Plex employees use to be all over this board answering questions. There were many updates. Now apps are left buggy as hell, employees are no were to be seen on this board, everything is hush. You guys sell to another company? You going out of business? Someone tell us something. I have paid for a once polished and great product for one now that is being ignored and left unattended. HELLO?
Poor you. Joined in october 2016. Last fall Plex made a big push to make us believe they were going to listen to us after a (yet another) big thread was made and everyone complained about Plex never listening. @kinoCharlino was posting everywhere, we had roundtables to discuss the state of things, voice our complaints and issues⊠of course since january itâs all back to what weâve known for years: radio silence. You just happen to have joined at a moment where you were given a false sense of employee presence on the forums.
THAT SAID, Since then they introduced streaming bandwidth limits, Plex DVR, Plex Cloud, hardware accelerated transcoding is in the testing phase and now we just got a taste of adaptative bitrate streamingâŠ
I really understand your frustration, but Plex is far from dead.
PS I suggest you go over to this thread, read through it (BTW Elan is co-founder of Plex, answered a few times in there) and whine there like everybody else 
PPS if you search the forums, youâll find a huge âVenting threadâ that was created before the one I linked. Youâll see that what youâre experiencing is just normality around here.
Hey guys, the support team is still here and crawling (and posting) all over the forums; its not just me. You should find folks like @ChuckPA, @âMovieFan.Plexâ, @sa2000, @BigWheel, @OttoKerner and the Ninjas as well as developers dropping into beta/preview release sections. In 2016 we did hold several community roundtables and plan to continue doing it in 2017, though not as frequently. When we started, we were testing out how well the format worked on a quarterly basis and found it was too quick of a cadence as new features and enhancements to existing features would often take longer. I would like to host another toward the end of summer or early fall.
Thanks @KarlDag for offering up some clarification. A lot has happened in the last 6 months, some of it is internal workings and some features that have already been released, or will be soon. The dev teams have grown and work steadily on crushing bugs while also working on new features and other enhancements. What we face is in providing technical support for a product where the local environment (your server, networking, media, all the different variables for how things can be done and how things can break) make providing traditional technical support a real challenge. Thatâs not to say we arenât focused on it. The forums have been a great place for many in the community to get together, discuss, explore, and experiment with the product. Theyâve also been a great source of information for the developers when it comes to betas and preview releases, as users can share their experience, post log, screenshots, etc, â giving the devs a good sense of whatâs going on. That being said, weâre working on a better way to provide our users with technical support without driving up peopleâs bills and while keeping the forum what itâs best suited for. Itâs too early for me to provide any concrete details or timelines, but know that we are working on it.
@kinoCharlino said:
Hey guys, the support team is still here and crawling (and posting) all over the forums; its not just me. You should find folks like @ChuckPA, @âMovieFan.Plexâ, @sa2000, @BigWheel, @OttoKerner and the Ninjas as well as developers dropping into beta/preview release sections. In 2016 we did hold several community roundtables and plan to continue doing it in 2017, though not as frequently. When we started, we were testing out how well the format worked on a quarterly basis and found it was too quick of a cadence as new features and enhancements to existing features would often take longer. I would like to host another toward the end of summer or early fall.Thanks @KarlDag for offering up some clarification. A lot has happened in the last 6 months, some of it is internal workings and some features that have already been released, or will be soon. The dev teams have grown and work steadily on crushing bugs while also working on new features and other enhancements. What we face is in providing technical support for a product where the local environment (your server, networking, media, all the different variables for how things can be done and how things can break) make providing traditional technical support a real challenge. Thatâs not to say we arenât focused on it. The forums have been a great place for many in the community to get together, discuss, explore, and experiment with the product. Theyâve also been a great source of information for the developers when it comes to betas and preview releases, as users can share their experience, post log, screenshots, etc, â giving the devs a good sense of whatâs going on. That being said, weâre working on a better way to provide our users with technical support without driving up peopleâs bills and while keeping the forum what itâs best suited for. Itâs too early for me to provide any concrete details or timelines, but know that we are working on it.
I noticed a post or two from you last week, was surprised as I hadnât read anything by you for a few months. Welcome back, sort of 
I know some guys lurk the forums, movie.fan and ottokerner being the ones I see the most (would really be great if they were all identified as employees though, can be hard to tell⊠Had no idea sa2000 was employed by Plex).
Thing is, multiple clients are really unstable and/or buggy right now, and people are getting fed up and not given (satisfying) answers, or at least feedback of how things are progressing.
FireTV 2 and Mi Box for example have had outstanding issues with ac3 for MONTHS and have no idea if a fix will ever happen. PlayStation still hasnât gotten really stable⊠And apparently this UWP app needs a lot of love. Plex for Kodi was brought along very nicely but the guys taking care of it were moved to other matter and stuff is still missing, music lyrics for example.
Users feel abandoned, again, and that sucks.
@KarlDag said:
Poor you. Joined in october 2016. Last fall Plex made a big push to make us believe they were going to listen to us after a (yet another) big thread was made and everyone complained about Plex never listening. @kinoCharlino was posting everywhere, we had roundtables to discuss the state of things, voice our complaints and issues⊠of course since january itâs all back to what weâve known for years: radio silence. You just happen to have joined at a moment where you were given a false sense of employee presence on the forums.THAT SAID, Since then they introduced streaming bandwidth limits, Plex DVR, Plex Cloud, hardware accelerated transcoding is in the testing phase and now we just got a taste of adaptative bitrate streamingâŠ
I really understand your frustration, but Plex is far from dead.
Sorry. This is actually my second account. I left for a while and came back but am thinking of going back. Just to many HUGE bugs in the certain app i am using and it is going unanswered and unfixed.
If I may chime in about the level of âsupportâ, Since December, Iâve made some 8000+ posts in response to user questions, problems, and other general information. I canât do everything. My expertise is with Linux and Synology (currently adding QNAP to that list). If I ever can be of help, just call me out with @chuckpa.
@ChuckPA said:
If I may chime in about the level of âsupportâ, Since December, Iâve made some 8000+ posts in response to user questions, problems, and other general information. I canât do everything. My expertise is with Linux and Synology (currently adding QNAP to that list). If I ever can be of help, just call me out with@chuckpa.
Unfortunately, some areas look abandoned. Everytime Iâm having an issue with the iOS client for example, I end up having to bump my thread several times in the hope of getting an answer.
So you end up really frustrated because some features that were hinted at never made it (gapless playback for example) to your client, you paid for the app, you paid for a lifetime plexpassâŠ
Oh and thanks for your help with PMS on Synology, it saved me multiple times.
I wonder if a sticky announcement can be added to each forum identifying a âleadâ Plex representative (employee and/or Ninja) who monitor that forum. If people asking questions called out those reps in their posts, would it result in drawing improved attention?
@ChuckPA said:
If I may chime in about the level of âsupportâ, Since December, Iâve made some 8000+ posts in response to user questions, problems, and other general information. I canât do everything. My expertise is with Linux and Synology (currently adding QNAP to that list). If I ever can be of help, just call me out with@chuckpa.
Believe me, no one is calling you a slacker. Your presence is very obvious, Chuck. But the problem is exactly what you just said: you canât do everything. There is a distinct lack of support in quite a few areas that do no lie within your expertise, like the UWP platform, iOS, Playstation, and XBOX to name a few. The UWP platform has gone from a lot of support posts from @pombeirp responding to posts about bugs to virtually no responses. The UWP community probably feels abandoned and itâs easy to see why. The iOS users get hardly any love in the way of posts acknowledging problems or asking for extra information, and itâs incredibly frustrating.
We see a mere handful of support folks like you, and quite frankly there arenât enough of you 4 or 5 to go around to help everyone. Perhaps Plex has experienced a massive growth and right now is unable to provide the support technicians to handle it. Perhaps Plex has pulled devs away from the forums to focus on the codebase. We donât know any of that, because we only see posts going unanswered.
I certainly appreciate all the support youâve given to the Plex community, and the support from the few other visible support folks. @kinoCharlino posted that Plex is working on a better way to provide support, and thatâs great to hear, but itâs unfortunate that another thread had to be made complaining about support before any information about it was given out.
@ChuckPA said:
If I may chime in about the level of âsupportâ, Since December, Iâve made some 8000+ posts in response to user questions, problems, and other general information. I canât do everything. My expertise is with Linux and Synology (currently adding QNAP to that list). If I ever can be of help, just call me out with@chuckpa.
You have several times helped me or provided guidance and/or support even though I run my Plex systems under Windows. We disagree from time to time but that is to be expected.
I just wish that Plex, in general, would fix/finish products before introducing new ones. For me, in particular, the Shield server is still about where it was when it was introduced over a year ago and it was âsoldâ as if it actually was a viable solution. When I have asked questions over in the Shield forums the responses have been either nonexistent or inadequate. I have even provided logs and details several times on clear bugs and there has been ZERO response from Plex.
That kind of response is why many people feel that Plex does not care at all. All the good you can do will not offset pathetic support in many areas. I know you cannot do everything and you do not have expertise in every area but, maybe, you could at least convince the Plex employees/ninjas/developers in other areas that the users actually deserve responses when reporting bugs particularly when the users go to great detail and a good deal of trouble to post exactly what the bug is and how to reproduce it and eve provide logs.
Several very detailed posts go unresponded to even with the details as above. The silence says that Plex does not care at all.
I love Plex but in many areas I agree with the people that say that Plex support is non-existent.
Elijah,
I work for Plex too but am not full time. There is a limit to how much I can do and how much influence I have. I work in support. I am authorized to make certain software changes and submit them for review and release. Those I donât have the skill for, I prepare as much as I can (even with prototype code) and have to champion getting it fixed. If I were to champion everything which needs âfixingâ, I would end up being a âChicken Littleâ with the sky falling. I feel such behavior would be quickly self-defeating.
I ask you this: not as a challenge question but as âthe other side of the same coinâ question
If support is non-existent, am i wasting my time here?@ChuckPA said:
Elijah,
I work for Plex too but am not full time. There is a limit to how much I can do and how much influence I have. I work in support. I am authorized to make certain software changes and submit them for review and release. Those I donât have the skill for, I prepare as much as I can (even with prototype code) and have to champion getting it fixed. If I were to champion everything which needs âfixingâ, I would end up being a âChicken Littleâ with the sky falling. I feel such behavior would be quickly self-defeating.I ask you this: not as a challenge question but as âthe other side of the same coinâ question
If support is non-existent, am i wasting my time here?
I think you misunderstand the point I am trying to make.
Your support has been about as good as it gets. You have been responsive and quite complete in any thread you participated in.
My point that I tried to present was that that level of response is non-existent in many threads/areas where you do not participate. One person does not and cannot make much of a difference in areas that they are not able to help in no matter how good their support is.
One example of a thread that should have been responded to but was not is this one in the Shield forum:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/264514/bug-with-shield-roku-involving-aspect-ratio-only-when-hardware-acceleration-is-used
In that thread I gave a detailed report of a BUG and full logs and not one Plex employee or anyone else from Plex had one word to say. Effectively I was told that I was just stupid to bother to report the BUG. While it might be true that someone did read it and might even be working on it the response says that is not true.
You give good support but you are one person and there seems to be many others that just do not care or that are too incompetent to respond to or fix problems. You cannot do it all and you are not the face that many see. What many folks see is that a huge number of reports go unresponded to and that is what makes it look like the support does not exist.
Are you wasting your time? Absolutely not. But you cannot singlehandedly fix the perception that Plex does not support many of its products.
@ChuckPA said:
If I may chime in about the level of âsupportâ, Since December, Iâve made some 8000+ posts in response to user questions, problems, and other general information. I canât do everything. My expertise is with Linux and Synology (currently adding QNAP to that list). If I ever can be of help, just call me out with@chuckpa.
Chuck, I didnât single you out at all. I know some of you guys do a lot to help, and ninjas also do their best, but itâs just not enough.
KinoCharlino listed some guys earlier in the thread⊠the number of employees offering support on the forums is just too small, and like you said, youâre not even fulltime.
Like I said, the MiBox users and the FireTV users are still stuck wishing for a bone to chew on⊠Even if @âMovieFan.Plexâ said once or twice the problem is caused by firmware issues, that doesnât make the app work better on those devices.
I wish 1. There was a list of reachable employees available to know who to ping about what devices/issues, and 2. There some sort of bug tracking system in place to know when an issue has been identified and if itâs being worked on.
But thatâs been asked time and time again and itâs not happening so Iâm not holding my breath.
I have posted a few issues and received a prompt response each time.
Thanks for clarifying. I was indeed misunderstanding.
I see a couple things there: 1) the SMB and 2) the aspect ratio are the heavy hitters, yes?
Finally, in 1.7.2, aspect ratio did get the long overdue attention it needed. I have no insight as to where/how they schedule their workload. Have you had the opportunity to test it yet? I know it specifically was pushed to pushed (Public I believe) for the players. Since I donât own or have access to one of those, I canât verify (but i canât verify anything at the moment with my both NASâs all torn up⊠need a couple more days to sort it out).
Iâve also had concerns about visibility in the forums and, directly on target, how questions get asked and answered or not.
I canât disclose (obvious reasons) but I saw something really NICE. Itâs going to make my job a lot easier AND nothing gets missed. (which clearly happens when there are over 800 unanswered threads in this forum alone)
As for not caring or incompetent, thatâs pretty harsh imho but I do see your point, acknowledge perception is a problem. What I saw in my last meeting speaks volumes to solving that. I need to see more before Iâm willing to say itâs a viable solution but itâs the most promising option Iâve seen to date.
There was comment earlier about the devs always being around the forum. Their workload doesnât allow it anymore. Plex isnât the âgarage startupâ it used to be. Anyone (myself included) whoâs started a business knows the pain. Itâs unfortunate everyone here is experiencing it along with us as âpart of the familyâ. Weâll get there. I wouldnât have become an employee if I didnât think it.
Personal note: I just grabbed a QNAP to broaden my support. As soon as I get this mess sorted, Iâll be spending more time there too. All I ask is nobody ask me to do Windows. Iâm not a Window licker LOL
Edit:
I know I wasnât being singled out but when I got pinged, I came to look and thought I could contribute.
I hope you all know, Iâm just a ping away.
Great responses from many of the Plex regulars, Employees and Enthusiasts. The issue seems to be the computer literacy and skill levels of Plex users over many platforms. Plex Media Server, the center of all discussions, controls your media for the apps, players, devices supported.
Unfortunately many forget the worlds Population have such array of skills and not all are skilled at computers or the use of software. Just like Iâm not a Electrician, Plumber, Motor Mechanic , Racing Driver etc. Everyone has a skill set of some sort, some are not wordsmiths, some are very blunt, some are just rude or impatient. Some know Jack about computers, I try like many others to offer some assistance where I can with Forum user discussions. So itâs clear to me that Computer Skill, Language, user knowledge of Technical Terminology, device parameters are just some issues present.
I believe communication of a acknowledged Consensus of issues and bugs be listed, rather than a mention in a discussion would alleviate a lot of the forum stress. Every business have methods of communication to their customers, be it warnings/notices or some sort of disclosure. I do acknowledge Plex have a great Library of FAQ Topics but there seems to be a disconnect. How can this issue be rectified? I have noticed many Plex users have links in the signatures, why not a more obvious link or tabs down the side. The header **FAQ **tab/link is not working well.
I strongly applaud the efforts of so many in the forums, be it volunteers or Employees. Plex is not perfect but everyoneâs efforts are well noted and truly welcomed. Thank you so much
Gary.
@kegobeer-plex said:
@ChuckPA said:
If I may chime in about the level of âsupportâ, Since December, Iâve made some 8000+ posts in response to user questions, problems, and other general information. I canât do everything. My expertise is with Linux and Synology (currently adding QNAP to that list). If I ever can be of help, just call me out with@chuckpa.Believe me, no one is calling you a slacker. Your presence is very obvious, Chuck. But the problem is exactly what you just said: you canât do everything. There is a distinct lack of support in quite a few areas that do no lie within your expertise, like the UWP platform, iOS, Playstation, and XBOX to name a few. The UWP platform has gone from a lot of support posts from @pombeirp responding to posts about bugs to virtually no responses. The UWP community probably feels abandoned and itâs easy to see why. The iOS users get hardly any love in the way of posts acknowledging problems or asking for extra information, and itâs incredibly frustrating.
We see a mere handful of support folks like you, and quite frankly there arenât enough of you 4 or 5 to go around to help everyone. Perhaps Plex has experienced a massive growth and right now is unable to provide the support technicians to handle it. Perhaps Plex has pulled devs away from the forums to focus on the codebase. We donât know any of that, because we only see posts going unanswered.
I certainly appreciate all the support youâve given to the Plex community, and the support from the few other visible support folks. @kinoCharlino posted that Plex is working on a better way to provide support, and thatâs great to hear, but itâs unfortunate that another thread had to be made complaining about support before any information about it was given out.
BingoâŠmy issue is how bad the UWP app is. It is laggy, sluggish,clunky, and an error fest. Itâs almost as if it needs to be strapped and started over from the ground up.
The main reason to use the UWP app is on a touch device such as a Surface, PMP doesnât work at all for touch and as I travel quite a bit with mine Iâve synced quite a few videos to an SD card.
Personally I donât have any issues with my installs, and havenât seen any of the issues reported, but I agree in general that the UWP app has gone from a very well supported app (bug fixes pretty much straight away several times a week, and very active forum support) to one that seems to be left behind.
@WilhelmStroker said:
The main reason to use the UWP app is on a touch device such as a Surface, PMP doesnât work at all for touch and as I travel quite a bit with mine Iâve synced quite a few videos to an SD card.
Personally I donât have any issues with my installs, and havenât seen any of the issues reported, but I agree in general that the UWP app has gone from a very well supported app (bug fixes pretty much straight away several times a week, and very active forum support) to one that seems to be left behind.
I use it for a small tablet and mainly my Surface Book. The list of issues is ridiculous. The syncing is a mess. The 'jump letters often donât work. The theme music often continues to play after the video has been started. Finished episodes no longer are automatically marked as watches (even manually marking them as watched often has them go back to u watched when you check later).When the app is open and looking for the server and you have no data connection, it is near impossible to switch to âthis deviceâ because it ignores input when it is still searching (which can go on forever). It pretty much always crashes when you switch to another app temporarily and leave it running in the background. I could go on forever. This glitches have been around for at least a year now. Ugh.
