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Plex will do anything other than make their player easy to use.
My only real complaint is their app is laggy.
Do you have other complaints with it?
Biggest issue I and my friends have with my Plex server is the constant buffer-play-for-a-minute-buffer issue with certain anime subtitle formats. Although the little bit of searching I’ve done with that indicates that may be more of an issue with the device being streamed on than with Plex itself. I dunno.
Certain subtitle formats cannot be directly streamed, so your server is probably re-encoding video on the fly to burn in the subtitles. PGS format is actually a series of images and will always require re-encoding video. Picking SRT should work with device direct streaming.
That must be it, then. Thankfully I’ve got Bazarr set up to snag SRTs for imported media, so those should generally be available.
I added whisper and have never looked back. Sometimes it’s not exactly right but it’s usually obvious and funny 🤣
As someone else said, this almost always comes down to the device they’re using. Especially if it’s a Playstation console or a Smart TV (in my experience) as they don’t support x265 codec or have .ass support, or both
I’ve noticed Roku TVs are a common device to have issues.
Come to think of it the AppleTV app does say a piece of media doesn’t have subs when it does. And if I turn them on the playback hangs for ~10 seconds.
I don’t get the play/buffer/play/buffer issue but I only really use it on my LAN so not really a surprise there.
My main complaint is when it decides to just stop casting to Chromecast in the middle of episodes randomly - then I have to open the app, reconnect, and resume.
Also I find the Chromecast controls stop responding frequently making it so I can’t pause what I’m watching - it’ll like disconnect from the Chromecast but keep playing.
My partner also complains about lots of bugs on the iOS app.
I’ve been having trouble with this too.
So far my best assessment is that the problem stems from the Chromecast not playing well with my router. Resetting the Wi-Fi on my router tends to fix the problem, but it’s seriously annoying.
Separately, I also have issues with the play/pause not working when casting and some other weird interface behaviors sometimes. But all in all, it’s worth complaining, but it still works better than everything else.
My biggest complaint is that it defaults to “recommended” instead of “library” which means for new users (family members you are trying to help remotely) don’t see the videos in your collection but instead a random unordered list to scroll sideways.
After you select library to see everything, it doesn’t save that view as default unless you go into settings and change it to remember changes.
A new annoying feature they added is when setting up a new account, the default is to send every video you watch to all friends/family unless you select disable. So you can’t even setup quickly by putting in a user/password and being ready to go. You have to talk family members through setup or everyone with access to your Plex will get email spammed with everything that person watched.
I have home videos on my server and this means lengthy phone calls to family so they can actually see the videos.
My biggest complaint is that it defaults to “recommended” instead of “library”… it doesn’t save that view as default unless you go into settings and change it to remember changes.
That’s a pretty minor gripe considering there is a setting for it. Also, given that it’s a you-get-it-one-way-or-the-other kind of setting, they’re always going to be upsetting someone.
Do you actually use their “recommended” view?
Do you primarily watch Plex live TV or their other ad supported movies?
Do you actually use their “recommended” view?
Yes, it lists shows I’m currently watching and takes me directly to the next episode.
Do you primarily watch Plex live TV or their other ad supported movies?
No, never.
Have you helped an older relative with computer problems over the phone?
If you could set the default, it wouldn’t be a problem.
Where do you imagine setting the default?
I imagine he means being able to set the default view for everyone accessing your server from the settings on your server. So that everyone who accesses your server gets those defaults that they can then change for their user if they desire.
Which would be a nice feature.
I would not want my settings affected by the servers I connect to. That would piss me off.
It’s terrible with direct streaming lossless Dolby Atmos (TrueHD) streams, not only where it’s not possible but there are workarounds (AppleTV / Infuse), but also on each and every platform it’s being done by other apps (Android, Xbox, PC / Kodi).
I only use it because I paid peanuts for lifetime premium and alternatives have egregious UX that I can withstand but my extended family cannot.
Yes I’m absolutely hating the Android app. The core player experience is so much better on iOS. No need to worry about direct play/transcode, it just works. It’s rubbish on android
I don’t care about the photos. But glad to hear they are taking photos and music out of the main app and making it less bloated.
I wish they’d allow syncing of my full music library to my mobile app so I can finally get off Apple Music.
Musicbee can pull your songs and playlists from itunes and allow syncing of them to your phone. It doesn’t do streaming though.
To what app in the phone? Does it keep playlists?
It adds it to local folders so you can pretty much use any music player app you want. I like personally like poweramp. I just add the directory with my playlists which are .m3u and it they just pop up
The problem for me is that my music is arranged around “smart playlists”. My music library would be unmanageable if I had to add every song to playlists manually.
Ah, then musicbee might not be for you. I’ve managed my own songs for at least a decade the old fashioned way so it was easy to import and move my songs around to other forms of media apps. You can however copy and paste the Playlist from iTunes to musicbee. You don’t have to manually add all the songs to the playlist from your library.
Put all songs in a playlist and then download that playlist?
But I need all my playlists, not just all my songs in one big useless playlist. I have around 50 of them.
You can download all your playlists.
Hmm, okay maybe I will experiment with it. It seems I read somewhere that there was an issue with doing this. Have you tried it? Then whenever I add new music I’d have to remember to add it to this playlist. Other playlists would automatically use the local copy?
I have Plexamp on my phone configured to automatically download the “loved” album (songs I’ve rated 4 or 5 stars). It automatically downloads songs I add to the playlist. My library is too big to download it all to my phone (most songs are in FLAC format) so I’d need to download a curated list anyways.
This seems to work well. I’ve used it a few times on flights or when I’m in a hotel room with spotty phone coverage and no wifi.
If you play the same songs on other playlists does it use the local copy?
So still not addressing the myriad problems the player has, especially on AppleTV where it’s been reported for nearly half a decade to not work well. But hey you get yet another place to do photos things (which they admit literally no one wants or uses, they’d be better off dropping support for photos altogether).
This is super frustrating because plex is very polished despite its clear bugs and misdirection. I just switched over to JellyFin and it’s faster and much more focused but just still has a lot of rough edges. I’m not sure which will be my long term solution but plex needs to attract folks to subscribe and focusing on features that 1/5 of a percent of users utilize is not how you do that.
As a longtime Plex user, I also hate their lack of focus and tendancy to priorotize bad features (like paid streaming and VR). But this one feels more like a way to re-focus on video by removing photo code from the main (video) app’s codebase, making it easier to maintain.
Can Jellyfin and Plex point to the same libraries and coexist?
I haven’t tried it before but maybe I should. I don’t have huge complaints with the Plex AppleTV app. I just find it laggy at times.
They can, I turned off my plex VM to save resources but no real reason they can’t both point to the same libraries at once.
Yes I do this. Same exact library folders so I can let my friends use whatever they prefer. If everything is named in a Plex friendly way it should just work in jellyfin.
I don’t use it much but haven’t had too many issues with plex on apple TV. I do have infuse too and a lot of people with plex servers prefer infuse on apple products.
I switched to Emby earlier this year and never looked back. All the core features are solid. And it works great on my AppleTV.
K. You lost me years ago when your photos and camera upload function were total shit forever. I since moved all my crap to nextcloud camera upload and photoprism. Not gonna change any time soon
Plex never fixes stuff and it’s really bad. They don’t even have a feedback system.
The login process for Plex photos (Android) was near im impossible, because it used the browser which closed/if I went away from the app such as if I wanted to copy my passqord from my password manager. I wouldn’t be at all suprised if that wouldn’t change until way after stable release.
You can log into the browser beforehand if that helps
I use Firefox Focus because operating a phone is hard. I guess I can switch it temporarily but that’s once again iffy.
I only recently started using Plex because they added the Drew Carey Show. I didn’t know they were anything other than a streaming service.
Their main product is a server that you run on a computer and lets you stream your own content.
Their main product is telemetry and selling your watch history to advertisers.
That’s why Plex doesn’t work without an active internet connection.
I genuinely love PlexAmp. I’m curious about the photos thing and might give it a try.
I just wish it had local sync for my whole music library, not just some small slice of it.
At this point the only thing holding me back from switching to Jellyfin is Plex’s transcoded download function.
I’ve found emby to be a good compromise.
Yeah that’s a good point. I think the appeal of Jellyfin is it being an open source project.
I wish there was a way to hide the synopsis.
I like watching movies and TV without knowing the plot of what I’m about to watch
Nice! The old photos feature in the main app felt too bloated so I stopped using it. Hopefully this one’s snappier cause I’ve been looking for a good way to access my old photos again.
