Plex 9?

Talisman

I haven't seen a thread about this so I was wondering if anyone has upgraded their Plex installation? The new version has been available for a week at this stage.

Plex

I'll be taking the opportunity to wipe the system and install Snow Leopard before tackling the install and was just wondering what other people's experiences have been.

J-blk

I have installed in on my MacBook to play around with for awhile before I upgrade my Mac Mini which is my "true" HTPC.

It had some teething problems on release, like overloading the TVDB servers and so no metadata was been grabbed for TV shows but that has now been resolved.

The biggest overhaul is how it manages media, it is way better and seems a lot more intelligent in updating the entries automatically if you add or delete files from your media folders (in Plex 8, you ended up with "orphaned" entries in your library that had to be manually removed). The "Videos" section is gone completely now because it adds the new content to your TV and Movie sections even if it cannot find metadata (just with entries like "Episode 1", etc and no data until it can grab it). So this is streamlined too.

There are some things I don't like in the UI with this update (e.g the watched/unwatched flags are now a grey circle) but I will install the Aeon skin soon and play around with that. Some of the media views seem to have been removed too.

The default skin now supports media flags, which previously only the Aeon skin supported - so now, in my Movies folder for example, it shows if content is SD/720p/1080p, video codec, audio codec, 5.1, etc. Really like that improvement.

I got the IOS app as well and even though the interface is not very nice IMO (Air Video is way more polished), it works well streaming content (and displays all your library metadata, etc) and as a remote for the Mac version of Plex.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend and I hope to move my Mac Mini installation to Plex 9 over the weekend.

silvine

I am a big fan of Plex and I'd recommend Plex over the Apple TV anyday.

However, the previous version made adding and scraping information about new media very difficult. From what I see of this version it's a lot easier and it picked up and scraped all my content quite quickly. Looking forward to playing around with it some more later.

And it's free! Can't beat that.

I've no iphone/itouch for the IOS app tho.

Elessar

I only ever used Plex to watch HD .mkv files as VLC suffered terrible stutters and frame rate problems even on newer machines. The latest VLC seems to have fixed that so I don't see a reason to use it again. Would be good for a media player I bet.

Talisman

Thanks J-blk - I was hoping somebody had tested the water. I remember the 0.8.3 update last year conned me into installing a driver for the Harmony remote which broke the remote functionality on Leopard. The only way I could get the remote to work afterwards was to install Remote Buddy.

Looks like I'll be backing up the system this weekend to prepare for a marathon install.

J-blk

Talisman wrote: »

I remember the 0.8.3 update last year conned me into installing a driver for the Harmony remote which broke the remote functionality on Leopard..

Oh yeah, Candelair... Oddly enough, I needed that installed to get remote functionality working correctly in Snow Leopard .

Good luck with the install, definitely recommend Plex 9 and since you've been using 0.8 anyway, you should have no problems getting up and running with it. The improvements to the media manager alone make it worth it.

thecommander

Using it since launch day. Problem with overloading on tvdb but its sorted now. Works a treat with other computers running it in different parts of house and iPad outside the house.

stimpson

Excellent. Love using Plex - will pull it down this evening.

Talisman

I'm rolling back to the previous version - too many issues with the scraper - the kids and the wife aren't too impressed that things aren't where they should be.

For example : Peppa Pig (very much in demand with the toddler and the wife but for different reasons) - 52 episodes scraped successfully in Plex 8, 1 episode appearing in Plex 9.

Other issues with movies not being scraped or being scraped incorrectly and there is no way to correct the errors within the interface.

Will leave it for a few months and take a look at it again.

J-blk

Talisman wrote: »

I'm rolling back to the previous version - too many issues with the scraper - the kids and the wife aren't too impressed that things aren't where they should be.

Sorry to hear you are having issues - the scraper is working pretty well for me now (though then again, I have no Peppa Pig in my collection to vouch for how that works ).

Not sure why things would not be in the correct place though? Like I mentioned in an earlier post, even when it fails to scrape, it uses the folder names and the SxExx numbering in the episode file name to place things, so you should still end up with things in the right place. The same applies to movies and that's why the videos section was eliminated.

silvine

Talisman wrote: »

I'm rolling back to the previous version - too many issues with the scraper - the kids and the wife aren't too impressed that things aren't where they should be.

For example : Peppa Pig (very much in demand with the toddler and the wife but for different reasons) - 52 episodes scraped successfully in Plex 8, 1 episode appearing in Plex 9.

Other issues with movies not being scraped or being scraped incorrectly and there is no way to correct the errors within the interface.

Will leave it for a few months and take a look at it again.

I was having a similar problem with an episode of Madmen

Exit Plex, click on the media server icon the top right on the Desktop. Select media manager and click update. That fixed it for me.

Plex 9 adds even vids it can't scrape. The devs have said there is a few teething problems with tv shows tho.

jester77

I haven't upgraded yet as I read somewhere that the show watched/not watched feature has been removed. Anyone confirm that?

Very happy with the previous version, I have everything automated and would hate to upgrade and have issues.

Inspector Gadget

Mine shows a little dot beside each show, which disappears once the show is viewed, so I'd say the feature's still there

It's very pretty overall, and the folder scanning seems pretty good (I'm sure it can be improved, I believe the scanners themselves are Python scripts), but it seems to be eating about 25-30% of my available CPU (Core 2 Duo Macbook, 2.1Ghz) at idle (that's the UI, not the media manager, now) and that worries me a little.