I mean, were you being a dick?
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Nope. Were/are you?
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What do I think?
I’ve bought an Emby licence.
The lifetime licence costs less than the Plex did before they put the price up.
I’ve got Plex and Emby running in parallel on my server at the moment which works surprisingly well. They’re forks from the same code base.
Key differences are that you don’t get all the ad supported Plex content which may be a good thing or bad thing. It’s just my own content and live TV from my HDHomeRun tuner.
One thing that made me go for Plex in the first place was the ability to build a universal watch list which would tell you what streaming service has the content you want to watch. This is missing from Emby.
My use case is as a networked PVR to replace the TiVo and cable subscription. We’re 9 releases into the new app which still doesn’t work for this use case. I’m still giving Plex a bit of breathing space as the family are used to it and I don’t want to push everyone into using a new system unless i have to.
I’m working on the assumption that Plex won’t be around for much longer. The only explanation that I can think for this situation is that they need to drastically alter their revenue generation method and need the new client to do that. The financial pressures must be massive to foist pre-alpha unfinished and buggy software on the end-users and I can’t see many people taking out a subscription at the moment. I’m guessing they’re burning through cash faster than it’s coming in and the funding is running out. So they either get more revenue/ reduce costs or go under. But they must have killed the goose that lay the golden eggs. Especially as it’s so easy to move to the competition.
If I didn’t have a lifetime pass I would have cancelled it by now.
But I’m reasonably happy as I have a nice off ramp so can sit back and watch the story unfold without getting too cross.
Using the Plex app on the TVs still and the Emby app on the only apple device that I regrettably upgraded.
Just need to decide on switching the Emby license to a lifetime one instead of monthly.
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Exactly my thoughts also, the institutional knowledge with my family is most critical. From my 10 year old daughter to my 78 year old Dad, and everyone in-between, the feedback about the new app has been universal in their frustration & inability to do what they used to do.
I think Plex has forgotten that their audience isn’t technical folks who love to tinker, it’s a:
Retired couple yelling at each other because they can’t hear properly about how this “Plex thing just doesn’t work”. That I need to teach them about a non discoverable way to enable and disable items on in the home area by pressing and holding the library button (that was 40 minutes of my life I won’t get back, via phone!).
My 10 year old daughter who can’t find where here downloaded shows are anymore as she is in the back seat and I’m driving on a freeway at 110 (kph).
My wife annoyed that on her iPad, her Plex app is now showing “Uh Oh… Something’s Not Right. Sorry, that didn’t work. We are actively monitoring for issues. Try restarting the app or come back later.”
It’s me trying to watch Live TV, and nothing working.
All real life situations in the last week.
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This and the fact that if you want to opt out of sending the “optional” data that they collect ( most of it isn’t optional) you have to actually click through the numerous sections on their privacy page to find the various opt out check boxes. They’re not located in a central location your profile or in your settings like you’d expect from any respectable company. And honestly that alone is extremely indicative of the type of company Plex is and who you’re dealing with here. It’s so incredibly scummy but again it tracks for what the company has become.
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Holy crap - I had already opted out of everything, but I forgot just how many settings you have to sift through - including really, really long lists of selections you have to explicitly choose.
This is one example: https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us/
It’s worth reading through the page at the link @Brady1 posted and opting out of everything.
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This company is truly deplorable.
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I have found it infuriating that I can no longer manage library access from the app any more. Before the roll out, I could grant and change access to my library through the mobile app, but that has been completely removed in the rollout. The “new experience” has been making things more difficult, not easier.
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I wonder what they intend to provide to replace that functionality? Why take it away? Can anyone from the company address this? Once again, you’ve removed useful things and provided no info on any alternative. What’s the plan? Thx
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They provided info about the alternative nearly 3 months ago. It’s in the blog post about the (as it was then) upcoming changes.
A new bespoke server management app that works on browsers or mobile clients for a better curation experience with more visibility into who is on your server, and how.
Interesting… in the blog post you mentioned the main topic is the new price policy and what’s now a service that people need to pay that was free until then.
But the main topic in this thread is the “new experience player app” with the two posts above yours are complaining about the following:
Can you please explain how your cited blog posts helps people with these problems?
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Firstly I was only responding to akkbar. And specifically the claim that Plex had provided no info about any alternative methods to administer a server going forward. That should have been bleedingly obvious from the quote in my post.
Secondly, if you can’t work out for yourself how the next quote in my post (which is from the blog post) provides a response to the above mentioned claim then I’m not sure any further explanation would help.
Who had a first sentence in his post (which you did not cite) mentioning “that functionality”, possibly referring to what @ElusiveZatchmo complained about.
Misread that one. Cancels my question. 
And of course, it is reasonable that a new app will work as a replacement to do what both users are missing. But they could have already be doing it from Plex Web. So, it is fair to assume that they may mean “within the app”. And this is how I interpret their complain.
For my home environment (which does not involve computers or mobile devices - except for a tablet mounted next to my bath tub for daily life), no alternative is visible. Of course, adding new equipment can be seen as an alternative (one I don’t like much). For me, things will get difficult once new experience gets to “Fire TV universe”.
However, we were never given a choice to use it as a Beta and then because it is terrible, NOT use it at all
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The new app was in Beta for months. Plex however decided to roll it out to public with loads of bugs and missing features.
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…still no solution in sight (?). Mobile app is still in an extremely poor state.
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They did announce yesterday that they have rolled back the decision to remove photos and music from the main Plex apps. I would say they are heading in the right direction they just aren’t communicating enough and they certainly haven’t done all they can to at least mediate the situation in the short-term.
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The UI/UX still stinks (nobody came up with this as a “good idea”), but yes, at least it’s not “bad UI” combined with “insanity” anymore. Sheesh. Still looking for a smattering of humble pie… I don’t think I’ll find it.
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It it an unmitigated disaster. You no longer can fix a match on Mac you can’t change a poster, you can’t get anything to work for the most part and big question for me is why wasn’t the CEO of plex fired and the board of directors dismissed, none of them clearly even use the product and if you are head of a software company you should know a failure when you see it and get the reviews on it. Also a good company would publish a bucket its of defects and a punch order of fixes, but then one would think they would have a test team that would be looking to do basic testing but then i don’t see anything I would have been expected to do when I was coding. Maybe they need some new leadership to bring order to this chaos.
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I’m a little confused about some of the details of your post, AFAIK nothing has changed with the desktop clients. I quickly checked and I can fix a match & change a poster, same as always. I can also do this via the web browser on my iPhone/iPad if I really need.
My biggest issues are with Live TV (a few bugs still exist that would be typically considered release blocking, ie guide data not working), and some other design regressions that are annoying but not blocking actual use. Not a great baseline mind you.
I’m not going to deny that some aspects of the New Experience are indeed disasters, to the point that I’ve disabled auto update for my Apple TV and also Mac client, just in case the New Experience launches onto more platforms before it is ready.
