Monday, January 4, 2016

I Hate Plex So Much

I have been hobbling along with Plex for nearly two years now.

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I have re-named all my files by their facist naming system (since Plex ignores the title information and anything else from file details) and placed each and every file in directories exactly as Plex has instructed.

As an early adopter, I paid hard-earned money for their Roku app (which should provide an elevated level of functionality… it does not).

I have spent hours looking through forums and trying to find information on their official website.

Still my files are constantly renamed (almost always incorrectly) and almost NO FILE has a thumbnail that corresponds to the actual film or television program it represents.  Even when I manually add names and poster files via the computer desktop interface, Plex will inevetiably switch the name back to whatever it wants, even when I use Plex’s “lock” funtion (this is particularly frustrating with episodic television).  Not only does Plex rename the titles, but it also removes the artwork I have assigned to replace the thumbnail with an image of Kevin Spacey from House of Cards.  I love Kevin Spacey, but I am so sick of seeing his #*&$% face on EVERY THUMBNAIL IN MY LIBRARY.

Furthermore, when I search (FF/RW) the “preview” always shows scenes from The Long Goodbye.  No matter the show I am watching, FF/RW will only show Elliot Gould, never the characters from the program I am searching through.  Thus, I have to guess how far forward or back I have gone.

I have dumped caches, refreshed databases, optimized databases, on and on and on… all to no avail.

The Plex interface in Roku is abysmal, especially since all the thumbnails are wrong.  I can’t search visually (since every thumbnail is the same still from House of Cards), so I have to highlight each and every file to see what the program actually is.  Not only that, but whoever created the Plex navigation for the Roku interface should be dragged into the street and beaten.  It is the most convoluted and unuseable maze of nonsense I have ever encountered.  I have no idea what they were thinking when they were creating the “quick access” sections, as each offering is completely useless when I’m trying to find the content I want to watch.

I am at witt’s end. I absolutely HATE Plex, but there seems to be NO OTHER choice for viewing my NAS stored media via Roku (which is what all the tv’s in our house use to access streaming media).

I could switch to XBMC and mirror to Roku, but I don’t want to have to access media via a computer (I want to use just Roku and NAS).

Why in the world is Plex the only game in town?!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree. I love xbmc. They were the best. I didn't have to change anything when I used them. few movies had to be renamed or a show because there was another with the same name. But its easier to change on xbmc than plex.

But for me After I added the pics for my shows and movies it stop letting me log on. I can still watch the shows from my Samsung smart tv but I cant do any changes on the web interface. the program is bull sh1t.

But what I noticed was that if you add a movie or one show at a time it will get the information and pictures right. I had like over 3 TB of movies and shows. Add all at one time and that's why it was F $$$ up. But when I added a one show or a movie all the information is correct.

I hope someone comes up with a better program soon.

seefilms said...

You are doing it wrong.

Calling yourself an "early adopter" at 2014 is disingenuous. I began in 2011 and even I wasn't an early adopter. Early adopters got the plex forever pass for almost nothing.

Plex is awesome.

Oh...and this thing you call XBMC...it hasn't been called that for almost five years now. It's Kodi. (and you are right...it's pretty great...but if it was all that, we wouldn't be talking about Plex right now.)

I have about 12TB of movies and shows. I can add one movie or show...or hundreds and each time, there is very few if any that have problems. It's not perfect. But I can watch shows on pretty much anything I own...anywhere in the world...at any time.
And so can my family and friends.
The movies show exactly the picture I want them to show with the information I want them to see.

Granted, it doesn't have a lot of things I would like...nor does it have some of the functionality of XBMC/Kodi.

If you are as angry about it as you say you are...you gotta know it's you.

There are forums to educate yourself about each of the problems you both have talked about.

MBGM said...

Sorry to necropost... 2021 and we're still in the same boat. I started using Plex about 8 years ago and not a day goes by that I don't curse it. It's a shame Emby and Kodi and Seawhatever can't hold a candle to Plex's unrealized potential. I actually almost got a Plex Pass way back when, but after seeing how little the developers care about their product and how they care even less for their PAID users, I don't see it happening. And I love how Plex's fierce defenders are not only the rudest and most sanctimonious people I've encountered (surpassing even the legendary insolence of Linux power users) and they love to tell tall tales of how they've never had a single problem with Plex ever. Even when several dozens of users are having the same issue, requests for help go utterly unanswered, or end up being little more than a depository for incredulous insults to use at family gatherings. Plex advertises itself as simple enough for the everyday user, but even those of us who know our way around an IT department know that Plex is fubar.

The Invisible said...

Yeah... I definitely gave up on Plex quite a while ago. The old server is actually still installed on my media server (I need to remember to move that at some point), but I haven't accessed it in a couple years. It's a real bummer, because it was great when it worked. Now I just use handbrake to convert media to something that's DLNA friendly and play from a list using ROKU or a tablet or phone.