6 ms·

I was kind of agreeing with the author, right up until he talked about setting up a pipeline involving Plex to have a good UX. Maybe I'm in the minority, and

I was kind of agreeing with the author, right up until he talked about setting up a pipeline involving Plex to have a good UX. Maybe I'm in the minority, and maybe I'll get downvoted, but to me, Plex has a horrific UX. 1) If I import something its scanners cant' scrape metadata for, it might as well not even exist. Its not displayed to me at all. I have to fiddle with title and re-scan until its metatdata scraper finally realizes what it is. 2) They've gone to some dark patterns to convince you to make a plex account and log in, just to talk to a server on the same LAN. 3) They now hide your content and promote their own streaming content in a tv-channels like grid. I don't want any of that, I just want my movie library, don't make me scroll for it. There are other frustrations, but these are the high points. I need to find time to setup kodi again..

AndroidKitKat 5y ago
Have you looked into Jellyfin? It's not got quite the same polish, but I've been using it pretty happily for about 7 months now.
- handrous 5y ago
  Seconded. Happily running it in a Docker container on an old Linux box. Set-up took minutes and it's been working, through occasional upgrades, for something like two years now without a hiccup. I mostly use the Roku and Web clients. I spent years trying to get Kodi how I wanted it and it just never worked out. Between the jank and the way they've chosen to structure the UI, I don't think I'll ever like Kodi. Jellyfin is a much better fit for me, with no tweaking at all.
jjulius 5y ago
I use Plex (I don't pay for a Plex Pass) too, and I don't have the same issues. 1.) This only happens for me if, say, I use youtube-dl to download a music performance and then drop it in. Every time I've gone outside of my Sonarr/Radarr setup to manually add a TV show or movie, it's always handled the metadata just fine. It's when I throw it a curveball (that, tbh, I expected) that it doesn't handle it for me. Maybe I've just been lucky? 2.) Completely agree with you here. I'd love to know if there's a workaround, though I haven't spent any time looking into it. 3.) Not the case for me. My home page goes Recently Watched -> Recently Added Movies -> Recently Added TV -> the streaming bullshit you mentioned. The UI loads with the left menu open, and all I need to do is hit "down" one for TV, twice for movies; no scrolling necessary. To your point, I wish that it didn't show those extra streaming options at all.
sokoloff 5y ago
I’m pretty happy with Plex, happy enough to buy a lifetime sub a few years back. I didn’t like when they started to mix in some of their Plex TV or whatever it is, but I (and my kids) find it pretty damn easy to use and at this point, I think I’ve paid around $3/mo for it.
sbierwagen 5y ago
4) Plex only supports some codecs. Oddly enough, my Samsung TV seems more flexible than Plex. For a handful of video files it's easier to just stick them on a USB stick and walk over to the TV than to wander lost in the dark forest of video transcoding.
- imbnwa 5y ago
  Does your Samsung TV handle DTS audio? Mine doesn't, just curious.
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    The built in Samsung media player has correctly played audio from a wide array of pirated video files. I don't know if it does the right thing with multichannel audio, I only use the built in stereo speakers.
seanalltogether 5y ago
1. I completely agree. It's super frustrating that all these random kids videos I have I can't just drop in a folder and have Plex pick them up and just show them in alphabetic order.
- drewg123 5y ago
  The frustrating thing is that I could swear there used to be a "home videos" section or something for videos w/o metadata, but they seem to have killed that, or hidden it so well I can no longer find it.
MivLives 5y ago
I switched to Emby for these reasons. It works like Plex did six or seven years ago. The one downside is they charge for the android tv app, but otherwise I haven't run into many problems. It seemed a bit more feature complete then Jellyfin last time I looked.
FooHentai 5y ago
>If I import something its scanners cant' scrape metadata for, it might as well not even exist. Its not displayed to me at all. I have to fiddle with title and re-scan until its metatdata scraper finally realizes what it is. You can use the 'Fix Match' option within Plex and tweak it's search parameters (usually just title and year) until it matches. Alternatively you can paste stuff like IMDB IDs into the field and it'll match based on that instead. For some titles with obscene names etc, that's the best way to get an accurate match. >They've gone to some dark patterns to convince you to make a plex account and log in, just to talk to a server on the same LAN. Settings -> Network -> List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth -> Put your LAN subnet in there. >They now hide your content and promote their own streaming content in a tv-channels like grid. I don't want any of that, I just want my movie library, don't make me scroll for it. Yeah that's a bit annoying, but can be fixed: Use the 'pin' functionality to force your libraries to the top. This applies even for unauthenticated users (just tested in a private tab). I ditched Plex a few years back due to UI annoyances. I've come back because they're mostly resolved, and honestly the alternatives (Jellyfin etc) aren't great. I chucked the money at them for a lifetime pass as well (mostly for PlexAmp), so I guess I'm pretty invested now :)
- drewg123 5y ago
  > You can use the 'Fix Match' There used to be a way to not have any metadata, and just get plex to show you the files. I think they called it something like "home movies". The first time I setup plex, it was easy. But I can't find it anymore..
  - FooHentai 5y ago
    Settings -> Libraries -> Add -> Type 'Other Videos' should do it. Though if anything's matched and you would prefer it to have other info showing, you can hit the pen icon for the item and manually enter fields.
bobsmooth 5y ago
Emby is open source and can stream outside your network for free. The metadata grabber fails sometimes or needs to be manually refreshed but you can edit metadata for each episode.
philliphaydon 5y ago
I’ve tried several times to setup plex and I just can’t get it working… it makes me feel stupid. I did briefly get video from my computer playing on the tv but couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get the subtitles working.
DavideNL 5y ago
Agreed, i gave up on Plex too. Too many annoyances and bugs. Now i just use a simple app on my iPad (nPlayer - no subscription!) and just play files from a network share. Plain and simple and it always works perfectly without all the bloat.

AndroidKitKat 5y ago

Have you looked into Jellyfin? It's not got quite the same polish, but I've been using it pretty happily for about 7 months now.

handrous 5y ago
Seconded. Happily running it in a Docker container on an old Linux box. Set-up took minutes and it's been working, through occasional upgrades, for something like two years now without a hiccup. I mostly use the Roku and Web clients. I spent years trying to get Kodi how I wanted it and it just never worked out. Between the jank and the way they've chosen to structure the UI, I don't think I'll ever like Kodi. Jellyfin is a much better fit for me, with no tweaking at all.

jjulius 5y ago

I use Plex (I don't pay for a Plex Pass) too, and I don't have the same issues. 1.) This only happens for me if, say, I use youtube-dl to download a music performance and then drop it in. Every time I've gone outside of my Sonarr/Radarr setup to manually add a TV show or movie, it's always handled the metadata just fine. It's when I throw it a curveball (that, tbh, I expected) that it doesn't handle it for me. Maybe I've just been lucky? 2.) Completely agree with you here. I'd love to know if there's a workaround, though I haven't spent any time looking into it. 3.) Not the case for me. My home page goes Recently Watched -> Recently Added Movies -> Recently Added TV -> the streaming bullshit you mentioned. The UI loads with the left menu open, and all I need to do is hit "down" one for TV, twice for movies; no scrolling necessary. To your point, I wish that it didn't show those extra streaming options at all.

sokoloff 5y ago

I’m pretty happy with Plex, happy enough to buy a lifetime sub a few years back. I didn’t like when they started to mix in some of their Plex TV or whatever it is, but I (and my kids) find it pretty damn easy to use and at this point, I think I’ve paid around $3/mo for it.

sbierwagen 5y ago

4) Plex only supports some codecs. Oddly enough, my Samsung TV seems more flexible than Plex. For a handful of video files it's easier to just stick them on a USB stick and walk over to the TV than to wander lost in the dark forest of video transcoding.

imbnwa 5y ago
Does your Samsung TV handle DTS audio? Mine doesn't, just curious.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  The built in Samsung media player has correctly played audio from a wide array of pirated video files. I don't know if it does the right thing with multichannel audio, I only use the built in stereo speakers.

seanalltogether 5y ago

1. I completely agree. It's super frustrating that all these random kids videos I have I can't just drop in a folder and have Plex pick them up and just show them in alphabetic order.

drewg123 5y ago
The frustrating thing is that I could swear there used to be a "home videos" section or something for videos w/o metadata, but they seem to have killed that, or hidden it so well I can no longer find it.

MivLives 5y ago

I switched to Emby for these reasons. It works like Plex did six or seven years ago. The one downside is they charge for the android tv app, but otherwise I haven't run into many problems. It seemed a bit more feature complete then Jellyfin last time I looked.

FooHentai 5y ago

>If I import something its scanners cant' scrape metadata for, it might as well not even exist. Its not displayed to me at all. I have to fiddle with title and re-scan until its metatdata scraper finally realizes what it is. You can use the 'Fix Match' option within Plex and tweak it's search parameters (usually just title and year) until it matches. Alternatively you can paste stuff like IMDB IDs into the field and it'll match based on that instead. For some titles with obscene names etc, that's the best way to get an accurate match. >They've gone to some dark patterns to convince you to make a plex account and log in, just to talk to a server on the same LAN. Settings -> Network -> List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth -> Put your LAN subnet in there. >They now hide your content and promote their own streaming content in a tv-channels like grid. I don't want any of that, I just want my movie library, don't make me scroll for it. Yeah that's a bit annoying, but can be fixed: Use the 'pin' functionality to force your libraries to the top. This applies even for unauthenticated users (just tested in a private tab). I ditched Plex a few years back due to UI annoyances. I've come back because they're mostly resolved, and honestly the alternatives (Jellyfin etc) aren't great. I chucked the money at them for a lifetime pass as well (mostly for PlexAmp), so I guess I'm pretty invested now :)

drewg123 5y ago
> You can use the 'Fix Match' There used to be a way to not have any metadata, and just get plex to show you the files. I think they called it something like "home movies". The first time I setup plex, it was easy. But I can't find it anymore..
- FooHentai 5y ago
  Settings -> Libraries -> Add -> Type 'Other Videos' should do it. Though if anything's matched and you would prefer it to have other info showing, you can hit the pen icon for the item and manually enter fields.

bobsmooth 5y ago

Emby is open source and can stream outside your network for free. The metadata grabber fails sometimes or needs to be manually refreshed but you can edit metadata for each episode.

philliphaydon 5y ago

I’ve tried several times to setup plex and I just can’t get it working… it makes me feel stupid. I did briefly get video from my computer playing on the tv but couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get the subtitles working.

DavideNL 5y ago

Agreed, i gave up on Plex too. Too many annoyances and bugs. Now i just use a simple app on my iPad (nPlayer - no subscription!) and just play files from a network share. Plain and simple and it always works perfectly without all the bloat.