Plex Media Center for OS X Leopard

If you’re a basketball fan, you probably want to check out the hot-off-the-presses March Madness plug-in we just released. You can watch all the games live, in HD!

Note: You need Silverlight installed for this plug-in to work.

We’re got another batch of plug-ins to liven up your weekend. As usual, we’ve gotten a lot of help on these, and we really appreciate all the comments on and suggestions for the framework. There are now over 40 plug-ins available, and the App Store has only been open for three weeks! We look forward to getting more coverage for our international users, and are happy to provide help to developers in these countries, since many times we don’t have access to the foreign content (silly media providers). Specifically, we’ve been assisting some Swedish users on a plug-in which we’re excited about.

I’ll start with a shout out to our users in Britain, who will be overjoyed to see an iPlayer plugin. We’ve got at least one more British plug-in in the works as well. James has been working on this plug-in for a while, and it’s a real labor of love. With BBC iPlayer you can catch up with shows from the past seven days that you’ve missed or want to watch again, or watch episodes from an entire series with Series Catch-Up. Shows are available from all BBC TV channels and radio stations, and BBC Wales content shown on S4C. Inside Plex, you can view the most popular iPlayer content, highlights selected by the BBC, and browse by channel, day, genre or format, or use the search feature to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Next up, we have a couple of new ones that I know will be heavily in my rotation. Daniel Metz, Isaac and Scott created plug-ins for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Tons of content, and lovely organization.

James also whipped up a plug-in for Geekscape, which was requested by phunkysai, long-time Plex tester and all around good guy.

Next up, anyone with a TiVo is going to love this one. Written by Yoav, and described in more detail here, this plug-in lets you stream shows directly off your TiVo. Brilliant work! As one happy beta user commented “Thank you very much, this app runs beautifully”.

Last, but not least, we have another beautiful photo blog available on your TV, called Aperture Priority. There is some great tilt-shift photography on there.

We have lots of interesting plug-ins in the works, but this one is kind of special. After all, who doesn’t love Pandora? Scott, who never ceases to amaze me with his plug-in writing prowess, whipped this lovely gem up. It still has a few rough edges, such as the need to log into Pandora with Safari, but we couldn’t resist releasing it early for you to play with.

You’ll note that the last menu item at the top level is a help screencast that walks you though the plug-in, which Isaac made. Please watch it if you have any questions. The only other tricky bit besides logging in through Safari is that we’ve added special controls for this plug-in: Hitting “right” moves to the next track, hitting “up” gives the track a thumbs up, and hitting “down” gives the track a thumbs down. (Sometimes you have to hit the key/button twice).

Hopefully it’s a fun new addition to the content available in Plex!

After a few days of working perfectly, they’ve deployed new countermeasures against us. We’re looking into it and are working on a fix.

This cat and mouse isn’t benefitting anyone.

The final thing I’ll say is that there is a ton of other content available on Plex via Joost and other plug-ins, and there will continue to be more and more as time goes on.

There’s some new stuff for you to enjoy in the Plex App Store today. First of all, we have a plug-in for the popular Daily Kos site. If progressive politics if your thing, you’ll likely enjoy this one.

If you prefer to get your politics directly from the White House, Chris Tarczon (author of the popular IGN plug-in) wrote a plug-in which gives you access to Obama’s weekly addresses (in HD!) and other White House content.

And for those of you who don’t care a whit about (American) politics, but like your rock indie flavored, install the Pitchfork TV plug-in, which provides access to a *ton* of content, including band interviews, live performances, music videos, and more.

We’ve also released an update to the CNET plug-in so that the “Today on CNET” section actually reflects the current date.

Just in time to distract you at the start of your work week, we have a bunch of new content available from the App Store.

James added Academic Earth, a brilliant site with thousands of lectures from the best professors in the world. This one was requested in the forums.

We received a submission for an IGN plug-in from Chris Tarczon. Chris obviously “gets” our framework and did a great job with it. There is a ton of gaming-related content here.

James also did a plug-in for The Escapist, which houses a collection of gaming-related shows, reviews and entertainment content.

Scott and Isaac whipped up a plug-in for The Onion, a hilarious site with fake news.

And finally, we received another user submission from Chris Barnes for his wife’s photoblog site. She’s a talented photographer, check it out!

We also released updates to Hulu (display more season/episode data), Google LIFE (update for site change), and Revision3 (added thumbnails).

We hope you’re enjoying consuming all this content as much as we’re enjoying bringing it to you!

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 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!

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.