such things produce a situation where one or more full time employees spend all there time maintaining the tracker and very little, if any. time actually performing productive work.

Just a bit more communication with what is already available is all that is really needed.

Now to address one more thing: MediaBrowser's transcoding. It, for me streaming to my Rokus, transcodes everything that Plex does and does no transcode anything that Plex does not.

I installed MB on a computer that performed poorly with Plex where some videos that transcoded re-buffered frequently. MB is able to transcode a stream on that computer without re-buffering ever which causes me to believe that MB is either better at transcoding or less burdensome in other aspects allowing it to run better on a lower powered computer.

But, even with that, I much prefer Plex's user interface and general operation. MB just had an update to their beta server and Roku channel that is much better and adds, with a plug in, the ability to have indexes (bif files) for Roku usage. This was one of the advantages of Plex. So MB is narrowing the gap for me but I still find Plex better in almost all categories for me.

For me Plex needs a few features but, right now, there is nothing better for my local streaming. 

Just for completeness I want to say that I do not use many of the functions that many people use in both Plex and MB. I do not use: sharing, sync, multiple users, remote access or many of the other fancy features. I stream local content and use a couple of the Plex channels. It is normally only me (and my dog) watching in my home and even when my granddaughters visit I just set up a TV in the spare bedroom and they watch my Plex, in their free time when they are not reading, using my account. The only way I might need to use another account to restrict viewing of some content would be if my dog mastered the remote. He just cannot be trusted to control his impulses. ;)

180

With regards to bugs and features and bug tracking, I think we need step back a bit and start by defining the requirements. We are discussing solutions and there is a big risk we end up losing some vital requirements. So first we spell out what is needed - then once that is agreed, one can look into the solution and you could leave that to the Plex Team to decide what it is going to be - so long as the Requirements are met