Why use plex? Alternative?

General Discussions
1

I have been using Plex for about 6 months, and its been this very simple, limited, and box of “click too play”.

Personally, my style is “New music is added every day or so” and its “displayed on the home page” (Only about 8 show at anytime)
If you open the “music library” and sort by recently added, you get the exact style im looking for as my home page.

  • The home screen is ridiculously bland and featureless, very little customization of the home screen.
  • Linking songs too your family and friends isnt simple, and the stupid ones dont get it.
  • All attempts too locate “plugin and mods” for plex have failed with only results for “channel plugins”
    Bugs:
  • When using folder based sort function, album art is not displayed.
  • Sometimes art is not displayed for any conceivable reason.
  • Some albums have been labeled countless different way as the “same” but are still displayed as 70 different albums.

I would pay if there were better features.(Server mods?)
(You think people would pay for “Trailers”, pay too watch ads??? )

Plex is either clueless/creatively suppressed or Plex thinks that people want too have a system like this, I work on designing games and new features come up and are implemented in less then a day.
Plex takes 6 months and I’ve noticed not one changed or improved feature, in my methods of using it(Except that they added sort by folder like 5 months ago, which I am glad too have).
Either way there are alternatives with better and more features.(but about equal in total quality, hopefully im uneducated on media servers and more doors are waiting for me)

Im not looking for any answers, unless you have a tip for me :slight_smile: , I’m just hoping Plex offers a better product.

2

The reason to use Plex is simple for me - if you want it to work, and work out of the box (without a ton of tweaking, say Kodi - and I was an xbmc user way back to the original xbox days), and work everywhere, it is the way to go. Plex works everywhere, every client device, with no need to hunt for some weird solution. The centralized server model (and awesome web UI model) means that adding a new client is just signing in and go - even my kids can get that.

Yes the channel support is lame - I’d like to see that change for the new streaming TV services (PS Vue, Sling & SFNTV Now), I don’t have a lot one need to get Saudi Arabian Water Polo games though personally - I like the mainstream stuff. But frankly most of those services come natively to the device anyways.

Sounds like you are having some problems due to file naming and/or media tagging. Look into that before giving up on Plex. I personally like that it gets me to get my stuff straight, and never, ever touches the media.