15 ms·

Introducing the Plex Media Player

182 points by dtparr 11y ago

nih0 11y ago
I like Plex except the authentication.
- lfgn 11y ago
  What authentication? If you just use it in your local subnet you don't need to log in. I've been using the free version for years and I do not have a Plex account.
  - unethical_ban 11y ago
    Wrong. On Roku, at least, if you want to watch Plex you MUST have an online account now. And, you're not able to manually add your server if the Roku client can't auto-discover it. For some reason I have to do that, but they took that option away. They've "streamlined" it to the point of unusability.
    - lfgn 11y ago
      I guess it's system dependent then. I use a Windows machine as a media server and my client is an LG Smart TV which has Plex support. It also works with a Raspberry Pi client without authentication.
    - bitshiffed 11y ago
      For Roku, you want the "Plex Classic", instead of "Plex", channel if you don't want to be forced to sign in. That version is open sourced (https://github.com/plexinc/roku-client-public https://github.com/plexinc/roku-client-public). The Plex developers have abandoned it, for updating the newer client only; but it's still perfectly usable as the old-version.
      - unethical_ban 11y ago
        Thanks for that. I'll take a look. It's just such a shame they're alienating LAN users and pushing their Plex Pass bloatware.
    - kayone 11y ago
      Skip sign-in, manual server entry will definitely be part of Plex Media Player, right now we don't support it since the app is gated with plexpass which means you _need to sign in_ so we can validate your subscription status. but signing in will not be required when the app leaves preview and plexpass requirement is dropped. source: I wrote skip-sign in, manual server entry in the core platform.
- cotillion 11y ago
  The constant Plex Pass reminders are very annoying also. They're also designed to be confusing and to give a user the impression you have to sign up for Plex Pass to continue using Plex. Plex is awesome together with Chromecast anyway.
mariusmg 11y ago
Pretty cool of them to hire the mpv guy. Hopefully they'll continue to improve it.
tempodox 11y ago
This is really nice and all, but only bored billionaires can afford the kind of data plan you need for movie watching. Ripping DVDs (legally) is still much cheaper. And I can store them offline where I want.
- tomtoise 11y ago
  I think Kimsufi works pretty well. I think their data cap is 5tb a month for about £10, so it's hardly bored billionaire status. EDIT - Unless you meant consuming from mobile, in which case I pretty much agree.
  - zaroth 11y ago
    Why doesn't it transcode / down sample and cache on the mobile device over WiFi before you head out for your trip? Or does it?
    - Vendan 11y ago
      It does, if you have a plex pass
  - joshstrange 11y ago
    Kimsufi is popular on the Plex.tv forums but I've found this [0] to be the best deal around. Get an i7, 16GB Ram, 2x3TB HD, 20TB bandwidth (out, in is not metered), 1Gbps pipe for only ~$30-35/mo [0] https://robot.your-server.de/order/market https://robot.your-server.de/order/market
    - tomtoise 11y ago
      That looks like an amazing server. What's their policy on P2P traffic? I host fairly large data sets for analysis at work and the most stable way to get them from one place to another is via packing them into torrents. Would this be frowned on / throttled?
      - 11y ago
Toenex 11y ago
No mention of linux support on this page but it does talk about RaspberryPi. [https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/208050637-What-are-the-supported-platforms-for-Plex-Media-Player- https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/208050637-What-are...]
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  It appears to be a complete machine image for the Pi: "Pex Media Player for embedded devices is a small Linux based operating system that turns your Raspberry Pi 2 or Intel HTPC into a dedicated media playback device."
  - lloydsparkes 11y ago
    FYI: If you looking for the Raspberry Pi 2 downloads or the x86 download for Embedded Device you need to sign into your plex pass account first, then theres a button on the downloads page called "Plex Pass Downloads" It seems as its a beta its only open to plex pass subscribers. It's Taken me 30minutes to work this out (luckily I am a subscriber)
    - inetsee 11y ago
      When I went looking for the Raspberry Pi download I ended up here: http://www.rasplex.com/get-started/rasplex-installers.html http://www.rasplex.com/get-started/rasplex-installers.html
      - fsckin 11y ago
        That is the RasPi port of Plex Home Theater -- the previous player which is no longer being developed. "Is Plex Home Theater still around? Plex Home Theater is still available and open source. We’re no longer actively developing it and are focusing our efforts on making Plex Media Player the best experience possible. (We’ll continue to make bug fixes for PHT for now.)"
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
roderickm 11y ago
The Plex app on the Amazon Fire TV (and stick) is fantastic. I'm a big Plex fan, but I don't immediately see any incremental benefits to running Plex Media Player, or why I would dedicate a Raspberry Pi 2 (much less a Mac or Windows box) to my TV for the purpose.
- untog 11y ago
  I have a Windows box under my TV that runs Plex. It also runs a web browser, which means it's incredibly simple to look something up on Google Maps, order some food from Seamless, etc. - not to mention be able to video chat on Skype and play video on any web site out there, not just ones that have apps for platform X. If all you want to do is watch videos from Plex then no, there's no point changing hardware. But you'd be surprised how much you end up doing through the TV when you can.
  - Splines 11y ago
    I'm curious, what do you use for remote input in windows?
    - untog 11y ago
      A Logitech wireless keyboard with trackpad embedded on it: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Keyboard-Multi-Touch-Touchpad/dp/B005DKZTMG/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1445526270&sr=1-2&keywords=logitech+wireless+keyboard http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Keyboard-Multi-Touch... It's not fancy, but it does the job well - barring some signal issues that I think must be specific to my apartment, as I haven't seen anyone else complain of them.
    - derefr 11y ago
      If you frequently sit in front of your HTPC-enabled TV with a laptop, connecting the two together using http://synergy-project.org/ http://synergy-project.org/ is amazing, UX-wise. You don't ever have to pick up a remote, or try to get Bluetooth peripherals to work over an 8' distance; you just flick your mouse up "past" the top of your laptop screen, do a few things on your TV, and flick back. It's a bit of the feeling of having a second (big) monitor hooked up to your computer (or using Apple's AirPlay "extend display to this monitor" mode in OSX) but having the two be separate computers is actually a good thing, frequently: • I don't have to worry about having something CPU-demanding (like a streaming Flash player in Chrome) running on the TV while trying to compile on my work laptop; neither one will cause choppiness in the other. • I run all my torrents on the HTPC (because that's where I want to play the videos from anyway) and have QoS enabled on my router, so my laptop's network connection is never clogged. There's also the benefit of the pixels of a TV being far-enough away that you can get away with a lot of scaling. Presuming a 60" 1080p LCD at an 8' distance, turning on Windows' "Extra Large" DPI Scaling, or force-enabling OSX's HiDPI mode, looks really good (e.g. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47375701/ss20151022-1108am.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47375701/ss20151022-1108...). You only get 960x540 effective pixels from a 200%-DPI-scaled 1080p TV, so some things might not fit on the screen and will necessitate temporarily toggling back to "regular" 1080p. Also, you'll probably want to full-screen most apps, to get something like this (http://i.imgur.com/YDN6VuZ.png http://i.imgur.com/YDN6VuZ.png). It's a lot like using a netbook. It's pretty great for reading long articles in particular; I find there's less eye-strain than looking at my laptop—maybe because the glyphs are so clear, and maybe also because I'm focusing on something farther than 2' away.
brotoss 11y ago
If content owners want to stop piracy, knocking out this kind of stuff should be step #1
- joshstrange 11y ago
  You know... Or provide a better way to pay for and access their content... Ripping DVDs is 1000X a better experience than watching a buffering icon spin during primetime. Offer me a way to legally download an mkv/mp4 and play it through whatever player I want and/or transcode it if I want and I'll be falling over myself to give you my money.
  - oaktowner 11y ago
    iTunes proved that. People were stealing music prior to its release not because they were thieves at heart but because it was the only way most of them could find most of the music they wanted. iTunes put the entire music industry to shame by simply showing that if, instead of fearing downloading, they had given a good, legal venue to sell music, people would in fact be willing to pay.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  What kind of stuff? Media players? Are you seriously implying the only people that use media players are pirates?
  - peteretep 11y ago
    Certainly the only stuff I watch through a media player is stuff I couldn't find on iTunes, Netflix, or Amazon. I'm sure there are legit use cases, although none spring straight to mind, except for people who encoded a bunch of their DVDs a decade ago.
    - nirvdrum 11y ago
      I record TV with Windows Media Center. While I can use an XBox 360 as a Media Center Extender, buying a bunch of them is a bit ridiculous. We use Plex to stream that content throughout the house. It's not as nice as having a native extender, but it works quite well.
Mithaldu 11y ago
It'll be nice to have a media player that's native and not running in a browser, but according to what i can see in the forums, the UI is the usual brand of "our way or the high way" with little to no configuration or customization and even at least in one way a step back² from Plex Home Theater, which this replaces. Not to knock Plex itself. The server/encoding/play-on-any-device pipeline is amazing. Just saying that their UIs need developers who actually care about what their users want. ² http://i.imgur.com/Ygde8Px.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Ygde8Px.jpg
- speedkills 11y ago
  Agreed. I watch a lot of sports and have been disappointed that they removed slow motion and frame by frame advance years ago and have little interest in adding it back. Still, I am paid for Plex pass to support them because I find it works better than anything else for me.
  - Touche 11y ago
    How are you watching sports on a Plex?
  - benologist 11y ago
    I find plex works "better than anything else" too but it's in desperate need of an open source alternative.
    - bradbatt 11y ago
      The media player they just released is open source … https://github.com/plexinc/plex-media-player https://github.com/plexinc/plex-media-player I suppose their server software isn’t … I’m not sure.
      - lighthazard 11y ago
        Correct, the server software is not open source. If you want an open source alternative: https://emby.media/ https://emby.media/
joshstrange 11y ago
I run Plex Home Theater on my Rasp Pi 2 and it provides the best experience of any plex client I have ever used (Chromecast, AppleTV + PlexConnect, FireTV Box, Xbox 360, Xbox One). I'm VERY disappointed in the new UI as I hate the "Modern"/Xbox look it has. I do NOT want side scrolling or variable-sized posters as it's very hard to follow. I want my on deck, recently added, and a quick way to browse and entire section. This is a MASSIVE step backwards in UI and I will hang on to PHT for as long as I possibly can.
madaxe_again 11y ago
So, just snagged this, I've been using plex for about as long as it has existed - went from XBMC (on a hacked original XBOX, of course) to Kodi to PMC.... It's good. Makes the experience far more consistent with their current offerings for devices, and as far as I can see, nothing particularly important seems to have gone walkies - handles impressively awkward subtitles with aplomb, channels all still work, in fact it's easier than ever to sling on reddit videos and sit and stare. All in all, approval.
nailer 11y ago
How do you get content for Plex?
- joshstrange 11y ago
  Ripping DVD's/BluRays is a very popular way to do it. Plex also has "channels" for streaming content but they are a crap-shoot on if they work any given day and I've all but given up on them.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >Ripping DVD's/BluRays is a very popular way to do it. Is it really? Because I know nobody doing that of several Plex users. Maybe with a few of beloved DVDs from their library, but not for 99% of what they watch.
    - joshstrange 11y ago
      Ok, maybe "very popular" isn't the way to describe it. It's the most popular LEGAL way to do it. The most popular way consists of: * Sonarr/Sickbeard/Sickrage (TV) * Couchpotato (Movie) * Headphones (Music) * Sabnzbd/Nzbget (Usenet download clients) * Deluge/Transmission/etc (Torrent download clients)
      - deathcakes 11y ago
        Is usenet still going for that sort of thing? I found it started drying up massively about a year ago, have switched to torrents ever since...
        joshstrange 11y ago
        It's extremely reliable if you have something like Sonarr/Sickbeard constantly running (checking rss feeds every 15min or so). A lot of stuff gets DMCA'd be there is a still a ton of content there, it's by no means dried up or dead. Sonarr/Sickrage can use torrents and usenet though so it can fallback to torrents (or use them primarily if you desire).
impostervt 11y ago
I use Plex on my Roku, and it works great (when my rather old laptop can keep up with transcoding). It already looks like that new media player...
- shostack 11y ago
  It was great until they redid their UI. Now it is absolutely painful. For example, I don't always want to watch the next episode of a series--I often want to see all the episodes I have in there. Yet I'm not forced to dig for the option to find that. Combined with the fact that there are unhelpful icons without tooltips (because its on a Roku) and my wife ends up helplessly confused by their UI. And that's just one nit. In general I now try to use the Plex iPad app (which rocks), and then punt it up to my TV. Unfortunately the tracking doesn't work great on that so I can't easily scan around the show in the iPad, and have the TV instantly reflect that.
- mobiuscog 11y ago
  Have they removed the plex login requirement that 'accidentally' got pushed in a recent update ? I used to use it all the time, but there's no way I'm logging in to plex to view local media.
codeaken 11y ago
Plex was great until they forced the Plex Pass on us. I have now switched to using the Kodi [http://kodi.tv/ http://kodi.tv/] and Emby [https://emby.media/ https://emby.media/] combo instead.
- ejdyksen 11y ago
  Plex is very usable without the Plex Pass.
  - codeaken 11y ago
    Before I could access my media server with the iPhone app. Then all of a sudden I was forced to register for a Plex Pass to be able do this. For me at least, that made the whole app unusable.
    - SG- 11y ago
      the mobile apps are free as remote or for $4-5 or so you can unlock the ability to play and sync media without a plex pass like before.
      - hedwall 11y ago
        You can play on iDevices without a subscription, but you can't sync.
      - majora2007 11y ago
        For iOS, they actually require Plex Pass for syncing, which is kinda a shame as I, the server owner have it, but why should my users have to subscribe?
        johnpowell 11y ago
        They don't. I have a plex pass and the people that use my server that don't have it can sync fine.
    - 11y ago
jwr 11y ago
This is good news. I'm using RasPlex on a Raspberry Pi 2, which for all its shortcomings is the best home entertainment solution I could find. This has the potential to be better (where better means more reliable, with better user experience).
comrh 11y ago
I really like the Home Theater but I really think the killer feature would be adding Netflix/Amazon/Hulu seamlessly. I know they've tried but have limited success.
patja 11y ago
Took me a while...a long while...to wade through all of the fluff describing how plex is so awesome and can do everything before I found it still won't play ISOs. I guess it is awesome, it does all you need....as long as you preprocess and encode your media to a format it accepts. I feel like they really bury this key piece of information (as if, "who would even want that?"), but maybe I am a dinosaur with my preference for the quality of ripped vs. streamed media. Anyways, I could do with a simple soup to nuts spec sheet and less marketing fluff.
- lojack 11y ago
  I would guess the majority of users follow less than legal methods of obtaining their media, which is what I hear it handles well. It is unfortunate that they don't support this though.
  - thomnottom 11y ago
    I'm not sure why ISO vs other containers would be a matter of legal methods. I've ripped plenty of my DVDs and never thought for once to keep them in an ISO. Using MKVs allows me to compress the size and still keep extra audio tracks, subtitles, and chapters.
    - patja 11y ago
      Sometimes the extras, trailers, etc. on the disc are interesting, but not interesting enough to go through separately processing them just to make a media player happy. I'd rather stick the disc in, rip and have a perfect simulation of physical media when using my media player. My Dune player does a great job at this.
      - thomnottom 11y ago
        Even for that, can't you just rip the disk to files (as a VIDEO_TS directory)? I believe Plex handles that, but I could be wrong. Not trying to be a dick, just always interested in how other people handle media and what works best for them. I am VERY familiar with software not interested in dealing with the particular way that I store things.
6stringmerc 11y ago
Best media playback engine in the world. Needs to play every format under the sun. So both SACD and Dolby Atmos work now?
- cthalupa 11y ago
  Dolby Atmos doesn't really work anywhere where ffmpeg is used. ffmpeg currently drops the extra info and sends the core MLP stream on. Anything that supports bitstreaming Dolby TrueHD should support Dolby Atmos, and you can already bitstream TrueHD with Plex. No idea on SACD
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    I'm just curious based on my noted dislike for hyperbolic statements / puffery when there can be noted exception identified without too much effort.
NelsonMinar 11y ago
I don't understand this announcement. Is this Plex saying that the viewer will basically no longer be free?
- joshcrowder 11y ago
  This is exactly what I thought as well. I use Home theatre at the moment and don't have a plex pass.. does that mean I can no longer do so?
  - bradbatt 11y ago
    No. They stated that Home Theater is still available and open sourced, although they are not working on further development and are focusing on the new Plex Media Player instead.
- jacobwg 11y ago
  Seems a little confusing yes, but looks like they rewrote the player from scratch to better unify interfaces across platforms and improve usability. It's also open source [0]. As with most new features, they're releasing for PlexPass first and moving to (free) public availability after a waiting period. [0] https://github.com/plexinc/plex-media-player https://github.com/plexinc/plex-media-player
- Alphasite_ 11y ago
  Its still free, its just no longer fully open source, they've released a new app which shares its UI with their other apps.
- JonLim 11y ago
  Nope, just that the preview is for Plex Pass subscribers. They usually roll things out at previews for the premium people first. > Will it be available to everyone? The new app is launching as an early preview version for our Plex Pass subscribers. Once the preview period ends, it will be available to all users; we’ll make another announcement when that happens.
click170 11y ago
Does plex finally support reading files from network shares? Plex is based on XBMC (aka Kodi), which supports reading from the network natively, which leads me to believe they disabled this on purpose and I've never understood the rationale behind it. It makes plex almost useless to me and anyone else who uses a nas or similar to store files. Expecting that I will run plex itself from my nas because they disabled network access is laughable. Also their UI has consistently been going downhill for the last several versions.
- cthalupa 11y ago
  Plex the server is not based on XBMC/Kodi. Plex the server has supported reading files from network shares for a very very very (very) long time. The Home Theater client was based on XBMC, but it only ever connected to the server.
  - click170 11y ago
    Hm. I'll have to take another look at it then, last I played with it you couldn't add network shared to plex. Though I still prefer Kodi for its FOSS-ness.
KevinMS 11y ago
I just cannot express how annoyed I am by the concept of the "media browsing experience" when I just want to watch some videos I have in a folder.
- hatsix 11y ago
  The good news is that you've been able to do this for years. Not sure why you came here to complain about something you've (nearly) always been able to do with OS-provided media players or VLC.
  - KevinMS 11y ago
    I'm not talking about opening videos on my computer, don't be ridiculous. We're talking about plex, and plex is for streaming from one thing to another. I've been able to stream from OSX to roku using plex but each version keeps getting worse. The last version was so bad it didn't even let you browse folders. I think there were so many complaints they released 'plex classic'. I'm trying out emby again right now, looks much improved and like all I need.
    - hatsix 11y ago
      Ah, I had assumed that because the plex app in the announcement is an app for opening videos on your computer (I know that Plex does other apps as well, but this SPECIFIC one is just desktop OSs), that you were talking about that. Anyways, it seems that standard DLNA is what you are looking for. I don't know the current state of support for this is, but I know my 8-year-old Thecus NAS and PS3 both supported it and worked great together. Otherwise I recommend switching to a RasPi2, and trying out the media player images, several based on kodi, which were able to play from network drives just fine in my experience. Plex has always been about libraries and metadata. Sure, it had vestigal options from it's break from XBMC, which WAS focused on that, but these were never a focus in the past 7 years. Also, according to other threads here, Plex Classic was mainly released to ensure that there was a free version on the Roku, while Plex Pass is required for the mainline app. This isn't how it works on any other platform (ios/android = pay for the app, plex pass is only for sync).
beachstartup 11y ago
the biggest thing i care about is title availability, not what my interface looks like. i would use the worst UI in the history of computing if it had every title i would ever want to watch.
- dmerrick 11y ago
  Well, once you start building your own library, you might find that the next step is improving the UI.
zyxley 11y ago
The most interesting new feature to me, beyond the UI itself - there's now some algorithmic generation in the movie/TV screens. It looks like the Movies screen will automatically offer up unwatched movies with recent release dates, as well as groups of unwatched movies from the same director ("Top movies by ..."). If you actually go into a movie and open the Extras menu, along with trailers/features (if you have a Plex Pass), it'll show you other movies by the same director and with the same lead actors. Similarly, the TV screen has groups for recently aired TV episodes, and even has shows grouped by the channel they're currently airing on (!). It's a neat use of metadata, and it would be interesting to see it go further. It would be really neat if I could, say, choose Star Trek TNG and get an automatically generated list of the best 10 episodes (with data pulled from thetvdb, IMDB, etc), or if I could go into Movies and choose an option to group movies by randomized Netflix-like specialized genres.
the_watcher 11y ago
The new UI for Plex Media Server is a big improvement over the old one, in my opinion. Plex has some limits, but it does one thing better than any other option, and I continue to be a huge fan.
Shorel 11y ago
Accurate determination/prediction of airspeed of various swallows (laden/unladen). Now that's a feature Kodi can't rival.

182 points by dtparr 11y ago

nih0 11y ago

I like Plex except the authentication.

lfgn 11y ago
What authentication? If you just use it in your local subnet you don't need to log in. I've been using the free version for years and I do not have a Plex account.
- unethical_ban 11y ago
  Wrong. On Roku, at least, if you want to watch Plex you MUST have an online account now. And, you're not able to manually add your server if the Roku client can't auto-discover it. For some reason I have to do that, but they took that option away. They've "streamlined" it to the point of unusability.
  - lfgn 11y ago
    I guess it's system dependent then. I use a Windows machine as a media server and my client is an LG Smart TV which has Plex support. It also works with a Raspberry Pi client without authentication.
  - bitshiffed 11y ago
    For Roku, you want the "Plex Classic", instead of "Plex", channel if you don't want to be forced to sign in. That version is open sourced (https://github.com/plexinc/roku-client-public https://github.com/plexinc/roku-client-public). The Plex developers have abandoned it, for updating the newer client only; but it's still perfectly usable as the old-version.
    - unethical_ban 11y ago
      Thanks for that. I'll take a look. It's just such a shame they're alienating LAN users and pushing their Plex Pass bloatware.
  - kayone 11y ago
    Skip sign-in, manual server entry will definitely be part of Plex Media Player, right now we don't support it since the app is gated with plexpass which means you _need to sign in_ so we can validate your subscription status. but signing in will not be required when the app leaves preview and plexpass requirement is dropped. source: I wrote skip-sign in, manual server entry in the core platform.
cotillion 11y ago
The constant Plex Pass reminders are very annoying also. They're also designed to be confusing and to give a user the impression you have to sign up for Plex Pass to continue using Plex. Plex is awesome together with Chromecast anyway.

mariusmg 11y ago

Pretty cool of them to hire the mpv guy. Hopefully they'll continue to improve it.

tempodox 11y ago

This is really nice and all, but only bored billionaires can afford the kind of data plan you need for movie watching. Ripping DVDs (legally) is still much cheaper. And I can store them offline where I want.

tomtoise 11y ago
I think Kimsufi works pretty well. I think their data cap is 5tb a month for about £10, so it's hardly bored billionaire status. EDIT - Unless you meant consuming from mobile, in which case I pretty much agree.
- zaroth 11y ago
  Why doesn't it transcode / down sample and cache on the mobile device over WiFi before you head out for your trip? Or does it?
  - Vendan 11y ago
    It does, if you have a plex pass
- joshstrange 11y ago
  Kimsufi is popular on the Plex.tv forums but I've found this [0] to be the best deal around. Get an i7, 16GB Ram, 2x3TB HD, 20TB bandwidth (out, in is not metered), 1Gbps pipe for only ~$30-35/mo [0] https://robot.your-server.de/order/market https://robot.your-server.de/order/market
  - tomtoise 11y ago
    That looks like an amazing server. What's their policy on P2P traffic? I host fairly large data sets for analysis at work and the most stable way to get them from one place to another is via packing them into torrents. Would this be frowned on / throttled?
    - 11y ago

Toenex 11y ago

No mention of linux support on this page but it does talk about RaspberryPi. [https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/208050637-What-are-the-supported-platforms-for-Plex-Media-Player- https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/208050637-What-are...]

madaxe_again 11y ago
It appears to be a complete machine image for the Pi: "Pex Media Player for embedded devices is a small Linux based operating system that turns your Raspberry Pi 2 or Intel HTPC into a dedicated media playback device."
- lloydsparkes 11y ago
  FYI: If you looking for the Raspberry Pi 2 downloads or the x86 download for Embedded Device you need to sign into your plex pass account first, then theres a button on the downloads page called "Plex Pass Downloads" It seems as its a beta its only open to plex pass subscribers. It's Taken me 30minutes to work this out (luckily I am a subscriber)
  - inetsee 11y ago
    When I went looking for the Raspberry Pi download I ended up here: http://www.rasplex.com/get-started/rasplex-installers.html http://www.rasplex.com/get-started/rasplex-installers.html
    - fsckin 11y ago
      That is the RasPi port of Plex Home Theater -- the previous player which is no longer being developed. "Is Plex Home Theater still around? Plex Home Theater is still available and open source. We’re no longer actively developing it and are focusing our efforts on making Plex Media Player the best experience possible. (We’ll continue to make bug fixes for PHT for now.)"
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

roderickm 11y ago

The Plex app on the Amazon Fire TV (and stick) is fantastic. I'm a big Plex fan, but I don't immediately see any incremental benefits to running Plex Media Player, or why I would dedicate a Raspberry Pi 2 (much less a Mac or Windows box) to my TV for the purpose.

untog 11y ago
I have a Windows box under my TV that runs Plex. It also runs a web browser, which means it's incredibly simple to look something up on Google Maps, order some food from Seamless, etc. - not to mention be able to video chat on Skype and play video on any web site out there, not just ones that have apps for platform X. If all you want to do is watch videos from Plex then no, there's no point changing hardware. But you'd be surprised how much you end up doing through the TV when you can.
- Splines 11y ago
  I'm curious, what do you use for remote input in windows?
  - untog 11y ago
    A Logitech wireless keyboard with trackpad embedded on it: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Keyboard-Multi-Touch-Touchpad/dp/B005DKZTMG/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1445526270&sr=1-2&keywords=logitech+wireless+keyboard http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Keyboard-Multi-Touch... It's not fancy, but it does the job well - barring some signal issues that I think must be specific to my apartment, as I haven't seen anyone else complain of them.
  - derefr 11y ago
    If you frequently sit in front of your HTPC-enabled TV with a laptop, connecting the two together using http://synergy-project.org/ http://synergy-project.org/ is amazing, UX-wise. You don't ever have to pick up a remote, or try to get Bluetooth peripherals to work over an 8' distance; you just flick your mouse up "past" the top of your laptop screen, do a few things on your TV, and flick back. It's a bit of the feeling of having a second (big) monitor hooked up to your computer (or using Apple's AirPlay "extend display to this monitor" mode in OSX) but having the two be separate computers is actually a good thing, frequently: • I don't have to worry about having something CPU-demanding (like a streaming Flash player in Chrome) running on the TV while trying to compile on my work laptop; neither one will cause choppiness in the other. • I run all my torrents on the HTPC (because that's where I want to play the videos from anyway) and have QoS enabled on my router, so my laptop's network connection is never clogged. There's also the benefit of the pixels of a TV being far-enough away that you can get away with a lot of scaling. Presuming a 60" 1080p LCD at an 8' distance, turning on Windows' "Extra Large" DPI Scaling, or force-enabling OSX's HiDPI mode, looks really good (e.g. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47375701/ss20151022-1108am.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47375701/ss20151022-1108...). You only get 960x540 effective pixels from a 200%-DPI-scaled 1080p TV, so some things might not fit on the screen and will necessitate temporarily toggling back to "regular" 1080p. Also, you'll probably want to full-screen most apps, to get something like this (http://i.imgur.com/YDN6VuZ.png http://i.imgur.com/YDN6VuZ.png). It's a lot like using a netbook. It's pretty great for reading long articles in particular; I find there's less eye-strain than looking at my laptop—maybe because the glyphs are so clear, and maybe also because I'm focusing on something farther than 2' away.

brotoss 11y ago

If content owners want to stop piracy, knocking out this kind of stuff should be step #1

joshstrange 11y ago
You know... Or provide a better way to pay for and access their content... Ripping DVDs is 1000X a better experience than watching a buffering icon spin during primetime. Offer me a way to legally download an mkv/mp4 and play it through whatever player I want and/or transcode it if I want and I'll be falling over myself to give you my money.
- oaktowner 11y ago
  iTunes proved that. People were stealing music prior to its release not because they were thieves at heart but because it was the only way most of them could find most of the music they wanted. iTunes put the entire music industry to shame by simply showing that if, instead of fearing downloading, they had given a good, legal venue to sell music, people would in fact be willing to pay.
Karunamon 11y ago
What kind of stuff? Media players? Are you seriously implying the only people that use media players are pirates?
- peteretep 11y ago
  Certainly the only stuff I watch through a media player is stuff I couldn't find on iTunes, Netflix, or Amazon. I'm sure there are legit use cases, although none spring straight to mind, except for people who encoded a bunch of their DVDs a decade ago.
  - nirvdrum 11y ago
    I record TV with Windows Media Center. While I can use an XBox 360 as a Media Center Extender, buying a bunch of them is a bit ridiculous. We use Plex to stream that content throughout the house. It's not as nice as having a native extender, but it works quite well.

Mithaldu 11y ago

It'll be nice to have a media player that's native and not running in a browser, but according to what i can see in the forums, the UI is the usual brand of "our way or the high way" with little to no configuration or customization and even at least in one way a step back² from Plex Home Theater, which this replaces. Not to knock Plex itself. The server/encoding/play-on-any-device pipeline is amazing. Just saying that their UIs need developers who actually care about what their users want. ² http://i.imgur.com/Ygde8Px.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Ygde8Px.jpg

speedkills 11y ago
Agreed. I watch a lot of sports and have been disappointed that they removed slow motion and frame by frame advance years ago and have little interest in adding it back. Still, I am paid for Plex pass to support them because I find it works better than anything else for me.
- Touche 11y ago
  How are you watching sports on a Plex?
- benologist 11y ago
  I find plex works "better than anything else" too but it's in desperate need of an open source alternative.
  - bradbatt 11y ago
    The media player they just released is open source … https://github.com/plexinc/plex-media-player https://github.com/plexinc/plex-media-player I suppose their server software isn’t … I’m not sure.
    - lighthazard 11y ago
      Correct, the server software is not open source. If you want an open source alternative: https://emby.media/ https://emby.media/

joshstrange 11y ago

I run Plex Home Theater on my Rasp Pi 2 and it provides the best experience of any plex client I have ever used (Chromecast, AppleTV + PlexConnect, FireTV Box, Xbox 360, Xbox One). I'm VERY disappointed in the new UI as I hate the "Modern"/Xbox look it has. I do NOT want side scrolling or variable-sized posters as it's very hard to follow. I want my on deck, recently added, and a quick way to browse and entire section. This is a MASSIVE step backwards in UI and I will hang on to PHT for as long as I possibly can.

madaxe_again 11y ago

So, just snagged this, I've been using plex for about as long as it has existed - went from XBMC (on a hacked original XBOX, of course) to Kodi to PMC.... It's good. Makes the experience far more consistent with their current offerings for devices, and as far as I can see, nothing particularly important seems to have gone walkies - handles impressively awkward subtitles with aplomb, channels all still work, in fact it's easier than ever to sling on reddit videos and sit and stare. All in all, approval.

nailer 11y ago

How do you get content for Plex?

joshstrange 11y ago
Ripping DVD's/BluRays is a very popular way to do it. Plex also has "channels" for streaming content but they are a crap-shoot on if they work any given day and I've all but given up on them.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Ripping DVD's/BluRays is a very popular way to do it. Is it really? Because I know nobody doing that of several Plex users. Maybe with a few of beloved DVDs from their library, but not for 99% of what they watch.
  - joshstrange 11y ago
    Ok, maybe "very popular" isn't the way to describe it. It's the most popular LEGAL way to do it. The most popular way consists of: * Sonarr/Sickbeard/Sickrage (TV) * Couchpotato (Movie) * Headphones (Music) * Sabnzbd/Nzbget (Usenet download clients) * Deluge/Transmission/etc (Torrent download clients)
    - deathcakes 11y ago
      Is usenet still going for that sort of thing? I found it started drying up massively about a year ago, have switched to torrents ever since...
      - joshstrange 11y ago
        It's extremely reliable if you have something like Sonarr/Sickbeard constantly running (checking rss feeds every 15min or so). A lot of stuff gets DMCA'd be there is a still a ton of content there, it's by no means dried up or dead. Sonarr/Sickrage can use torrents and usenet though so it can fallback to torrents (or use them primarily if you desire).

impostervt 11y ago

I use Plex on my Roku, and it works great (when my rather old laptop can keep up with transcoding). It already looks like that new media player...

shostack 11y ago
It was great until they redid their UI. Now it is absolutely painful. For example, I don't always want to watch the next episode of a series--I often want to see all the episodes I have in there. Yet I'm not forced to dig for the option to find that. Combined with the fact that there are unhelpful icons without tooltips (because its on a Roku) and my wife ends up helplessly confused by their UI. And that's just one nit. In general I now try to use the Plex iPad app (which rocks), and then punt it up to my TV. Unfortunately the tracking doesn't work great on that so I can't easily scan around the show in the iPad, and have the TV instantly reflect that.
mobiuscog 11y ago
Have they removed the plex login requirement that 'accidentally' got pushed in a recent update ? I used to use it all the time, but there's no way I'm logging in to plex to view local media.

codeaken 11y ago

Plex was great until they forced the Plex Pass on us. I have now switched to using the Kodi [http://kodi.tv/ http://kodi.tv/] and Emby [https://emby.media/ https://emby.media/] combo instead.

ejdyksen 11y ago
Plex is very usable without the Plex Pass.
- codeaken 11y ago
  Before I could access my media server with the iPhone app. Then all of a sudden I was forced to register for a Plex Pass to be able do this. For me at least, that made the whole app unusable.
  - SG- 11y ago
    the mobile apps are free as remote or for $4-5 or so you can unlock the ability to play and sync media without a plex pass like before.
    - hedwall 11y ago
      You can play on iDevices without a subscription, but you can't sync.
    - majora2007 11y ago
      For iOS, they actually require Plex Pass for syncing, which is kinda a shame as I, the server owner have it, but why should my users have to subscribe?
      - johnpowell 11y ago
        They don't. I have a plex pass and the people that use my server that don't have it can sync fine.
  - 11y ago

jwr 11y ago

This is good news. I'm using RasPlex on a Raspberry Pi 2, which for all its shortcomings is the best home entertainment solution I could find. This has the potential to be better (where better means more reliable, with better user experience).

comrh 11y ago

I really like the Home Theater but I really think the killer feature would be adding Netflix/Amazon/Hulu seamlessly. I know they've tried but have limited success.

patja 11y ago

Took me a while...a long while...to wade through all of the fluff describing how plex is so awesome and can do everything before I found it still won't play ISOs. I guess it is awesome, it does all you need....as long as you preprocess and encode your media to a format it accepts. I feel like they really bury this key piece of information (as if, "who would even want that?"), but maybe I am a dinosaur with my preference for the quality of ripped vs. streamed media. Anyways, I could do with a simple soup to nuts spec sheet and less marketing fluff.

lojack 11y ago
I would guess the majority of users follow less than legal methods of obtaining their media, which is what I hear it handles well. It is unfortunate that they don't support this though.
- thomnottom 11y ago
  I'm not sure why ISO vs other containers would be a matter of legal methods. I've ripped plenty of my DVDs and never thought for once to keep them in an ISO. Using MKVs allows me to compress the size and still keep extra audio tracks, subtitles, and chapters.
  - patja 11y ago
    Sometimes the extras, trailers, etc. on the disc are interesting, but not interesting enough to go through separately processing them just to make a media player happy. I'd rather stick the disc in, rip and have a perfect simulation of physical media when using my media player. My Dune player does a great job at this.
    - thomnottom 11y ago
      Even for that, can't you just rip the disk to files (as a VIDEO_TS directory)? I believe Plex handles that, but I could be wrong. Not trying to be a dick, just always interested in how other people handle media and what works best for them. I am VERY familiar with software not interested in dealing with the particular way that I store things.

6stringmerc 11y ago

Best media playback engine in the world. Needs to play every format under the sun. So both SACD and Dolby Atmos work now?

cthalupa 11y ago
Dolby Atmos doesn't really work anywhere where ffmpeg is used. ffmpeg currently drops the extra info and sends the core MLP stream on. Anything that supports bitstreaming Dolby TrueHD should support Dolby Atmos, and you can already bitstream TrueHD with Plex. No idea on SACD
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  I'm just curious based on my noted dislike for hyperbolic statements / puffery when there can be noted exception identified without too much effort.

NelsonMinar 11y ago

I don't understand this announcement. Is this Plex saying that the viewer will basically no longer be free?

joshcrowder 11y ago
This is exactly what I thought as well. I use Home theatre at the moment and don't have a plex pass.. does that mean I can no longer do so?
- bradbatt 11y ago
  No. They stated that Home Theater is still available and open sourced, although they are not working on further development and are focusing on the new Plex Media Player instead.
jacobwg 11y ago
Seems a little confusing yes, but looks like they rewrote the player from scratch to better unify interfaces across platforms and improve usability. It's also open source [0]. As with most new features, they're releasing for PlexPass first and moving to (free) public availability after a waiting period. [0] https://github.com/plexinc/plex-media-player https://github.com/plexinc/plex-media-player
Alphasite_ 11y ago
Its still free, its just no longer fully open source, they've released a new app which shares its UI with their other apps.
JonLim 11y ago
Nope, just that the preview is for Plex Pass subscribers. They usually roll things out at previews for the premium people first. > Will it be available to everyone? The new app is launching as an early preview version for our Plex Pass subscribers. Once the preview period ends, it will be available to all users; we’ll make another announcement when that happens.

click170 11y ago

Does plex finally support reading files from network shares? Plex is based on XBMC (aka Kodi), which supports reading from the network natively, which leads me to believe they disabled this on purpose and I've never understood the rationale behind it. It makes plex almost useless to me and anyone else who uses a nas or similar to store files. Expecting that I will run plex itself from my nas because they disabled network access is laughable. Also their UI has consistently been going downhill for the last several versions.

cthalupa 11y ago
Plex the server is not based on XBMC/Kodi. Plex the server has supported reading files from network shares for a very very very (very) long time. The Home Theater client was based on XBMC, but it only ever connected to the server.
- click170 11y ago
  Hm. I'll have to take another look at it then, last I played with it you couldn't add network shared to plex. Though I still prefer Kodi for its FOSS-ness.

KevinMS 11y ago

I just cannot express how annoyed I am by the concept of the "media browsing experience" when I just want to watch some videos I have in a folder.

hatsix 11y ago
The good news is that you've been able to do this for years. Not sure why you came here to complain about something you've (nearly) always been able to do with OS-provided media players or VLC.
- KevinMS 11y ago
  I'm not talking about opening videos on my computer, don't be ridiculous. We're talking about plex, and plex is for streaming from one thing to another. I've been able to stream from OSX to roku using plex but each version keeps getting worse. The last version was so bad it didn't even let you browse folders. I think there were so many complaints they released 'plex classic'. I'm trying out emby again right now, looks much improved and like all I need.
  - hatsix 11y ago
    Ah, I had assumed that because the plex app in the announcement is an app for opening videos on your computer (I know that Plex does other apps as well, but this SPECIFIC one is just desktop OSs), that you were talking about that. Anyways, it seems that standard DLNA is what you are looking for. I don't know the current state of support for this is, but I know my 8-year-old Thecus NAS and PS3 both supported it and worked great together. Otherwise I recommend switching to a RasPi2, and trying out the media player images, several based on kodi, which were able to play from network drives just fine in my experience. Plex has always been about libraries and metadata. Sure, it had vestigal options from it's break from XBMC, which WAS focused on that, but these were never a focus in the past 7 years. Also, according to other threads here, Plex Classic was mainly released to ensure that there was a free version on the Roku, while Plex Pass is required for the mainline app. This isn't how it works on any other platform (ios/android = pay for the app, plex pass is only for sync).

beachstartup 11y ago

the biggest thing i care about is title availability, not what my interface looks like. i would use the worst UI in the history of computing if it had every title i would ever want to watch.

dmerrick 11y ago
Well, once you start building your own library, you might find that the next step is improving the UI.

zyxley 11y ago

The most interesting new feature to me, beyond the UI itself - there's now some algorithmic generation in the movie/TV screens. It looks like the Movies screen will automatically offer up unwatched movies with recent release dates, as well as groups of unwatched movies from the same director ("Top movies by ..."). If you actually go into a movie and open the Extras menu, along with trailers/features (if you have a Plex Pass), it'll show you other movies by the same director and with the same lead actors. Similarly, the TV screen has groups for recently aired TV episodes, and even has shows grouped by the channel they're currently airing on (!). It's a neat use of metadata, and it would be interesting to see it go further. It would be really neat if I could, say, choose Star Trek TNG and get an automatically generated list of the best 10 episodes (with data pulled from thetvdb, IMDB, etc), or if I could go into Movies and choose an option to group movies by randomized Netflix-like specialized genres.

the_watcher 11y ago

The new UI for Plex Media Server is a big improvement over the old one, in my opinion. Plex has some limits, but it does one thing better than any other option, and I continue to be a huge fan.

Shorel 11y ago

Accurate determination/prediction of airspeed of various swallows (laden/unladen). Now that's a feature Kodi can't rival.