Plex Media Center for OS X Leopard

(First of all, a sincere apology for not writing sooner. Communication is important, and I’ve sorely lapsed in my communication with the Plex community. This may have appeared as a lack of progress on Plex, but let me assure you, it’s entirely the opposite. We have some amazing things to share with you this year, and we’re only getting started.)

As most of you know, for the last year we’ve been working hard on best-in-class support for online media. Since we released the first version of the Plex Media Server with support for plug-ins, there have been hundreds of plug-ins written, and more than 1.4 million plug-ins downloaded from our store. We strongly believe that our platform is the easiest way on the planet to get media from a website to your living room TV.

On the other hand, many people who first see Plex are impressed most by how it handles your local media. To see a file on your hard drive spring to life with posters, fan art, and rich metadata is a wondrous thing indeed. Navigating through your library in various ways, seeing what episodes of a TV Show you haven’t watched, browsing through movie summaries and ratings, these things are all magical compared with browsing a lifeless Finder window.

The success of our platform for online media, coupled with our passion for building the best possible product, led us to focus our attention and energy in the last months on local content. Now as you may know, the library in Plex/Eight is based almost entirely on XBMC code. The XBMC library is quite possibly the best in the world, especially compared with other pieces of media center software. So the first question was: enhance or rewrite? At the end, we decided, just like with our plug-in framework, to throw out the existing code and rewrite it from scratch.

The ground up rewrite not only results in an extremely powerful library for personal content, but also sets the stage for providing many benefits beyond just the library itself. The latest major revision of the Plex Media Server, which incorporates the library, provides many other new capabilities under the hood that will allow us and developers to build some seriously cool new things.

This first post will serve as an attempt to explain the high-level features. Of course, the most important thing of all is its name. We decided to name the Plex Library after the Royal Library of Alexandria, the most famous library of the ancient world. (Naysayers may point out that the library was eventually destroyed, but hey, it lasted for hundreds of years!)

Here are some of the features of the new library:

• Decentralized: This was very important to us. The XBMC library is coupled to the media center itself. In Alexandria, the Plex Media Server stores all the data, and serves it out via an HTTP/XML interface. In this way, multiple Plex applications can share a library, or multiple libraries. You can do cool things like stop watching a movie on one client and resume on another.
• Flexible: As opposed to the XBMC library with its limiting Movies and TV areas, Alexandria allows a library to have unlimited sections. For example, you might have a “Documentaries” section, a “Home Movies” section, an “Anime” section, and a “Foreign Films” section, all configured to suit the media.
• Open: As mentioned before, the data from the library is available via an HTTP interface to the Plex Media Server. In addition, a new class of plug-ins called Metadata Agents have been developed, which are responsible for finding and retrieving information about your media from the Internet. Agents already exist for IMDB, TheMovieDB, TheTVDB, and others. Agents can retrieve any sort of data, such as TV theme music, subtitles, and song lyrics. The agents can be combined and arranged so that the resulting information is a customizable amalgam. We’ve also added a new class of entities called Scanners, which are responsible for identifying media on your drives. This means that even if you have a completely different file system structure to your media, you can write a few lines of Python code and integrate it with Alexandria.
• Unified: In Alexandria, even if a movie has no entry on IMDB (for example), it still sits alongside those movies that do. There is no more “file mode” and “library mode”. Everything in a library section, regardless of how much metadata it has, is a first class citizen of the library. This also allows content like home movies to live in the library, have their own fan art, posters, summaries, and other metadata.
• Robust: One of the problems with the old library is that a change to the IMDB site, for example, could cripple the scraper and prevent new content from being added. Since the metadata agents and scanners live in Plex plug-in bundles, they are auto-updated from our site, so we can quickly push a fix. Additionally, Alexandria is flexible enough such that even if a metadata provider like TheTVDB is down, new episodes are still added (and somewhat magically, may even get full metadata!)
• Developer friendly: The old scrapers were an enormous pain to develop, maintain, and even understand. We’ve built the new agents on top of our proven plug-in framework, which relies on modern features like XPath to make it easier than ever to bring metadata to your media.
• User friendly: There are a number of features which make Alexandria a pleasure for users. The library management is centered around the Plex Media Manager built into the Plex Media Server, which makes it easy to add library sections. Once added, these sections show up instantly on all Plex clients in the house. The Media Manager makes it easy to maintain your media, correct matches, tweak the metadata, customize the artwork, and more.

This, in summary, is Alexandria. I’m sure the first question will be “When can I have it?” We are quite far along with development, and we have released early builds to a select group of testers, who have been extremely helpful with their feedback and help. I’m using it full-time on my Mini, and used it to watch the latest episode of Lost last night. There are, of course, many things to clean up, fix, and add, but it won’t be too long now before we open up the testing to more people.

Thanks again for your patience. I’ll write more soon, and cover lots more of the details of Alexandria. Until then, I’ll leave you with some quotes from the first group of testers:

“Setting up sources is MUCH MUCH MUCH easier!!”

“NIIIIICEEEEE!!!!”

“This is going to be soooo good!!”

“ho-ly sh*t! I can read and understand this!”

“PC users are going to want a Mac. This is way ahead of XBMC now”

“This is just … WOW!!!”

“That is fantastic! Exactly what we need.”

“This looks amazing…exactly what is missing”

“You guys, this is f**king amazing”

“Whacking sources before used to be such a pain in the ass. Now it’s no big deal.”

“Wow, this is really nice”

Some more plug-in releases for you fine folk this week. For those more interested in local content, stay tuned for some upcoming posts on the new Media Library (code name: Alexandria) that is making its debut in the Plex/Nine series!

Thanks as always to the plug-in authors, and to Isaac for managing the plug-in release process.

Kelby.tv – Written by Sander Spies

Kelby.tv provides videos from the following sites:

NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) News
Ask Dave
Photoshop User TV
Lightroom Killer Tips
Layers TV
D-Town TV
Photoshop Killer Tips

Webcomics – Written by Spaceman

Like comics? You’ll love this plug-in!

TellSticker – Written by Eithe

TellSticker lets you control your TellStick devices from within Plex. You can switch devices (like lights) on or off, dim them or bell them. You need to have Telldus Center installed for it to work (and a TellStick hardware device).

NBC Olympics – Written by Jonny Wray

View exclusive Highlights, Recaps, Interviews, News, Results, Features and Athlete Bios from NBCOlympics.com

Flickr – Written by Ian.G and Jonny Wray

Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world, and it’s great to be able to welcome it to Plex.

Studio 100 TV – Written by Sander Spies

Studio 100 TV verzamelt de leukste videoclips van Mega Mindy, Samson en Gert, Kabouter Plop, K3 en nog vele andere. Bekijk ze nu allemaal gratis online!

1 Cast – Written by Jonny Wray

Sourcing content through partnerships with top broadcasters and cable networks, 1Cast is the online destination to get all the news you need – updated throughout the day.

CBC – Written by mysciencefriend

More than just a traditional broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada is evolving into a content company, the home of Canadian programming and a multimedia leader with a solid presence in the regions.

CBC’s new video player brings you online streaming of your favorite entertainment, news and sports programming straight to your computer. Watch full-length episodes, news, on-demand sports and more.

The Prayer Room – Written by Sander Spies

Kansas City Missions Base, founded by Mike Bickle, operating in 24/7 worship and prayer since 1999 with a Bible school, bookstore, cafe, and conference center.

Het Gesprek – Written by Sander Spies

Het Gesprek biedt inspiratie, nieuws en inhoud met programma’s over actualiteiten, maatschappij, cultuur en media.

GreenStijlTV – Written by Danny Michael

Bekijk het online tv-kanaal van de website GeenStijl.TV (onderdeel van GeenStijl).

Dumpert – Written by Danny Michael

Bekijk filmpjes, plaatjes en beluister audio van de website Dumpert.nl (onderdeel van GeenStijl).

Nicholas Deleon from CrunchGear was kind enough to spend the time to run an interview on Plex past, present, and future. If that’s your thing, check it out.

We’ve got some great new plug-ins to share with you this week, thanks as usual to Isaac for coordinating the release and to all the developers for all their hard work creating the new plug-ins!

Feed Me – Written by Jonny Wray

Create a library of your favorite video and audio podcasts using ‘Feed Me’. This plugin allows you to build and view content from a collection of sources by browsing the integrated podcast directory sites or by entering RSS URLs directly.

Universal Sports – Written by Jonny Wray

Universal Sports is the premier Olympic and lifestyle sports network featuring coverage of the Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, World Championships, World Cups, Grand Prixs and more.

DR – Written by Nikki

DR is a danish public service tv and radio government owned company.

This plugin supports streaming of videos and audio from dr.dk/Podcast and dr.dk/bonanza and live streams of DR1, DR2, DR Update, DR K, and DR Ramasjang tv channels. It also supports TV On Demand.

TV2 – Written by Nikki

Streaming of videos from video.tv2.dk – TV2 is a danish tv channel.

Lens – Written by Elan

Lens is the photography blog of The New York Times, presenting the finest and most interesting visual and multimedia reporting — photographs, videos and slide shows. A showcase for Times photographers, it also seeks to highlight the best work of other newspapers, magazines and news and picture agencies; in print, in books, in galleries, in museums and on the Web.

Live Music Archive – Updated by Billy Joe

This isn’t a new Plug-in, but rather a really awesome update to an existing one. This new version of Live Music Archive supports looking at your iTunes artists and presenting you with concerts for matching artists. This is a really innovative way to find live recordings of your favorite artists.

MTV UK – Written by Sander Spies

Watch full length music videos and video playlists for free. Browse through the years and play the top videos for each decade, watch video premiers, and more!

Anna Kim Photography – Written by Elan Feingold

My lovely wife has begun pursuing her second career as a photographer, so I thought it only appropriate to make a plug-in for her web site. Yes, that is a photo of me obsessing over a batch of sourdough loaves (thanks, Isaac). Yes, I am wearing pants.

Writen by chhitz Dieses Plug-in bietet den Zugriff auf die Inhalte auf dem SF Videoportal (http://videoportal.sf.tv/). Verfügbar sind die meisten deutschen Eigenproduktionen des Schweizer Fernsehens. Über die Einstellungen stehen 4 verschiedene Videoqualitäten mit unterschiedlichen Bandbreitenanforderungen zur Verfügung.

Written by Sander Spies, HT Guys is a podcast created by two guys, Braden Russell and Ara Derderian, known as the HT Guys. Listen in as they talk about the latest in home theater.

Also written by Sander Spies is the Uncle Jay plug-in. Uncle Jay explains the news to today’s innocent, ignorant and immature minds. Also to children. Watch Uncle Jay so you can figure out what’s going on, because grownups – perhaps you’ve noticed – haven’t.

Life is pretty good for Swedish Plex users, we have to admit, thanks to the hard work of our talented plug-in developers. This is probably why the country contains the highest per-capita of Plex users on the planet! I’m sorry to say I’ve never been, but I admit to having consumed an prodigious amount of Glögg at a friend’s house last weekend.

After the great success of the SVT plug-in (which is in the top 25 most downloaded plug-ins), the group was approached by TV4 (the largest commercial television channel in Sweden). TV4 wanted to know if they would create a plug-in for their content, and even offered to create an API to their specification.

Now let’s just stop for a minute and consider how cool this is: Can you imagine if NBC came to us with the same great attitude? It seems, at least at the moment, sadly unfathomable.

So Daniel Eriksson, Sander Spies and Andreas Wahlström sat down to design and code the new TV4 plug-in, which looks absolutely great. If you speak Swedish, make sure you check it out. Many thanks to them, and many thanks to TV4 for understanding and embracing new ways to deliver their content.

TV4 har lanserat en ny tv-upplevelse på nätet. I TV4 Play kan du se både korta klipp och hela program – om du vill se knäckebrödsdansen från Talang om och om igen så finns den här, men du kan också se avsnitt från många av TV4:s mest populära program som Talang, Robinson och Parlamentet, helt gratis. Denna plug-in möjliggör för er att se allt detta gratismaterial direkt i Plex.

OK, so we always try to make sure a plug-in is robust and fully stable before publishing it to the App Store, but we’re going to make an exception in this one case. Why? Because this new plug-in is so cool, we can’t keep it to ourselves any longer! We’ve been testing it internally for a few weeks now, and thanks to some of the bug-fixes and enhancements in Plex 0.8.5 we’re finally able to share it with you.

Do you like music? If so, riddle me this: What’s the premier subscription music service on the planet that everyone’s talking about? That’s right, Spotify. Of course, if you live in the US, you haven’t been able to enjoy it yet, but if you (or your IP address) resides in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France or Spain, you’ve probably checked out this amazing service.

So here’s the good news: If you have a premium subscription to Spotify, you can now enjoy this incredible service from the convenience of your couch for the first time ever, inside Plex. Head to the Plex App Store, install it, open up a nice bottle of wine, and enjoy the millions of tracks that are just a click of an Apple Remote away.

(Many thanks to Don McAllister and Oscar R for their initial testing of the plug-in and great suggestions!)

NOTE: Don’t forget, you need the latest Plex to use this plug-in, as well as a premium Spotify subscription.