Saw this news today and the first thing I thought of was Plex. I hope it's as straightforward as Microsoft is promising.
I appear to be different from most of the members commenting here, but I don't want to ask why or why not or when or give reasons you should do something. I want to help find a solution. I do not have advanced programming skills, but am a Windows Administrator with experience scripting. In what I have read in Microsoft's publishings regarding Universal Windows Apps, I am willing to offer my assistance in updating the Windows 8/8.1 app to a Universal Windows App. If you would like to send me the code along with which editor you prefer to use (to help avoid any formatting issues), I would be glad to look in to it and see what needs to be done. I can then make the needed changes to the code and send it back to you for verification and testing.
Let me know if this is something the underpaid and under-appreciated Plex Team is interested in.
Sgeek
This would be something that would probably make me pay for plex because I would never have to leave my xbox which makes it easier with my tv and xbox fighting for control of my surround sound. Hope the universal app thing makes it easy for you to achieve this
I would like to make you all aware of some very exciting news...
Microsoft has approved the development of a Plex Client for Xbox One.
That is correct, we have been granted membership into ID@Xbox specifically for the development and eventual release of Plex for Xbox One.
This is in no way saying that it will be coming next week, or even next month, but starting tonight I will be applying my first test code to an Xbox One.
More details will be coming soon.
Thank you very much for your patience in this matter, and thank you very much for your support.
Jumping for joy with this news, now I will have no choice but to buy xbox one.
I would like to make you all aware of some very exciting news...
Microsoft has approved the development of a Plex Client for Xbox One.
That is correct, we have been granted membership into ID@Xbox specifically for the development and eventual release of Plex for Xbox One.
This is in no way saying that it will be coming next week, or even next month, but starting tonight I will be applying my first test code to an Xbox One.
More details will be coming soon.
Thank you very much for your patience in this matter, and thank you very much for your support.
Great news!!
Universal app?
Good to hear! I don't know how this stuff works as far as developing apps and getting them approved, but any chance of this also coming to Xbox360 and/or PS4?
Unfortunately, Xbox One does not get Universal Apps until it gets a Dashboard Update "later this year".
As I don't want to keep everyone waiting that long, there will be an Xbox-Specific version released as soon as it is ready.
I will however be maintaining a Universal version with the Kinect support for when end-users are able to purchase Kinect 2.0 for Windows this Summer, as well as simplify ongoing maintenance of the Xbox One version.
Unfortunately, Xbox One does not get Universal Apps until it gets a Dashboard Update "later this year".
As I don't want to keep everyone waiting that long, there will be an Xbox-Specific version released as soon as it is ready.
I will however be maintaining a Universal version with the Kinect support for when end-users are able to purchase Kinect 2.0 for Windows this Summer, as well as simplify ongoing maintenance of the Xbox One version.
What about Windows Phone 8.1?
this is awesome when its true!
.There is an existing app for Windows Phone 8, which itself will run on Windows Phone 8.1.
Xbox 360 is an entirely different platform from the Xbox One, so it would require entirely separate development.
Development for the Xbox 360 is significantly more expensive as the development kits themselves are still 10k.
As there is existing DLNA support on the 360, it doesn’t really make sense to spend that kind of money to simply facilitate development on a last-gen platform.
On the other hand, code written for an app for Playstation 4 with minor tweaks and a recompile will run on the PS3 and Vita.
At present, there is nothing to announce regarding the Playstation 4 beyond it being an interesting platform.
I have a related question. So the whole Cinavia DRM/watermarking system that gets in the way with some devices. Would that be implemented in the Xbox One OS? or in media players themselves.
Just wondering what the chance is of Plex on an Xbox One not being molested by Cinavia.
This has not specifically been asked, and as the project is not far enough along yet to allow for the playing of a video, we simply don't know.
As it is the weekend, I can't reach out to the Xbox team and ask them.
I will pose the question Monday morning and see what we can find out.
From what I understand, any content that can currently play on the Xbox via PlayTo should behave identically when called from another application on-device.
Content that can not currently work with PlayTo will need to run through the Transcoder due to missing codecs on the Xbox One.
As a bit of a jump, if you have a video that can play via PlayTo on an Xbox and can not play on a Playstation due to Cinavia then you would have an immediate answer.
I would like to make you all aware of some very exciting news...
Microsoft has approved the development of a Plex Client for Xbox One.
That is correct, we have been granted membership into ID@Xbox specifically for the development and eventual release of Plex for Xbox One.
This is in no way saying that it will be coming next week, or even next month, but starting tonight I will be applying my first test code to an Xbox One.
More details will be coming soon.
Thank you very much for your patience in this matter, and thank you very much for your support.
This is awesome news! Can't wait to see it. Hope it has voice control. :D
I have an idea I want to pass along to you since you're planning work on this.
Being that the 'intent' appears to be that the Xbox team wants users to see all our sources of video (Movies and TV Shows) converging into one spot (the One Guide), I would suggest looking into getting the Plex media server offerings to show up in the One Guide as well. If Microsoft allows it to function that way, it would be nice to see the Plex Meta Data exposed to the One Guide and to the Xbox One Bing so that we see all the media information, including poster art appearing in the One Guide in much the same way it works for other apps like Xbox Video and Vudu.
I posed the same thought to Microsoft, noting the Xbox should use the One Guide & Bing to scan/view into local DLNA servers (Reading Meta-Data) and know what content is available and it should of course lead to being able to play the content through the Video app.
So if, for example, I'm watching a movie on TV (like Ang Lee's 'The Hulk' and I go to view its information in the One Guide to see where else I might be able to watch the movie, the One Guide should know the movie is present on the Plex server(s) (if such is the case), offering it as an option to play in Plex. There should be no need to navigate into the server(s), the Xbox One Guide should simply already be in the server(s) seamlessly accessing all the data being broadcasted from the server(s).
Plex should also show up as an app channel in the One Guide, Clicking to the Plex channel should bring us to a screen showing what's playing, perhaps borrowing from the server(s) New releases/Recently added data.
Something like this http;//oi57.tinypic.com/wtytmp.jpg
As mentioned above, Plex Meta-Data should also be exposed to Xbox One Bing searches, so if I search for Batman, all related items in the Plex server should appear in the results, allowing us to get directly to what we've searched for and not have to navigate through menus to find what we want.
This is amazing news. I wanted this for a while. I had Logitechs Google TV (which sucks) for PLEX and it broke than had jailbroken Apple TV which was pain and now finally on xbox. I no longer need the crappy devices. Proud to be Plex Pass member. Keep it up
I've been waiting for this news for some time but I seem to be a little less than excited after reading the last few posts in this thread.
Given that my entire collection is HD MKV, which is not natively supported by the Xbox One one as best I can tell, this coming app would require my PMS to do some transcoding. I have my PMS hosted on a QNAP NAS and therefore it isn't powerful enough to handle transcoding HD content.
I guess until someone can convince MS they need more native file support my dreams of an Xbox One app for Plex will continue to go unanswered :(
Happy Happy Joy Joy
Manky, I've been working on some pretty simple PoC Media Players and have found a few things that seem to be a definite positive on the transcoding front.
For supported codecs (H.264 & VC-1) simply remuxing an existing MKV into a M4V container will get it to play on an Xbox One without requiring "transcoding" the video.
This is not in any way integrated with Plex Media Server at this point. It simply is a 30 second video file included with the binary and deployed at runtime and interpreted by the Windows Media libraries. Need to start somewhere after all ;)
I am looking into whether it would be viable to include ffmpeg within the Xbox One client in the near-term as it would remove many of these codec concerns. The Xbox definitely has enough processing power to do the decodes itself of whatever you throw at it, however I am just trying to approach the project in some easily attainable steps and also ensure that there is some sanity checking as I work considering that I haven't previously developed for an Xbox One before.
To sum up, at present it looks like you may not actually need to transcode as much media as I initially thought when it comes to Xbox One, however until I actually have something working, integrated with Plex Media Server, and tested against a variety of media this is speculation.
My earlier statement regarding the need of using the transcoder was based on feedback provided to me prior to starting development by insiders.
It is possible that they didn't consider remuxing of a stream prior to the Xbox opening the stream as an option.
And long term, this may not even be a consideration once I move off of Windows Media and onto ffmpeg.
Manky, I've been working on some pretty simple PoC Media Players and have found a few things that seem to be a definite positive on the transcoding front.
For supported codecs (H.264 & VC-1) simply remuxing an existing MKV into a M4V container will get it to play on an Xbox One without requiring "transcoding" the video.
This is not in any way integrated with Plex Media Server at this point. It simply is a 30 second video file included with the binary and deployed at runtime and interpreted by the Windows Media libraries. Need to start somewhere after all ;)
I am looking into whether it would be viable to include ffmpeg within the Xbox One client in the near-term as it would remove many of these codec concerns. The Xbox definitely has enough processing power to do the decodes itself of whatever you throw at it, however I am just trying to approach the project in some easily attainable steps and also ensure that there is some sanity checking as I work considering that I haven't previously developed for an Xbox One before.
To sum up, at present it looks like you may not actually need to transcode as much media as I initially thought when it comes to Xbox One, however until I actually have something working, integrated with Plex Media Server, and tested against a variety of media this is speculation.
My earlier statement regarding the need of using the transcoder was based on feedback provided to me prior to starting development by insiders.
It is possible that they didn't consider remuxing of a stream prior to the Xbox opening the stream as an option.
And long term, this may not even be a consideration once I move off of Windows Media and onto ffmpeg.
That is promising news.
As a backer of the VLC for Windows RT project I know they put a lot of work into getting support for many of the common HD formats and I believe Xbox One and Windows RT would have similar native support. So it seems possible, but they did it with a lot of money to support the project :)
