I have some questions to ask to Plex. And some complaints. The meaning of this post is not to troll…but to discussed the feelings of plex pass users which may share the same concerns as mine.
Since I am a plexpass user, not a single issue I had to deal with was ever answered by the official Plex team. Of course, there is a pretty active irc channel, and a discord one, but there is no one there working for Plex actually supporting the paying users. This also applies to change requests, or even feature requests, which user actually never even get an answer from Plex team. In general, I did not see any support from Plex team. It really feels like a cash and carry software. You get what you paid for, good luck with it. And please do not even think about requesting for features, we don’t give a damn.
Features are removed from Plex, and are NOT being reimplemented :
The premium music libraries were suddenly removed. So no more nice gracenote fingerprinting, no more album art downloads, nothing. Strangely, Plex did partner with Tidal a few months before, and now advertises “60 million tracks in Plex” on social medias. These are actually Tidal subscription plans they are trying to sell. Nothing else. So I guess Plex for music enthusiasts is now limited to "link Tidal to plex, and that’s it.
A lot of users hope Plex will get back with a nicely rebuilt premium music library. But I truly believe the mindset is simply to keep selling Tidal accounts, get a percentage, and not invest any resources in this new development. I also have the strong feeling that Plex partnership with Gracenote didn’t succeed the way they wanted, and most probably wasn’t economically interesting enough.
The players…the what ??? Well, lately, I got a message from Plex telling me that PMP would be discontinued. This is really nice. But now I’m ending up with the exact same interface as the plex web service, and I don’t even have a way to use a remote controller to browse the interface. This is really nice for a media player you are running from your computer. Seriously Plex? How did you even release a player that cannot be controller with a remote controller anymore ?
What will happen to Plex in the future, which features are they gonna remove, and which streaming services will they decide to partner with? Maybe Netflix would be a good pick ? That way we would have the perfect Tidal / Netflix frontend ? That day Plex may even think about removing users Movies and TV Shows libraries from the list?
I’d like to know i anyone else has the same feeling about what Plex “currently” becomes. All comments welcome.
I would also say that removing features before they are replaced is a bda precedent - both with the music features and especially with plugins. Developers who put effort into a plugin are not excited about reworking them at the best of times - but break before fix, that causes people to find other solutions and is when things in the supporting ecosystem die. Tivo were great at this, and that is what drove me, and many loyal fans from that platform before they got around to killing themselves by inaction.
I’m hoping Plex does not go the same way - removing things which are supposed to come back, but never materialize.
They have become the master of over promising and under delivering.
Podcasts highly hyped, useless, so many bugs, hasn’t been worked on in almost a year.
Mobile sync, has been unreliable for years also.
Features that people actually want like, CarPlay and Siri Shortcuts are passed over time and time again for UI redesigns. Noting gets fixed, only junk added.
While I agree that Plex adds “features” that seem unwanted it should never be assumed that features you want are wanted by others. While I have some idea what “Siri Shortcuts” are and why some might want them I have no real idea what “CarPlay” might be. I also will say that I do not think I want or need either one.
Of course I have other “features” that are missing that I do want but I gave up years ago on Plex implementing what I want even if a very large number of people also want them. Plex does as Plex wants and the customer matters very little.
Plex will just do what they want to do because Plex knows best and we, the customers, are not smart enough to know what we really need. We should just accept what Plex gives and use what is provided.
And the UI designs keep getting worse in some respects. The mobile apps are ok, but the constant obsession to make every platform look similar is annoying. For a PC setup running a home theater, it should be very art intensive and less remote battery draining. They can add all the extra services they want, but as long as the clients are bad I won’t be using any of them.
Apples version of Android Auto, places the Apple UI on the cars head unit. Makes interfacing with Apps safer while in a car.
Allows programing of Apple Siri to use voice to control apps, like “Hey Siri, ask plex to play music shuffled” this can be used in a car or if the device is in another room.
These are no small items, it has become standard on almost all major apps on iPhone.
That explains why I have no idea what use they are and why I have no interest in them. I allow NO Apple products in my house unless they are consumables. I also do not know even one person using i anything. The few I know that used to use an iPhone have long since switched to Android products.
I do not think that anything Apple should ever be prioritized at all BUT I also do not really think that my desires should drive development any more than anyone else’s should. Companies should, as Plex is doing, drive their own development and then the users vote by usin or not using their product.
Plex clearly believes they are doing right and if we, as users, do not like it there are other products that do the same things and we are free to use those if Plex is not filling our needs.
I have a lifetime Plex Pass but I use Emby for about 90% of my streaming now for exactly that reason. Plex is no longer filling my needs and wants the way I desire so I have mostly moved away from Plex.
It should also be noted that neither Plex or Emby fill my needs for audiobook support, which is real important for me, so I use MediaMonkey for that. It works MUCH better for audio in my setup.
As far as voice control goes I use Echos and I have full control when I choose to use it of Plex and Emby and MediaMonkey. But I only use voice control for start and stop. I do not use or trust voice control to find or play specific titles or playlists. It is too unreliable.
I assume there are different teams for each platform, there would be no priority. I believe Android Auto has already been implemented on Android because that team found that important, why the iOS team doesn’t find CarPlay important even with the high demand (check the feature request thread) is beyond me.
Would also work with headphones, no need to take phone out of pocket, just activate Siri via mic and make request.
I don’t even try to keep my servers updated anymore… the only sure thing with updates nowadays is probably new broken stuff rather than new and useful features…
Plex has a new announcement = new things to get disappointed by
I never use my phones for Plex or Emby. I do use MediaMonkey on them but all my Android based phones have full voice control available if I want. Again I do not use voice control for finding media as it is too unreliable. I just use it to start and stop playback.
I just see no real advantage in having voice controls built into Plex or Emby or MediaMonkey. The external controls work just fine. Plex should not waste their time building such things internal, they should just make sure that external controls work correctly.
But all this really does not matter as Plex does not listen to users. Plex decides what is best for their users and they believe that the users are too stupid to have views that have any real value.
Emby at least listens to their users and often implements what is asked for if it can be done fairly easily or if there is good demand. They almost never, never to my knowledge, add a feature that is unwanted or has not been requested and discussed on the forums. It should be noted that they also do not always implement what is asked for or adhere to the majority view. They just seem to actually listen and explain and give reasons for decisions a LOT more than Plex.
Is Emby better? For me the answer is yes BUT that is not true for everyone. But if you want company responsiveness then try Emby. You will be pleasantly surprised I think.
I’m not sure if it’s changed since iOS 12 but to create a CarPlay app Apple has put up extra hurdles developers must go through. Specifically they need to sign up for the Made for iPhone/iPod program which adds some red tape that only larger companies can afford to deal with.
The Apple Developer site is still saying you need an extra entitlement so not sure if that’s changing anytime soon.
