Plex and Playon

Any local users of either or both servers?

Interested in trading info and inquiries!

I have PlayOn lifetime, and Plex Free. In the early days, it was simply for casting from my PC to my TV. I realized later that Plex is probably better, as the fight for domination by providing original programming and extras is well under way.

I never use either except for the odd occations, because the interface on both is so sloppy. There seems to be a perception that a huge, colourful icon for everything is the way to go. if you have dozens or hundreds of films, TV shows, and music, you need a Detailed grid view, like in Windows File Explorer. They haven't caught on to this... and worse, because you cast the same interface to your TV, you are either stuck with farting around with a mouse and Up/Down cursor for hours, or investing in some BlueTooth gear for a keyboard connection.

The 'search' function is really no bonus. Now, with Roku and so many other devices, including and maybe especially Chromecast (which essentially casts anything from your phone or PC), I'll need to see more from both PlayOn and Plex to convince me.

ComputerGuy wrote:I have PlayOn lifetime, and Plex Free. In the early days, it was simply for casting from my PC to my TV....

...The 'search' function is really no bonus. Now, with Roku and so many other devices, including and maybe especially Chromecast (which essentially casts anything from your phone or PC), I'll need to see more from both PlayOn and Plex to convince me.

CG,
are you using the PLEX app on Roku? I am not much of a TV watcher but I find the PLEX interface to be not much worse than anything else on Roku.* They're all a bit confusing, inconvenient and overwhelming for me. I haven't bothered to figure out the speech option on my Roku remote.
*I don't subscribe to any premium channels.

I can watch both PLex and PlayOn on either the Roku or my Samsung TV. I prefer the Roku because it has a much more powerful processor that the TV. Because even a super-fast Interneet speed (which I get with iLox and direct ethernet through a Gigabit switch) relies to some extent on the device chip itself... so less wait time for starting up channels, less stutter, less waiting.

But perhaps I should be more clear about the interface: their are two. One is for watching stuff from your PC. That interface is a kludgey mess of directories and sub-directories, with long hard-drive access times and not a lot of control because a TV remote is so basic. The other is when watching Plex/PlayOn programming, which yes, is a lot like Roku. Both systems take far too long to wade through. Roku did come up with a brilliant idea, though: microphone search. I can say "Load Bonanza" and it goes off and finds it. This saves hours of time and tons of frustration. I haven't tried it with Plex or PlayOn on the Roku yet because I just don't use them much.

More importantly, I don't care to watch things that are on my PC anyway. I have a different system. I load everything that I have downloaded from the torrents onto a portable hard drive and plug that into my DVD player, which offers me all the remote control functions I need to skp through what's available.

Right now the biggest drawbacks to any system are a lack of OnScreen Guide, unless you are into IPTV and know how to constantly update the M3U lists, and a lack of live news and events. Althugh that is beginning to change, slowly. Far too much info for this thread right now.

nlu wrote:Any local users of either or both servers?

Interested in trading info and inquiries!

Any interest in other "apps" for both live streaming and VOD?

Probably best to start another thread. It's a big topic.