Plex Media Center

Hello again, myPlexians! (myPlexers? myPlexites? Hmm…) Andre here again, back from working hard in the myPlex fields with a juicy harvest. As part of our ongoing efforts to make adding videos to your queue as easy as possible, we have set up a newer, friendlier way. Every myPlex queue now has an email address. To find out what your queue’s email address is, just visit the queue help page. The email address on that page is unique, and adds videos only to your queue. Keep it to yourself, since anyone can add videos to your queue if they know that address.

How is this email address useful to me, you ask? Well, it’s actually pretty cool. On certain types of mobile devices that are pretty popular nowadays, like iPhones, and iPads, and those Android thingies, it’s hard to use bookmarklets. Setting them up is a pain, finding them to use them is a pain, and it’s pretty much just a pain all around. What those convenient and tiny computers all share, though, is a button that lets you email a link to the page or video. That button is now the beautiful integration point for your myPlex Queue! Just email the link to your queue’s email address, and you’ll be able to watch the video later from the comfort of your very own Plex.

To make things even easier, you can add your queue’s email address to your address book, with a name like “myPlex Queue”. Once you’ve done that, you don’t have to remember (or copy and paste) your queue’s email address whenever you want to queue an item over email. Now that you can email items to your queue, it’s easier than it’s ever been to queue up videos to watch later on your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, and any other device that supports myPlex.

Since those devices all put the name of the video in the subject line and a link to the webpage in the body, myPlex tries to take the title from the subject and the link from the body of the email. We didn’t want to limit you, though, so we’ll also look for URLs anywhere in the email subject or body. In fact, you can even queue a few URLs at once by sending all of them in a single email. We’ll add each one to your queue.

We hope you enjoy the new feature, and we’ll keep you posted as we continue working hard to add more. As always, we love to hear how your feedback as you use myPlex to watch your media when and where you want it.

It’s been about 24 hours since the release, although it seems longer than that because we haven’t gotten much sleep with all the excitement. First and foremost, a massive THANK YOU to everyone for your overwhelmingly positive response to this new release. It’s been an amazing experience for us to finally see this release take wings after being in development for so long. You’ve already queued thousands of items in your myPlex Queues, and one of you even wrote a Safari extension already (thanks, Alex!). Of all the feedback that poured in, this had to be one of my favorite comments:

I just wanted to quickly cover a few of the known issues, and some frequently asked questions, in hopes of helping you with the new release.

myPlex

• Why don’t I have any thumbnails? Some of you are noticing that your server’s sections don’t look as pretty as mine do. Speaking frankly, my sections bring all the girls to the yard. The reason for this is simply that with the many thousands of people who connected their servers to myPlex for the first time today, the thumbnailing jobs are a bit backed up. We’ll be bringing more hardware online shortly to help.

• Why don’t I see/can’t I play my media on myPlex? myPlex is a cloud-based hub for your media, which helps connect Plex clients to Plex Media Servers, but it does not store your libraries (media or metadata).
• I am having issues logging into myPlex/the forums. In order to support single sign-on and scale, we are migrating over accounts from the forums to myPlex. This migration should be transparent and automatic, and it has been for thousands of people. However, a handful of you have had trouble, the primary situation being if forgot your forum password. If you need help, please stop by the Plex Chat and one of our friendly engineers will lend a hand!
• myPlex makes it too easy for me to watch my media, no matter where I am! Sorry, we’ll get right on that.

Known issues

• There appears to be a problem with iOS 4.x, where users are seeing a crash on start with Plex for iOS 2.0. We’re scurrying around to find a device with that version (we’ve all updated to iOS5), so if you’re having problems, the quick fix would be to upgrade, if you’re willing to do so.
• A minority of users are reporting stutter with nearly all video, which we’re puzzled by. We’re in the process of isolating the cause, and you can help by stopping by Plex Chat and sharing details of your setup, or adding to a forum thread.
• Transcoding qualities from the Plex Laika client were wrong (too low), and additionally, transcoding from a server which was not on port 32400 (an automatically mapped one rarely is) would fail. A fix for this one is available as 0.9.5.1; the updated clients are available for download now (no autoupdate for now, sorry!).

Security/privacy

IANAL but these are my common sense notes:

• All communication between clients and myPlex is fully SSL encrypted.
• myPlex doesn’t store any information about your media (files, hashes, etc.)
• myPlex stores five thumbnails from each section (when it gets around to it) but no metadata about items in your library (beyond what you see).
• myPlex acts as a hub, connecting Plex clients and Plex servers, but it is not involved in any communication between client and server (beyond facilitating it).
• myPlex stores URLs and metadata for queued items (obviously), and your progress viewing the items.
• When clients sign into myPlex, they send OS type and version, client type and version, and a unique identifier (random UUID on most platforms).
• myPlex loves you and respects you. myPlex doesn’t wait to call you. myPlex never forgets your birthday.

General tips

• Plex/Nine used to contain client and server together in a single package. For a variety of reasons, the new release has separated out the client (Plex Media Center) and the server (Plex Media Server). This allows you to quickly install just the client on a machine, for example. The new server can simply be dragged to Applications like the client.
• The old and new clients don’t interfere with each other and can both be used on the same machine.
• You can move between old and new server (and back again) without any trouble.
• One thing to note is if you had the old server starting automatically, you may want to disable this in Plex/Nine via Preferences > System > Plex Media Server if you’re going to run the new server.
• There is no need to re-scan, recreate your library, or anything of that nature when moving between server versions. Try the new one out! Make your dog use the old one!
• The new client will work with the old server, mostly, but you’ll be missing features (e.g. TV posters in On Deck/Recently Added). If the server is much older, the new client may not see its sections at all.
• The old client will work with the new server perfectly, but it might be a bit jealous.
• The new client is labeled BETA. It’s very new. Most things should work much better. Some things are still missing, incomplete, or broken.
• There is no auto-update for the new client or server yet, but it will be added soon.

And for Phill, who correctly pointed out in the comments that such a major release warrants an additional photo of Barkley: you, sir, are correct, and we’ve taken steps to remedy this most serious breach of protocol.