What is Plex trying to be?

General Discussions
1

Plex used to be about YOUR content. A way to organize, view, share YOUR content. Everyone here bought into Plex for that very purpose.

I bought into Plex because I was looking for a way to avoid advertising through commercials and also to provide a safe environment for my family to watch movies/tv shows. No longer did my family need to look through the horrid posters of horror movies trying to find Winnie the Pooh or ask for my permission to view a specific show. I controlled the posters and I controlled their content access.

Plex empowered me! And, Plex received my money and my vocal recommendations to friends to look into Plex.

Times are changing…
Subscription Cable TV is dead or dying. It is being replaced by online streaming. Now there are several legit and huge online streaming services.

So, where does this leave Plex? I mean, why should users want to spend their time and money attempting to store and host their own content, if all the content can be found online?

Companies such as Roku have capitalized on this market mindset and offer tools that allow you to search the entire online catalog of content and have it streamed to your device. Roku and others have been doing this for a long time.

But, people haven’t fled Plex to these outside services. If anything Plex install base has become larger in the midst of this online streaming revolution. But why? Because people enjoy being empowered. People come to Plex to retain control over their streaming instead of having large corporations telling us how we need to stream and for how much money or with how many ads to watch. Plex allow us to buy our DVDs one-time and watch forever instead of having to pay literally tens of thousands of dollars (over a lifetime $50/month * 12months * 50years = $30k) on streaming services just to access the same movies over and over again.

So, again, where does this leave Plex?

I believe the value in Plex is really the same. It is in the mindset of giving us, the users, the tools to become the admins of our own streaming services. We control our content. We own our content. We control our families and friend’s viewing experiences. This is something cable TV never provided, and is something online subscription services will never provide either.

I don’t think anyone here wants to go back to watching ads again. We all know how nice it is not to watch them. Tubi and PlutoTV are just getting bigger and those are the real future of profitable streaming.

So, today is appears Plex is trying to figure itself out. Right now Plex is attempting to mix our local content to be seamless with online subscription/ad-based content.

There is no reason for this model. If you are devoted to online streaming services, there is no reason to spend money to store your content locally. Spend your money on Roku, Android TV, Apple TV and your choice of online streaming services and have at it. It is all pretty much there now. However, if you want full control of your media, wish to stop spending on subscription services, then Plex should be your solution. Right now, Plex is losing that insight.

Plex believes it can do both, but instead Plex is forcing us to move away from our wishes and into their vision of a mixed content world.

I don’t want the WHOLE world. I want control of MY world.

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2

To be fair, there have been feature requests and other discussions asking Plex to combine local media and online sources in various ways. I have never had an interest interest in that, but obviously others have. I’m not opposed to Plex adding such features if they feel it is in their financial interest — they are a business, after all.

What disappoints and angers me is that, in this case, they aren’t allowing me to disable the feature, and, as noted in another thread, their marketing hype about this feature rather blatantly exposes the mindset that those of us who use Plex for our own media and don’t care to include the remote services are now the afterthought.

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That seems to be a matter of opinion. I don’t care about this feature either … but it seems like about half the comments I see between here and Reddit do want to use it.

4

They are trying very hard to be all things to all people at the detriment of the very thing that made them great to begin with. They were a niche product and dominated that.

Each new feature that doesn’t focus on our media is a gut punch to any trust they had left.

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It seems to me many of the people on Reddit don’t know about the same feature exist on Roku and other streaming devices.

Also, many reddit posters seem to like the feature so they can combine it with their Radarr and Sonarr, which kind of defeats the purpose for Plex to add it to bring in more money.

6

Any good company has a mission statement. I felt like it was pretty clear when I joined in, but now I’m not so sure that I know what it is. Either that, or it’s changed to something I might not follow today.

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They’re trying very hard to be the service I used to pay for before switching to Emby . . . and they just succeeded.

8

And eventually be wiped off without notice, just like whole political /cancel culture war of Spotify and such…

Man, I bet everyone is getting really tired of having to hide their kids, hide their wives, hide their music and movies, every time there’s cultural unrest in our society. I’m getting pretty exhausted in making sure I catalogued items thats controversial or might be deleted off the internet for some stupid reason.

When you’re dealing with the streaming climate of today, you have to make sure you viewed something before it gets yanked.

Licensing be damned.

9

I do not think Plex’s strategy was clandestine, since they got their major investment, cant remember when, Plex target has been to be the one app where users can get all their media needs met, personal or otherwise.

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What is Plex trying to be:

What is Plex?

For fans of movies and shows who are overwhelmed by the chaos of the fragmented streaming universe, Plex provides a more personalized and intuitive experience in one easy-to-use, powerful, and beautiful app. Whether you are interested in managing your personal media library or watching free Live TV or streaming 1000s of free movies, Plex is the home for all your entertainment.

11

Yep, another reason I prefer to host my own content and control it.

Disney isn’t taking my “Song of the South” away or possibly any movie/show that mentions a specific gender. I’ll make my own decisions thank you very much.

And, I also don’t want to have to sit through the lies, “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together. Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe…”

Disney just knows that if they remove them all, they would have nothing to offer.

12

I already have my solution to the chaos: my own local content.

I don’t need Plex mixing it into the chaos.

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13

Thank you. I hadn’t seen the article before.

14

After reading that investment article… I can feel the deconstruction of what drew me here. I came to Plex to get away from all of that, and I’ll likely be left standing in the rubble of something that used to be great.

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15

Well said! :clap: :clap: :clap:

16

I guess time will tell. I don’t see any of the current changes impacting my current setup. So from my perspective (at the moment), no harm, no foul.

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