You can pause live TV on some channels. They’re also the channels that will let you watch any shows that aired in the last 72 hours. I don’t know why it’s only featured on some channels.
Ah, ok thanks. That’s annoying that some channels won’t let you. Would love to know the reason for trying to limit us. They should be doing everything they can to get me to watch their programming, not make it more difficult.
Yeah, Disney owned channels are particularly horrible about this. Like ESPN. They won’t allow pausing living TV, they won’t allow you to DVR anything even if you pay the extra $5 for DVR service.
Following in Microsoft’s footsteps, Plex will no longer allow you to opt-out of telemetry. This includes all metadata on your media, including filesizes, bitrates, resolution, and format but does not include the file names or titles. However that metadata constitutes a fingerprint that can trivially be used to discover what you’re watching.
If you care about your privacy, it’s time to uninstall Plex and cancel the Plex Pass. If you paid for a lifetime membership, try to get a refund.
Unfortunately there really aren’t any comparable alternatives to Plex. Emby exists but is far less polished. Nevertheless, that’s what I’ll be using.
That sucks. Hopefully there will be a way to block/disable/pi-hole the telemetry data like you can for W10/GFE.
(and it looks like adding 0.0.0.0 metrics.plex.tv to hosts file should take care of it.)
Until they change it. Plex connects back to the mothership to authenticate and redirect connections to your home IP. So ultimately we’ll need to block all outgoing connections and connect to our home IPs directly via a dynamic DNS service to stop this. Bunch of scumbags.
Probably a naive question, but how is this worse than just about everything else? Isn’t your Android phone giving away far more information than that? Facebook is collecting everything you do. Etc. Not saying this is a good thing, just seems a bit harsh on them.
One evil does not excuse another.
For what I use Plex for (ie., not all that much), Emby looks like a great alternative. Thanks for pointing it out.
EDIT: Got it installed and set up in all of 2 minutes. Seems like a wonderful alternative to Plex so far. I just need an easy way to watch stuff housed on my PC via my firestick, and this does the trick with 0 hassle.
Due to overwhelmingly negative feedback, Plex has largely rolled back the forced telemetry.
Always amusing how these companies seem to think this stuff won’t be noticed then it’s the standard act of being so surprised by the negativity.
Has the Comedy Central channel stopped working for anyone else on Plex last week? When the Daily Show came back with new episodes last week, I had to watch them on their website since Plex wouldn’t show it.
Edit: Uninstalling the Channel and then installing it again fixed the problem.
I am most likely cutting the cord this week. After a lot of careful analysis, the Playstation Vue won out. It will get its final test tomorrow night when I try and watch the Patriots game.
It has NESN, which is the channel I watch my baseball and hockey on. $44/mo. I realized I’m paying over $30 a month in device rentals alone for set top boxes.
Just visited the Playstation Vue website. Am I understanding correctly that it is a service, with no hardware attached? (as opposed to, say, XBox?). So you subscribe, and just bring the programming in broadband to whatever device you want–directly to your TV, or if you own a Ruko or something, etc?
Correct.
I have it on both of my Rokus, and there is web viewing and an iOS app as well.
Here’s the devices that support Vue:
So, it’s similar to SlingTV. That one can be on similar devices, but on Xbox instead of Playstation among the list of devices.
Specifically for Plex, the preferred device seems to be the Nvidia Shield TV.
But a Roku is still the best in terms of keeping it simple and supporting almost every possible service. I don’t like the Amazon Fire TV remote but it is a hackable device so there are reasons to go Amazon.
Apps on Roku tend to all look alike, the standard Roku appearance. AndroidTV (which includes FireTV) has much more variation, which also means more functionality and sometimes the reverse.
ShieldTV is the best overall device, I have one myself. But you don’t need it for the Plex client; a fireTV (not stick) will handle that great. The difference is the shieldTV will also run the Plex server, and transcodes video realtime in hardware.
Roku has a better universal search than Amazon, although they both still suck compared to Tivo which has barely changed in like 5 years. (If you get a pass to a show on a Tivo, it shows new episodes wherever they might appear – live tv, netflix, on-demand cable, whatever).
I don’t agree. Plex, Netflix, and Amazon Video all look pretty much the same between both my Roku and FireTV. There are a few interface differences (especially for remote commands) between them, but mostly they work the same too.
The interface to launch those apps is very, very different though. With the Amazon it’s like combing through a catalog of shit to find that sweater you always buy, but they keep moving it to a different page. With the Roku it’s 100% consistent and a million times easier.