I'm probably WRONG about the recent Plex news... [CORRECTIONS IN DESCRIPTION]

The Evolution and Transformation of Plex: A Tech Giant's Shift towards Streaming Media

Overall, I would say that my initial reaction to Plex's shift towards streaming media is mixed. While there are some benefits to this new direction, such as increased legitimacy and partnerships with major studios like Lionsgate, I also worry about the potential loss of Plex's roots and the impact on its user base.

As a tech enthusiast and Plex user, I have always appreciated the service's focus on physical media and local file playback. The ability to rip and manage my own files, as well as stream them directly to devices, has been a major draw for me. However, with the increasing trend towards streaming media, I worry that Plex may be abandoning its core values and sacrificing user control in the process.

One of the main concerns I have is the potential impact on users who rely on Plex's manual file management features. For those who are not "server nerdy" or familiar with the inner workings of Plex, this aspect of the service can be a major advantage. However, for more advanced users, the loss of this feature could be a significant blow. I have spoken to others in similar situations, and it's clear that many users are concerned about losing this level of control over their media collection.

On the other hand, Plex has made some significant strides in terms of legitimacy and partnerships with major studios. The fact that the MPAA is not actively pursuing Plex for anti-piracy measures suggests that the service is being taken seriously, and this increased legitimacy may help to attract more users who are looking for a reliable and trustworthy streaming solution.

However, as I began to think about Plex's shift towards streaming media, my concerns grew. The partnership with Lionsgate, in particular, has raised eyebrows among some fans of the service. It seems that Plex is now positioning itself as a middleman or front-end for Warner Bros. and Lionsgate's own streaming services, which could be seen as a threat to user autonomy.

Furthermore, I worry about the potential loss of Plex's unique value proposition. The service was initially built on physical media and local file playback, which set it apart from other streaming services like Netflix. By shifting towards streaming media, Plex may be sacrificing some of its identity and appeal to more mainstream users.

In addition, I am concerned about the implications of this shift for users who rely on Plex's ability to stream high-quality, uncut content. The recent removal of certain films and TV shows from the service has left many fans feeling frustrated and disoriented. This kind of behavior is not what I expect from a service like Plex, which prides itself on its commitment to delivering high-quality content.

As I reflect on Plex's evolution, I am reminded of my initial enthusiasm for the service. At first, I saw it as a breath of fresh air in an industry dominated by streaming services that seem to be sacrificing quality and user control in pursuit of convenience and profit. However, as Plex has shifted towards streaming media, I have begun to feel a sense of unease.

I worry that Plex is losing sight of its core values and sacrificing the very features that made it appealing to users like me. The shift towards streaming media may be seen as a necessary step in order to compete with larger players in the industry, but I fear that it will ultimately harm the service's reputation and user base.

As someone who has been a loyal Plex user for years, I would love to hear from others on this topic. Do you think Plex is making a mistake by shifting towards streaming media? Are there any features or aspects of the service that you are particularly concerned about losing? Let me know in the comments below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enremember when I used to make videos like this it was at the old apartment but it was still in a setup like this I kind of miss it it might come back I know I'm super late to this but we need to talk about the recent plex news it's it's time to talk about it there's actually been more since the initial wave of Plex news that I was actually going to talk about for this video and there's a lot going on we're gonna talk about it in this video I'm you post Vox and this is Plex news as always I have a monthly recurring series where I talk about Plex on the channel usually in the form of tutorials although sometimes I want to apply apply more you know educational explanation of news going on this series is sponsored by Plex as always I will have affiliate links where you can sign up for free via Plex pass for yourself or buy one for someone else has a gift in the description down below please use them if you sign up if you're unaware what Plex is Plex is a media streaming service sort of it's becoming more of a media streaming service now with the recent news we're gonna talk about but it's basically a program that you can run on a computer or a network drive or now you don't even necessarily need a computer for it to stream your own movie Rip's and TV show rips and downloads and things like that to all of your different devices and even friends and family that aren't in your home and it has a lot of cool functionality you can learn more about it in the playlist linked in the video description there was a lot of news that came out over the past couple months about flex imma be good some of it bad the big good thing is that they have a beta exclusive to the forums I mean you can obviously download it if you're not active on the forums but you know not fully released yet of their new transcoder for transcoding footage for other devices notably this brings up specific fixes for it now supports in V deck or Nvidia hardware decoding on Linux which it didn't before so all of you wondering why I didn't do my Tesla for flex video on Linux that's because part of the problem was the decoder functionality which wasn't even present on Linux at the time of recording yeah and then there's a few other aspects to it one of the bigger ones is the zero copy functionality for the transcoding itself which is a much more efficient and powerful way of encoding footage and this is actually kind more or less equivalent to the new ending in coder implemented into OBS 23 earlier this year it is a zero copy functionality meaning other than scaling which can't be done on the encoder so if Lex is doing scaling here in the trans code it's doing that first it's sending it from the Nvidia decoder to the Nvidia encoder or Intel AMD is on the way I believe but I believe Intel is a surefire thing AMD in the works but you know from the graphics card based decoder of your source file so a movie rip sends it to the graphics card to be decoded then is encoded again on the graphics card - for the transcode and then sent out instead of to the cpu to the decoder to the cpu to the decoder or to the encoder like typically there's a lot more bounces that adds latency and makes the process much less efficient and you'll see minor sub subtle quality or rather performance bumps that over the previous transcoder a lot of people won't notice any difference but it's just kind of one of those fixes that now that's kind of a thing encoding pipelines are doing there's something they should implement once it's fully released in things like that I'll have more coverage of it I don't want to get it into it too much until it's publicly available because they have some other features they want to implement as well such as SD or HD r2 SDR transcoding which this lays the groundwork for but doesn't necessarily implement just yet another big news was the new Plex app I covered this last month in a video but one of the things that I missed that a lot of people were confused about what they announced that it was ending support for HT pcs now a lot of people were confused what this would mean because you could still setup page TPC with the new app and theoretically would be fine for most people but the previous Plex media player app actually had a lot of support for things like Logitech Harmony smart remotes and a couple HTPC optimized features that they were then cutting out for the new plex app for flex uno as well as the like 300-foot I think they called UI where it made everything super big all of that was being removed in the new plex app and they were dropping support for that obviously you could still connect your PC to your TV run the new plex app and it would be fine if you were using mouse and keyboard that is a clarification of what that meant but then after enough backlash because honestly it was a bizarre decision that I was really concerned and confused by they then announced that JK they're gonna find a way to keep it sustained because they didn't want to keep developing features for it or like maintaining support for it the legacy support because it was breaking other things or whatever and I guess they had decided that it wasn't a significant enough user base for it to really make a difference little did they know that you know is probably their most active and vocal user base so yeah so they announced that okay they're gonna find a way to make it work they're gonna leave the original plex media player app as it is and they may not update it a ton moving forward but they will figure out a way to keep both sides happy at least for the time being now on its own I'd say this is a typical program supplier mix up where they just decide they're gonna cut off something that suddenly a lot of people really care about and always cared about and just didn't necessarily make that very clear but then they also just announced that they are now getting support for Warner Brothers streaming now they haven't announced any of the lineup for TV shows or movies and this one is specifically only in the US but they are partnering with Warner Brothers to bring some of their movies and TV shows as a native integration within Plex kind of like you know you would open up your Smart TV and go to Netflix or Hulu or CBS or whatever you would have a Warner Brothers Channel kind of like the title channel in your Plex library so you can immediately start streaming over the Internet those files then literally as I'm going to sit down to record this it was announced that they've also partnered with Lionsgate which is going to be an international thing although specific movies and TV shows will have geo restrictions to implement their movies and TV shows into flex as well for streaming and some of the language when you keep that context in mind some of the language that they mentioned regarding removing HTTP support was is thrown some red flags for me because they specifically said that it is far more efficient and effective to just use a media streaming box a Roku a fire stick whatever or the app on your smart TV then a bulky power consuming HD PC and overall I would mostly agree although there's always little sacrifices you're making and there's always issues with certain formats not being supported and you need to try code whereas a PC can pretty much always direct play as long as you have mostly modern hardware the problem for me it's a I've received that a lot of people who aren't like the super server nerdy people like myself for bite my bits but you know they have massive server racks dedicated to their plex server those kinds of people who are running plex servers are generally from what I have seen and this may not be accurate or representative of everyone but what I have seen those kinds of people are using their HTTP see as their plex media server and just playing it directly on their TV and then streaming it to other devices so cutting out that support telling them to use something else doesn't make sense because they're already like they would they would be using more power you know it would be negligible but they would still technically be using more power and causing more problems to use a separate streaming box from their HTTP see that doesn't make any sense to me but also when you keep in mind that they're killing off this kind of thing the thing that heavily relies on using your own physical media that you've ripped and managing your own files while also implementing more streaming media functionality it makes me wonder if Plex is really trying to like like I am my first reaction was a good one so I'm gonna bring up a bunch of skepticism but my first reaction was a good one and that ok Plex is getting some legitimacy the MPAA isn't coming after them to tear them down instead certain publishers are actually working with them to distribute their films and TV shows through them that gives Plex some legitimacy keeps it in the light may mean that they have to behave a little bit more with some more maybe pirate friendly features which could suck but overall like plexes turning out to be a real deal but then once I started thinking about it more and seeing the HTTP see reaction and seeing the Lionsgate one go on top of it my second reaction is that of skepticism and fear because I worry that Plex is trying to move more towards the streaming media side because that's what the MPAA and all of the film publishers or distributors are wanting so you don't want anyone to own their media they want to stream it to them and manage licenses on that basis and Plex is trying to get in on the streaming service game if they're gonna start pushing out more and more of the manual or physical media based file management users we may see Plex become a completely different beast and it's pulling away from its roots which started as here's the files that you have here's the media you already own stream that and organize that wherever you want which was the big appeal for me when I first started with it the big appeal for a lot of people especially the whole pirate scene that I'm still just passing by so to pull away from that and go towards streaming media I start to wonder what the point of Plex would even be I guess in a sense Plex is kind of act acting as a middleman or a front in for Warner Brothers or Lions Gates own streaming services that way they don't have to have their own streaming app or back-end necessarily although I can't imagine Plex is actually developing their own streaming back in service for these publishers I don't know I'm nervous I will say that I would love to hear what you guys think maybe I'm being a little too skeptical maybe I'm coming up with conspiracy theories but to see them move so much towards streaming media for a service that was built on physical and local file playback is just a little scary to me especially when so much else is moving towards less ownership of the media you buy and consume and more of this nonsense and especially when there is problems with that like the weird reframing and cutting of the friends remasters and the Buffy remasters and things like that where I want to have my box set and I want to rip it and I want to stream it I don't want to stream the weird nonsense HD remaster that is objectively worse in every way I don't want it to vanish all of a sudden while I'm in the middle of watching it like house did or for it to go away in 2020 like the offices or friends in 2021 you know whichever that are getting removed from Netflix that seems like a terrible time I want to avoid that that is why I'm using Plex so for Plex to be turning into that is just scary and upsetting like I said I do want to hear your thoughts in the comment section down below let me know what you think as always hit the like button subscribe for more tech education and Plex content I have more educational stuff moving forward and in the playlist link in the description below I'm Evil's box I'll see you next timeremember when I used to make videos like this it was at the old apartment but it was still in a setup like this I kind of miss it it might come back I know I'm super late to this but we need to talk about the recent plex news it's it's time to talk about it there's actually been more since the initial wave of Plex news that I was actually going to talk about for this video and there's a lot going on we're gonna talk about it in this video I'm you post Vox and this is Plex news as always I have a monthly recurring series where I talk about Plex on the channel usually in the form of tutorials although sometimes I want to apply apply more you know educational explanation of news going on this series is sponsored by Plex as always I will have affiliate links where you can sign up for free via Plex pass for yourself or buy one for someone else has a gift in the description down below please use them if you sign up if you're unaware what Plex is Plex is a media streaming service sort of it's becoming more of a media streaming service now with the recent news we're gonna talk about but it's basically a program that you can run on a computer or a network drive or now you don't even necessarily need a computer for it to stream your own movie Rip's and TV show rips and downloads and things like that to all of your different devices and even friends and family that aren't in your home and it has a lot of cool functionality you can learn more about it in the playlist linked in the video description there was a lot of news that came out over the past couple months about flex imma be good some of it bad the big good thing is that they have a beta exclusive to the forums I mean you can obviously download it if you're not active on the forums but you know not fully released yet of their new transcoder for transcoding footage for other devices notably this brings up specific fixes for it now supports in V deck or Nvidia hardware decoding on Linux which it didn't before so all of you wondering why I didn't do my Tesla for flex video on Linux that's because part of the problem was the decoder functionality which wasn't even present on Linux at the time of recording yeah and then there's a few other aspects to it one of the bigger ones is the zero copy functionality for the transcoding itself which is a much more efficient and powerful way of encoding footage and this is actually kind more or less equivalent to the new ending in coder implemented into OBS 23 earlier this year it is a zero copy functionality meaning other than scaling which can't be done on the encoder so if Lex is doing scaling here in the trans code it's doing that first it's sending it from the Nvidia decoder to the Nvidia encoder or Intel AMD is on the way I believe but I believe Intel is a surefire thing AMD in the works but you know from the graphics card based decoder of your source file so a movie rip sends it to the graphics card to be decoded then is encoded again on the graphics card - for the transcode and then sent out instead of to the cpu to the decoder to the cpu to the decoder or to the encoder like typically there's a lot more bounces that adds latency and makes the process much less efficient and you'll see minor sub subtle quality or rather performance bumps that over the previous transcoder a lot of people won't notice any difference but it's just kind of one of those fixes that now that's kind of a thing encoding pipelines are doing there's something they should implement once it's fully released in things like that I'll have more coverage of it I don't want to get it into it too much until it's publicly available because they have some other features they want to implement as well such as SD or HD r2 SDR transcoding which this lays the groundwork for but doesn't necessarily implement just yet another big news was the new Plex app I covered this last month in a video but one of the things that I missed that a lot of people were confused about what they announced that it was ending support for HT pcs now a lot of people were confused what this would mean because you could still setup page TPC with the new app and theoretically would be fine for most people but the previous Plex media player app actually had a lot of support for things like Logitech Harmony smart remotes and a couple HTPC optimized features that they were then cutting out for the new plex app for flex uno as well as the like 300-foot I think they called UI where it made everything super big all of that was being removed in the new plex app and they were dropping support for that obviously you could still connect your PC to your TV run the new plex app and it would be fine if you were using mouse and keyboard that is a clarification of what that meant but then after enough backlash because honestly it was a bizarre decision that I was really concerned and confused by they then announced that JK they're gonna find a way to keep it sustained because they didn't want to keep developing features for it or like maintaining support for it the legacy support because it was breaking other things or whatever and I guess they had decided that it wasn't a significant enough user base for it to really make a difference little did they know that you know is probably their most active and vocal user base so yeah so they announced that okay they're gonna find a way to make it work they're gonna leave the original plex media player app as it is and they may not update it a ton moving forward but they will figure out a way to keep both sides happy at least for the time being now on its own I'd say this is a typical program supplier mix up where they just decide they're gonna cut off something that suddenly a lot of people really care about and always cared about and just didn't necessarily make that very clear but then they also just announced that they are now getting support for Warner Brothers streaming now they haven't announced any of the lineup for TV shows or movies and this one is specifically only in the US but they are partnering with Warner Brothers to bring some of their movies and TV shows as a native integration within Plex kind of like you know you would open up your Smart TV and go to Netflix or Hulu or CBS or whatever you would have a Warner Brothers Channel kind of like the title channel in your Plex library so you can immediately start streaming over the Internet those files then literally as I'm going to sit down to record this it was announced that they've also partnered with Lionsgate which is going to be an international thing although specific movies and TV shows will have geo restrictions to implement their movies and TV shows into flex as well for streaming and some of the language when you keep that context in mind some of the language that they mentioned regarding removing HTTP support was is thrown some red flags for me because they specifically said that it is far more efficient and effective to just use a media streaming box a Roku a fire stick whatever or the app on your smart TV then a bulky power consuming HD PC and overall I would mostly agree although there's always little sacrifices you're making and there's always issues with certain formats not being supported and you need to try code whereas a PC can pretty much always direct play as long as you have mostly modern hardware the problem for me it's a I've received that a lot of people who aren't like the super server nerdy people like myself for bite my bits but you know they have massive server racks dedicated to their plex server those kinds of people who are running plex servers are generally from what I have seen and this may not be accurate or representative of everyone but what I have seen those kinds of people are using their HTTP see as their plex media server and just playing it directly on their TV and then streaming it to other devices so cutting out that support telling them to use something else doesn't make sense because they're already like they would they would be using more power you know it would be negligible but they would still technically be using more power and causing more problems to use a separate streaming box from their HTTP see that doesn't make any sense to me but also when you keep in mind that they're killing off this kind of thing the thing that heavily relies on using your own physical media that you've ripped and managing your own files while also implementing more streaming media functionality it makes me wonder if Plex is really trying to like like I am my first reaction was a good one so I'm gonna bring up a bunch of skepticism but my first reaction was a good one and that ok Plex is getting some legitimacy the MPAA isn't coming after them to tear them down instead certain publishers are actually working with them to distribute their films and TV shows through them that gives Plex some legitimacy keeps it in the light may mean that they have to behave a little bit more with some more maybe pirate friendly features which could suck but overall like plexes turning out to be a real deal but then once I started thinking about it more and seeing the HTTP see reaction and seeing the Lionsgate one go on top of it my second reaction is that of skepticism and fear because I worry that Plex is trying to move more towards the streaming media side because that's what the MPAA and all of the film publishers or distributors are wanting so you don't want anyone to own their media they want to stream it to them and manage licenses on that basis and Plex is trying to get in on the streaming service game if they're gonna start pushing out more and more of the manual or physical media based file management users we may see Plex become a completely different beast and it's pulling away from its roots which started as here's the files that you have here's the media you already own stream that and organize that wherever you want which was the big appeal for me when I first started with it the big appeal for a lot of people especially the whole pirate scene that I'm still just passing by so to pull away from that and go towards streaming media I start to wonder what the point of Plex would even be I guess in a sense Plex is kind of act acting as a middleman or a front in for Warner Brothers or Lions Gates own streaming services that way they don't have to have their own streaming app or back-end necessarily although I can't imagine Plex is actually developing their own streaming back in service for these publishers I don't know I'm nervous I will say that I would love to hear what you guys think maybe I'm being a little too skeptical maybe I'm coming up with conspiracy theories but to see them move so much towards streaming media for a service that was built on physical and local file playback is just a little scary to me especially when so much else is moving towards less ownership of the media you buy and consume and more of this nonsense and especially when there is problems with that like the weird reframing and cutting of the friends remasters and the Buffy remasters and things like that where I want to have my box set and I want to rip it and I want to stream it I don't want to stream the weird nonsense HD remaster that is objectively worse in every way I don't want it to vanish all of a sudden while I'm in the middle of watching it like house did or for it to go away in 2020 like the offices or friends in 2021 you know whichever that are getting removed from Netflix that seems like a terrible time I want to avoid that that is why I'm using Plex so for Plex to be turning into that is just scary and upsetting like I said I do want to hear your thoughts in the comment section down below let me know what you think as always hit the like button subscribe for more tech education and Plex content I have more educational stuff moving forward and in the playlist link in the description below I'm Evil's box I'll see you next time\n"