Thoughts on Plex recent development

General Discussions
1

I replied some thread on reddit, and I think I should repost my comments on this forum to let the plex team know how I was disappointed in recent plex development.

I used to love plex. I am a lifetime plex pass user also. However, the decline of the standard of plex clients and server always give me headaches. You never know what will go wrong if you try to update the client or the server. They just spend time on live TV recently. Also, they support podcast recently. But, the UI and playback setting are too naive compared to most of the podcast clients in the market.

Instead of making more new features, I really hope they focus on the quality improvements, In particular, they should focus on iOS/Android clients first . These two got a lot of tiny minor bugs.

Supporting different platforms used to be an advantage of plex ; but, they did too much. Lack of focus just make plex getting worse.

Be honest, I no longer use plex for watching video/movies. The clients always got different kind of problems when I tried to watch video. Right now, I just keep my plex media server on for music library. It doesnā€™t mean plex is good for music library management. My classical music library is still in mess. Since I use chromecast audio a lot , plex is good in this aspect.

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I also bought the lifetime pass and I feel like such a sucker on days like tonight, when Iā€™m surfing a support forum for what should be the easiest thing in the world, just getting Plex to see my new album without messing up all the metadata in my entire library. This software had such promise, but I feel totally duped.

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Unfortunately, I doubt that none of the Plex team member will care about it. If I can find the good alternative for music library management, I will stop using Plex even I have paid for the Life-Time Plex Pass.

Right now, Roon and Emby are not the good choices for my case.

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Can you share what you see as the problems with Roon and Emby? It might save me some shopping around - especially if, like me, your main use is for a music library.

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Roon is in fact a good choice, if

  1. $499 (Life Time Membership) is not a problem for you;
  2. You have a dedicated pc/server for Roon Server.

I have tried Roon on my Mac Mini (3 years ago) before, it was quite good except no support of chromecast at that moment. Right now, I only got synology NAS(216Play) and Roon Server not running on it. But, I know that Roon support chromecast now.

For Emby, I have tried it around 12 months ago when I switch the plex server from macmini to Synology NAS. The server setting is quite cumbersome. And the clients (iOS/android) didnā€™t play music well, the music would have several pause during playback. I have tried emby for a month and it is not my choice of music library management.

I use foobar 2000 mobile (iOS/Android) through Plex DLNA at home and Plex Clients (iOS/Android) elsewhere. I also stream music to my chromecast / chromecast audio a lot.

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I also use Apple TV 4K to listen music sometimes.

So, right now, only Plex fulfill all my requirements.

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I have not used it before but JRiver Media Center is rooted in music playback first and added theater much, much later. I cannot report on quality but maybe it is worth a look? I donā€™t know about clients on players but they do have playback on mobile devices with JRemote.

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I havenā€™t had any problems with Emby and music. Plus Emby is quite active in the forums so any suggestions about music you have they would likely consider. Personally, I put in requests for more robust and thorough album/track metadata (mainly for classical music).

Their use of metadata for music is 100x better than Plex!

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8

Of the 2 links shared in that reddit post: The podcast is a year old and the article on music is 3 years old. And Iā€™m sure that with that 10 million they also bought that streaming company and started streaming news to us (sigh).

And in the last year plex has taken a sharp down turn: News, podcasts, gridless tv channel surfing and more bugs than they can squash. FireTV app is so buggy I had to stop using it, so I switched to Kodi but their Kodi app is horrendous. The best things right now are plexamp (which is a side project - and I love it) and PKC (which isnā€™t plex at all). And the only reason they still get my money is because of Android Auto.

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i was wondering if anyone bothered looking at the article and interview. From the interview there was several things Keith said that got me thinking, and why i posted the discussion.

according to him they have about 10% of their workers with UI skillz. With 60 employees worldwide, thatā€™s roughly about 5 people. 5 people spread across multiple platformsā€¦ this concerns me.
AND
Not saying they WILL do it but they can programmatically inject ads into streamsā€¦ this REALLY concerns me.

all these ā€œdealsā€ they are making has me also question where their loyalty lies. Will it (or has it already) stray away from user loyalty? Do they care what we think anymore? or are they trying to fit the mold of what these ā€œcompaniesā€ want?

we rarely hear from employees on the end goal, let alone THE CEO OF PLEX, so i thought these were good to postā€¦ despite being older articles.

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Plex is diversifying away from its original user base who ā€˜rip their own contentā€™ ahem.

12

Not sure what your requirements are but there are several alternatives for music

http://www.subsonic.org
https://www.mopidy.com
http://ampache.org
http://beta.madsonic.org


https://www.mysqueezebox.com

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13

If you do not need transcoding for music you might want to try Kodi.

Dave have made some wonderful work for music V18.

If you need to play on multiple device then you might want to check Yatse to cast Kodi/Plex and Emby to many things :wink:

(Disclaimer Iā€™m the author of Yatse, but Kodi 18 for music is really good by itself)

14

Plex has been a pretty good experience for me but things just change randomly. One day this wonā€™t work, another day that wonā€™t work. Right now a 1080p h264 mkv with aac 5.1 audio refuses to play audio and video is 2x speed on Android TV unless I tell it to transcode. I use the Kodi add-on it works without transcode. Why the fragmentation? Why does a standard file with standard codecs not play when it used to?

And the annoying bugs that seem to be permanent:
Why are tv shows still playing 3 seconds of an episode and automatically going to the next?
Why do I still get the spinning circle of death and have to hit back and start the video again?

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Itā€™s a local media server and theyā€™re moving away from people who want to organize and play local media. They need to take a good hard look at their mission statement, and if the entire nature of the product is changing, thatā€™s information thatā€™s worth sharing with us.

For a better client, I suggest VLC for Android. It can access your Plex server via DLNA, which means it can be browsed by the libraries that you define (unlike the Plex client), it can play several codecs that the Plex client has disabled, and it can cast media without any workarounds or plugins. And itā€™s free, unlike the Plex client.

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Ever looked at media monkey

17

I wish I knew why but my Plex experience is, except for interface choices, pretty much problem free. I do not have any reboots of the server nor any videos that do not play. All my clients (Rokus, Fire TV, Shield TV, Raspberry PI and computers) play pretty much without problem. The only difference between them is the interface.

If I knew why my Plex system was so flawless then, maybe, I could tell others what they need to do to increase the stability of their system.

I have had some pretty major differences with Plex but the stability and usability of the system has never really been a problem of any sort.

I do not disbelieve that the problems others are having are real but rather that complaining it might be good to explore what is different between the misbehaving systems and the many, like mine, that work nearly perfectly.

Now, does anyone want to examine what the differences might be? Plex is a very complex system of many parts that have to work harmoniously together for Plex to function as intended and that must all take place on several different operating systems.

I use Windows 10 for the base of my server and the problems that others experience using other operating systems might be quite different and unable to be reproduced on my system.

Some details about my system for a starting place.
Server Windows 10 connected wired to my network with 60 tb of USB hard drives pooled using DrivePool for my media. My server has no other regular tasks except those needed to support Plex and the storage.

Most of my clients are connected wired to my network (all the ones I use regularly are) and I generally do not even consider a client unless it can be connected wired.

My internet is pretty good and stable but I do have outages from time to time.

I do not share my content or use remote access at all.

I do not use live TV or DVR functionality at all.

At most on my system I have two or three transcoded streams happening at the same time and more than two are extremely rare.

I also have most of my media in a format that direct plays but there are still some remaining AVIs and other formats that require transcoding.

I do not use 4K, high bitrate files, subtitles (I burn in needed subs while encoding) or fancy audio formats.

That is about all the specifics I can think of for now that might lend some insight as to why my system is so stable.

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Hang on boys, I think Iā€™ve cracked the code- all you have to do to have a problem-free Plex experience is avoid every single part of Plex that has problems! Man, I wish Iā€™d thought of that sooner.

Posts like this make me wish they hadnā€™t gotten rid of the ā€œLOLā€ reaction. :joy:

Anyway, there are entire forums for support issues. Letā€™s not distract from the actual intention of this thread, which is to discuss the direction that Plexā€™s development is taking.

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19

I think I will give emby one more try if I got spare time in next month.

There are several things Plex Media Server/ Clients cannot handle well in my cases:

  1. AIFF never got the metadata right so I gave it up using AIFF

  2. Some FLAC canā€™t play well in tvOS/iOS 11 even tvOS/iOS 11 support FLAC natively. I have some FLAC files only last 1 minute or even less. After playing those FLAC files, there will be a 10 to 20 seconds silence and next FLAC will start playing suddenly , but not at the beginning. It is so weird, so right now, I have to keep 2 libraries, One is FLAC (for chromecast audio/FooBar 2000 Mobile) and One is ALAC (for iOS/tvOS).

  3. For Foobar2000 Mobile, through Plex DLNA, FB2000 never find the ALAC files. I guess PLEX DLNA publish ALAC container as mp4 so FB2000 just ignore them.

  4. The one and only one case for gapless playback on Native Plex Clients: ALAC on iOS/tvOS device. None of the Plex Clients support Gapless Playback on FLAC , even Chromecast audio.

For classical music/concert or other classic CDs like The Dark Side of the Moon,

  • Using Apple TV 4K which connect to AMP through HDMI

  • Using foobar 2000 mobile to listen on mobile device. Even through DLNA, foobar2000 can play flac gaplessly.

So, for some CDs ,need gapless playback, I always listen on chromecast audio, I just use a stupid alternative: I rip them in FLAC as a single track.

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In fact, I just wish to keep one library for all playing devices, not two.

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20

Honestly, Iā€™m with @Elijah_Baley on this one. While I do understand Plex has itā€™s frustrations at times, most of my experience is really good.
Unlike @Elijah_Baley Iā€™m using Mint Linux for my server, not Windows. I do have a few remote users that I never hear complaints from. I do use the DVR and it records without issue without fail. Itā€™s been as stable as I could ask for.
I have Roku, Fire TV, Nvidia shield, and Roku TV clients and they all work well. If I have an issue with any client, itā€™s usually my Android phone but nothing that I canā€™t work around and if itā€™s really that bad Iā€™ll post appropriately so the Devs know. I do use the Android beta client so I expect the occasional issue.
I havenā€™t jumped into 4k yet mostly because I donā€™t have the capability to rip my 4k discs yet. However, on my Blu-ray rips I use the native audio codecs because I enjoy my surround sound setup. I re-encode the video into an h.265 mp4 container. Maybe itā€™s just me but this has been very stable/consistent for me in my setup.
I donā€™t pretend to be using everything in Plex so I donā€™t doubt there are bugs but like @Elijah_Baley, I find it to be something I enjoy using and so does my family. Detracting from what he says because he doesnā€™t have issues when you do is ridiculous.
And for the record, no I donā€™t agree with Plexā€™s direction and decisions all the time but, for now, I still enjoy using it on a daily basis.

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21

Emby is by no means perfect (theyā€™re still working on gapless as well) but at least it seems like the devs listen and are open to suggestions.

Iā€™d give Emby a little time to sink in, itā€™s not Plex. I almost jumped ship after a week because itā€™s more finicky than Plex but there are no firetv audio issues, their kodi integration is nearly flawless, and their live tv/DVR is much more stable (although plex is getting there). Also, I was encouraged by their forums: the devs respond, squash bugs in a timely manner, ask questions and sometimes admit that change needs to happen.

So although I have ā€œpassesā€ to both, it looks to me like Emby is working more towards a solid core product, while Plex is distracted with podcasts, VR and news.

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