Plex Media Center

Can you tell this is going to be a great year for everything Plex? Not two weeks into 2013 and we have another three releases for you.

First up, let’s have a look at a really cool new feature in the Plex/Web release that you all should already have, thanks to the magic of auto-update. As many of you already know, PlexSync is cloud and server-based, and thanks to that, you can now queue up media to be converted for any of your devices from the convenience of a browser, no matter where in the world you are.

So you might be at work, and between designing spacecraft or performing open-heart surgery, you’re busy getting your iPad (sitting at home) ready for your upcoming vacation. Not that we at Plex condone ever doing anything other than work, at work. Really.

This also means that you can now use the advanced filters available in Plex/Web and send the results to one of your devices. So you could select “unwatched movies rated PG and released in the last three years”, for example, and this smart filter would continually watch for movies matching that criteria and convert them for your device. Pretty cool, right?

There’s also a cool new “activity” view which shows what your server is working on (yes, we will be enhancing it in the future to show more activity, which many of you have been asking for).

As you probably already know, PlexSync is a premium feature which we bundle with PlexPass.

Switching topics, there’s also a brand new release of Plex for Windows 8 in the store, with a bunch of new things including theme music! Direct play of AVI and MP4 files! PlayTo support! Support for Window Media Center remote controls! And lots more, you can read the full release notes here.

Last, but not least, there’s a new Plex Media Server release, which addresses some issues, including a reboot problem with LG TVs. We’ve spoken with LG, and they say a firmware update is coming which will fix the bug, but we have a workaround for you in the meantime. You can download the new release in the usual place.

• FIX: Workaround for LG TVs rebooting.
• FIX: (Windows) Lots of CPU, giants logs in some cases.
• FIX: An issue scanning sections where the paths had trailing slashes (e.g. W:\).
• FIX: MP4 files with DTS streams had them incorrectly identified as MP4a.
• FIX: (Sync) A few issues with sync status not being reported correctly.
• FIX: (Transcoder) An A/V sync issue affecting Windows 8 Plex app.

Happy New Year! We hope you had a festive and safe celebration. I personally spent the minutes before midnight in fear, as our neighborhood apparently considers launching illegal fireworks as the island equivalent of having the greenest lawn or largest snowblower. Explosions which sounded like mortars shook the house, and rockets clearly on par with the best commercial fireworks shot overhead, one nearly setting a palm tree on fire. Add the staccato of long chains of firecrackers and clouds of acrid smoke wafting over the entire neighborhood, and it was probably the closest I’ve even been to a war zone. And where, might you ask, was Barkley during all this action? Tucked in, completely unfazed by all the antics.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, our triad of releases to greet the new year, as a harbinger of much awesomeness to come.

First up, we have a major update to the Windows 8 Plex app with a bunch of bug fixes, much improved support for keyboard navigation, audio/subtitle stream selection, universal search, a lovely interface to the channel store, and a new high quality (but experimental) option for video playback which allows re-muxing most H.264 video. It’s available in the Windows 8 store right now.

Next up, Plex/Web is kicking it Gangnam style with an awesome new release, including the much requested ability to upload custom posters, with drag and drop, no less (or from a URL), some sexy tag completion in the editor, support for retina-quality posters on retina devices, and lots of bug fixes. You’ll get the update automatically within the next few hours, or you can force an update, as usual.

You know it’s going to be a big year when we have two photos of Barkley gracing a release post! The second one of course celebrates the new new release of the media server, which has the usual bag of goodies and fixes. You can download it right now from the usual place.

• NEW: Music sections support searching by album.
• NEW: Massive performance improvements for some DLNA streaming scenarios.
• NEW: Allow players to specify a protocol and respect their port.
• NEW: (API) Support for filtering movies by studio.
• NEW: (API) Support for sorting by last view date.
• NEW: (API) Added endpoints for uploading custom media assets (e.g. posters). Used by Plex/Web.
• FIX: Some cache control header updates.
• FIX: A few crashes.
• FIX: (Windows) Workaround for Win 8 security model preventing Plex for Windows 8 from connecting on same machine.
• FIX: (Windows) Crash on start.
• FIX: (Windows) 100% CPU when Plex for Windows 8 is running.
• FIX: (Transcoder) External SRT files with BOM marker weren’t getting rendered.
• FIX: (Transcoder) Faster startup.
• FIX: (PlexSync) Transcoder now handles anamorphic video properly.
• FIX: (PlexSync) Sometimes converted files could be bigger than source files.
• FIX: (PlexSync) Ratings directory was missing.
• FIX: (API) New /channels/arts endpoint which returns channel background art.
• FIX: (API) Resolutions filter can be itself filtered.
• FIX: (API) Don’t return empty studios.
• FIX: (API) Global on deck has mixed parents.
• FIX: (API) Make sure recently viewed channels have identifiers.
• FIX: (API) Fix incorrectly escaping JSON.
• FIX: (API) Fixes for media asset uploads, and select/lock upload.
• FIX: (API) Fix alphanumeric paging with non-alphanumeric characters.
• FIX: (DLNA) Hopeful fix for some heap corruption.
• FIX: Fixed a few (very) rare deadlocks.
• FIX: Fixed iTunes channel for iTunes 11.
• FIX: (Sync) iPad 4s weren’t using the right profile.
• FIX: (Transcoder) Faster starting for transcoded audio.
• FIX: (Transcoder) Fixes for RTMP with new transcoder.
• FIX: (Transcoder) Speed up WebKit transcoder starts.
• FIX: (Transcoder) Fix for some remuxing cases with Win8.