Plex Media Center

My gosh, it’s been a while.

You’d think I didn’t love writing these posts, or we’ve all been on vacation for a very long time. As usual, however, we’ve been here the whole time, working tirelessly on Plex, and growing our small but ninja-level team of developers. We’re super happy to announce that Tobias (of Plex for ATV2 fame) is joining us full-time; turns out Sweden is not only full of Plex-lovers, it’s also full of incredible engineering talent.

In other news, we’re finalizing the release of our Windows Phone 7 client, about which I’ll blog more shortly (until then, you can watch a sneak peek video). Also coming up is a release of the Plex Media Server which supports DLNA, which means you can access all your content from your Xbox360 or PS3 (yes, including your myPlex Queue and shared content, this is not your parents’ DLNA!). Our friends at GigOM have a sneak peek.

Also, I promise, we will soon switch our attention to the Plex desktop client (Laika) to fix bugs and add some cool new things. I realize some of you are frustrated with the optical audio bug and A/V sync issue, and we’ll get them fixed. (This is the client that’s on my TV every time I use Plex, so it’s near and dear to my heart!)

Lastly, between blog posts, if you’re looking for some love, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or stop by the Plex Chat to say hello! I’m in the chat room most days myself, always happy to meet new and long-time users.

For today, we have a new release of the media server for you, which fixes a number of issues. The release can be downloaded from the usual spot, and we’ll enable autoupdate in a day or two for Mac and Windows. (On Linux, ReadyNAS, QNAP/Cisco and unRAID packages are up, others will follow shortly.)

• NEW: Add a universal font for rendering subtitles with on Windows and Linux. This fixes streaming from Linux not working when subtitles were enabled.
• NEW: Enhanced selection of audio tracks: if streams are all in the same language (or are all missing a language), apply selection logic for DTS/AC3.
• FIX: Some media (e.g. MPEG1/2/TS) was not properly generating a thumbnail.
• FIX: We check to see if public address changes, and if so, notify myPlex.
• FIX: If the port is manually mapped, the media server never updates myPlex.
• FIX: Computing “streamability” for MP4 files was totally broken, leading to iOS not Direct Playing them. (You’ll need to rescan the library section or else kick off media analysis via the command line to fix existing files.)
• FIX: In some cases, the wrong subtitle (internal) was rendered, even when an external subtitle was selected.
• FIX: On Deck wasn’t correct for shows with multiple episodes on a single day (e.g. two-part finales like that awesome Lost finale that Anna and I are still arguing about).
• FIX: Filenames are now stored as UTF-8 on the Mac.
• FIX: A hang on OS X/Linux when spawning a section refresh
• FIX: Unmatched media wasn’t getting subtitles and cover art files.
• FIX: Stop ignoring USB drives on Linux; it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it just makes neckbeards angry.
• FIX: A bug where site config “pause” commands would never continue if a frame load came in during the pause (thanks, Ian!)
• FIX: A crash when there is no computer name set on OS X.
• FIX: Various WebKit crashes on Windows.
• FIX: Increase the iTunes ‘path’ column in the database, required for better I18N support (it was super short).
• FIX: Tweak to HTTP Live Streaming to make it adhere closer to the spec (and work on a TouchPad).
• FIX: Better (and much simpler) check for private network connections (details here).
• FIX: When episodes don’t have indexes (episode numbers), watched/unwatched settings applied to the entire season.
• FIX: When splitting media, you could end up with a “warning” flag that wouldn’t go away.
• FIX: Improved WebKit audio sync.
• FIX: A crash while updating the library.

We’ll be back soon with more news and releases, but for now I’ll leave you with a photo of the official Plex mascot, Mr. Barkley.