Comment by tengbretson
11 hours ago
Plex could reverse this trend in a week if they decided to prioritize work on any feature that their core market actually wanted.
11 hours ago
Plex could reverse this trend in a week if they decided to prioritize work on any feature that their core market actually wanted.
What more does Plex need? I would consider myself a power user of Plex and it does everything I need it to do. I would think the only thing I can think of is fully self-hosted login instead of their cloud option, but I'm glad we have that option because I don't want to handle the authentication of my friends and family
They removed plugins which severely hamstrung their ecosystem. They quickly lost a ton of useful features and started to lock everything into their preferences.
* IPTV support (xtream codes etc.) yes proxies exist like Dispatcharr but first class support would be better
* Better iOS/tvOS/OSX video playback (just buy Infuse because it can play so many titles the Plex player cannot)
* Add full context menus everywhere. Playlists are virtually useless for anything other than playback in order or randomly. Why can't I multi-select items on a playlist and move them to another playlist?
* Subtitle settings turn off between episodes
* Let me sort by file size so I can watch the disk gobbling files first
Thank God for python-plexapi and a bunch of scripts I use to organize an unwieldy library.
Highly recommend Infuse on Apple TV. Since I was running Plex on my NAS it would often be very buggy and slow with buffering. One day I got fed up and tried infuse, pointed it at the same network share, and bam- instant playback that worked consistently, and way better native controls for subtitles etc. I’m sure there are good reasons to use Plex, I did so for years, but honestly streaming has been so much easier since moving off it.
It needs more of the feature that makes it a networked player for the media I already have (which works great -- once a person gets to it), and less of the misfeature that is the sideshow also-ran ad-supported and rental live streaming and on-demand offerings (which I will never, ever use -- and that Jellyfin lacks altogether).
Plex been swinging in the wrong direction for a number of years now.
Here's an easy one: working downloads on mobile. Plex offline downloads are notoriously buggy.
Plex offline simply does not work. If it does work, it'll stop working when you get service/connectivity. It is wild how bad it is.
I don't even consider it an option anymore. I just turn to other software that sends the original file to me. It would be great to have Plex transcode my high res movies on the fly and send me smaller copies tailored for my device. I could save space on my mobile devices while having my progress synced back to Plex.
The poster you're asking this to is probably talking about plug-ins. Plex, very long ago, supported plug-ins, but it no longer does. Plug-ins were usually for adding in support for other media scrapers (porn and anime), or even other media types, like audiobooks.
Additionally, Plex tends to revise their UI and inner workings in a way that favors everything but the core media sharing platform. They add TV stations, they mix in their streaming ad-supported channels with your search results, and push them before the friends and family stuff, making it tough to help other navigate to shared libraries.
I think, overall, Plex is a good shepherd for their product, but everyone knows the enshitificaiton process is inevitable. It's just a question of how long the timeline between "Plex is usable" and "Plex is sold to private equity and is now utter shit." I've been pleasantly surprised with the length, so far. But having an escape hatch is always a good idea, and Jellyfin seems to be nearing a parity.
The last time I was involved in a thread like this, I was banned from r/plex.
I pointed out that Plex should do ebooks. It is a natural fit. They keep track of how far in a series or a show you are, they could keep track of where you are in a book. Many of the Plex idioms transfer well. It has a clear visual style that helps you to pick out the shows you might try, or shows like those you've already watched.
BUT IT'S NOT EVEN MEDIA, YOU'RE STUPID
Books were the first media, you must be illiterate.
WHY WOULD I WANT TO READ BOOKS ON MY BIGSCREEN TV!
Plex runs on my iPhone. And on yours too.
[banhammered]
But if you need more than one feature, I'm sure that in 10 or 15 minutes I could come up with a 90 page list of features. Without even trying.
>I would think the only thing I can think of is fully self-hosted login instead of their cloud option
Well shit. Even you can come up with one thing. Plex was awesome, and then Plex wanted to be the shittiest version of whatever CBS is calling their streaming service.
An even easier fit would be comic books. They already let you steam libraries of photos. I have never used that feature, but I would definitely stream some comics.
Also, they could handle audiobooks since they already stream music.
Instead, they want to sell me on streaming services when I started using Plex because I pirate my media.
I do see one issue with books that other media doesn't have. That is the ability to interact. When I use my e-reader, I like features like highlighting, taking notes, dictionaries, and other features that are more complicated that just streaming rendered images from a book.
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