Plex Media Center for OS X Leopard

We just pushed a new release out which improves compatibility with some Flash sites, and to go along with it, Scott prepared a new version of the Hulu plug-in with some nice enhancements, including more fanart, better thumbnails, flattened movie hierarchy, and more results returned for specific shows.

Besides the known issue of the Plex Media Server not working with Safari Adblocker, if a plug-in stops working, it’s likely that the structure of the site changed. This doesn’t happen very frequently with most sites, but it’s a definite possibility. When this occurs, an entity we call the “Campfire Robot” springs into action automatically and tracks us down to let us know, and shortly thereafter we can push an update.

As such, if a site stops working, the best thing to do is to check the App Store for updates. If you have automatic updates turned on, check your install history to see if an update got installed while you were getting coffee.

To answer your question, no, we rarely sleep.

Here’s another of Barkley and Anna from the San Francisco series:

As if you really needed a reason to upgrade to the latest version of Plex out today, but just in case, I’ll give you one: You’ll be able to run the new NPR plug-in. I picture our users as being a cultured, sophisticated bunch, so hopefully you’ll enjoy this one.

So run, don’t walk, to install the latest update and then head over to the App Store to pick up the NPR plug-in.

We’re really happy to see that people seem to be enjoying the store. We’ve had tens of thousands of plug-ins downloaded already, and we have a bunch of new ones in the works! In the meantime, we’ve cooked up another quick release to try to fix the most egregious issues with the last one.

• FIX: Fixed permissions on the Plex binary to allow non-administrative users to run.
• FIX: Tweaks to the skin for upcoming Plug-ins.
• FIX: Some crashes and leaks in the Media Server.
• FIX: Fixed the scrapers/NFO issue, this time for real (many thanks to Isaac for all the hard work on this one!). We also include the TMDB scraper again.
• FIX: A regression where only the first iPhoto album showed up.
• FIX: Improved compatibility with Flash sites for the Media Server.

The release can be downloaded here or via Sparkle as usual.

Here’s another photo of Barkley playing on a beach in San Francisco.

We figured that you might not have quite enough content yet to keep you busy watching and out of the forums filing pesky bugs. Luckily, Scott has been on a skiing vacation, and a few evenings ago he drank a bit too much at an Après-ski, then went home and wrote the Joost plug-in. We hope you enjoy it, there is a ton of content on there. Seeking doesn’t work yet but it should be an easy fix.

James also deployed some updates for the App Store plug-in itself. There’s now an update history section where you can browse through the plug-ins you’ve installed and the latest release notes for each one.

If you have automatic updates enabled, you’ll get the new App Store without any further ado, otherwise select Check For Updates to install manually.

Less than 24 hours after we launched, we received the first third-party plug-in submission, from the very talented photographer Jasper van der Meij. It’s really impressive, because he figured it all out just from looking at existing plug-ins, and even added his own nicely designed artwork.

If you’re looking to write your own plug-in, have a look at the installed ones in ~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins. If you’re writing a plug-in that works with a Flash or Silverlight site, you’ll also need to add a site configuration into ~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Site Configurations (see existing ones in ~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins/SiteConfigurations.bundle/Contents/Resources). The Plex Media Server automagically picks up changes so you don’t need to restart it while you’re developing, although you may want to run it inside Terminal to see the debug output.

I promise that we’ll have tutorials and documentation in short order, but these plug-ins are very easy to write, especially if you know Python and understand XPATH. We also have a new forum for the discussion of plug-in development.

Let’s see what you can come up with!

I could present the usual release notes, talk about the CoreAudio crash on startup that’s been fixed, the Mira/Sofacontrol changes (thanks marklight!), mention the TV/Movies keymap issue that was fixed, explain that the region link to weather settings is now fixed, and that NFO files no longer cause scraping issues. But honestly, I’d rather talk about something else.

This release, one innocent little point difference from the last, has the biggest new Plex feature ever. I’m not just gushing hyperbole here when I say you will never use Plex the same way again.

I’d like to introduce you to the new Plex Media Server:

Dear Media Companies,

I’m really beginning to think that things between us won’t work.

I have to admit that I’ve been cheating on you for a while now. I’ve been spending time with USENET. She’s old, she’s unattractive, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with her, but she does offer me one simple thing that you don’t: unencumbered access to ad-free media.

It didn’t have to be this way. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve never been a good listener. You seem more interested in your friends the Advertisers than me. And you’re terrified that I’ll steal your content, without realizing that (a) I already am and (b) you could offer me so much more.

In thinking of me as an untrustworthy thief, you’re missing some great opportunities. There is a holy trinity of things I want desperately from you, because I can’t get them anywhere else: availability, quality, and metadata. By availability I mean give me access to full catalogs of content. More is more. If I can’t get it from you, I’m going to have to go elsewhere, and you don’t want that. Secondly, give me quality: why would I go to you for SD content when I can get HD content elsewhere? Why would I go to you for ad-laden content when I can get ad-free content elsewhere? Lastly, give me rich metadata: reviews, related content, recommendations, transcripts, and credits. And give me an API interface to that data. In return I will give you my money every month, and I’ll rub your feet at least once a week.

I see you getting nervous, looking down at your shoes. Don’t you get it? I pay $30/month for my illicit relationship with the old hag, and she doesn’t offer me any meaningful part of the holy trinity – let’s face it, though, she only has to be better than you, and that’s not hard. She offers spotty availability, unreliable quality, and a paucity of metadata. The money I’m giving her could be in your pocket.

I would say that we needed counseling, but before that, I think you need to educate yourself a bit about basic economics; learn about concepts like tiered pricing and price discrimination. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that you’ve put your content online, but you’ve done it in a way that’s nearly useless to me. You want to offer it free, with ads? Great, but for the love of God, offer a subscription model where I can access it without the ads. Charge me a bit more and give me higher resolution content. A bit more and I get access to metadata for remixing your content.

(Remember two important things: (1) If you don’t give me what I want, I will go elsewhere and (2) You have the ability to give me things that I can’t get elsewhere.)

To reiterate: You have to stop being scared that I’m going to steal your content, because I’m already stealing your content. Your goal should be to get me to give you the money I’m already giving to others.

I’ll leave you with a win-win proposal. Sit down and run the numbers, and figure out how much I’m worth to you per month as a pair of eyeballs to your Advertiser friends. Double that amount, and that’s how much I’ll pay you for access to your content without any ads. Triple it, and that’s how much I’ll pay for high resolution, unencumbered content with metadata.

So please, take some time and think about things. I really think we could be great together.

As much as we try to ensure the quality of every release, there can always be some gremlins that sneak in, which is why it’s important to make it extremely easy to make new releases. After all, there’s a lot of stuff happening between writing a line of code and getting that code into your living rooms.

Luckily, we have a few scripts written, and there are really only a few simple steps: The first script builds a release, tags it, and packages it up into a DMG. The second one uploads it to our server, distributes it to a set of initial mirrors, and uploads metadata about the new release. The third “throws the switch” on the new release.

Here are the changes in this new release, which can be downloaded here (source here):

• FIX: iPhoto events sort by date, not by name.
• FIX: Slow access to media, marking unwatched/watched, etc.
• FIX: The HTTP receive timeout was increased to 15 seconds, to hopefully allow TVDB time to respond. Thanks to Todd L on the forums for suggesting this fix.
• FIX: IFO files weren’t showing up in DVD video directories.
• FIX: The MediaStream “Info List” view mode was tweaked to make the list the same size and positioning vertically as the regular list view.

Enjoy! This is Barkley relaxing in his favorite spot of grass on the island, in the remote town of Hana.

A one-click method to gather up information about your Plex configuration and submit it to us online? A great tool to help us diagnose and solve your problems with the application? Written in Cocoa? Auto-updating? It might sound too good to be true, but it’s not. Head over to James’ blog post as he introduces the new Plex System Reporter tool, and download it for yourself.

I can’t believe it’s already February! It’s been a rainy month out here, so for the most part there was nothing better to do than hunker down and write code and hope the electricity didn’t go out.

We have a brand new release for you with lots of good stuff. The exciting part, though, is that we spent as much time on the release as we did on some great new features coming up shortly. These new features are going to change the way you use Plex, and are going to open up some very interesting possibilities. We’ll be making a preview release shortly.

The release can be downloaded from here, and the source is available here.

Without further ado, here are the changes for this release:

• FIX: Ryan coaxed DTSWAV files into playing. It turns out to be impossible to play 44.1KHz DTS files on OS X, as it assumes encoded audio is 48KHz. For now, we’re mixing down the files, and shortly we’ll move to transcoding them to 48KHz AC3 files. Not optimal, but better than nothing given the limitations of the platform. (I’m looking forward to this personally, because I want to have the first 1080p Wizard of Oz + 5.1 Dark Side of the Moon party.)
• FIX: The highly annoying bug which caused TV shows to lose audio randomly with TV theme music enabled.
• FIX: Certain dialogs in the update code didn’t support UTF8 strings (James).
• FIX: There is now an option you can disable to prevent Plex linking the system audio output device with the device selected in Plex (System > Audio > Link System Output).
• FIX: The audio device settings didn’t appear to be remembered in the settings (they actually were saved, just not displayed correctly).
• FIX: We’ve disallowed deleting files from inside Plex by default. Much safer! This is a change to the settings, so you’d need to delete your guisettings.xml file to get the new value.
• FIX: We fixed a bug that prevented actions from being sent to Plex via event clients (used by Remote buddy).
• FIX: Ryan fixed a crash when attempting to transcode a corrupt DTS stream into AC3.
• FIX: Background music tracks are now played completely randomly.
• FIX: Isaac fixed some issues in the harmony and keyboard maps, and also added Hold Up/Hold Down to control volume in Full Screen Video and Visusalization for Mira users (and likely Sofa Control users as well). He also went through and “humanized” some of the error messages that Plex spits out to be more intelligible.
• FIX: Tweaked permissions on a MediaStream file.
• FIX: Mikey gave us some fixes to French strings (thanks!)
• FIX: Stillness sent some fixes for the KinoPoisk scraper (thanks!)
• FIX: A crash in Weather for some regions.
• FIX: Maddox suggested some excellent changes in the scraper defaults which result in better movie covers by default.

We have also updated the Plex Media Server (included with Plex) with the following changes:

• NEW: James added support for nested iTunes playlist folders and iPhoto folders (a much requested feature).
• NEW: Audiobook support.

• FIX: More tweaks for “album artist” tag.
• FIX: iPhoto sorting of events and albums was broken.

We’ve also pulled the usual bunch of fixes from XBMC, including updated scrapers, updated UPnP code, and some fixes.

Here’s Barkley resting in the yard. He’s still wearing his brace, but his limp is nearly gone, and we’re planning to start the water rehab in our friends’ pool shortly.