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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • the actual problem here is that OPs network is not configured correctly and that Plex detects that the physical local client is actually accessing the server from a totally other network.

    Fairly common when you use docker to run Plex and have the container run in bridge mode. This will put the container in the docker network that will then be different to your local network.

    Plex determines if a stream is local or remote based on the network so when your container is in bridge mode, the physical local client will be a remote connection because of the different networks.

    And since remote streaming requires Plex pass since end of April, you will see this.



  • Nice. I have a recent story about this.

    Basically, we have a process to sell something that is too big, complex and extensive for smaller customers so the idea was to drastically reduce this process to be able to give smaller customers the ability to sell that process.

    So, in January, I got an email with the assignment to do this. Since we don’t do it like this, I say he should submit a ticket in our tracker and plan it into a release to have some sort of structure and organisation in what is being done and when. Such a thing should also happen with our project manager because, well, he is the person managing what is being worked on so he should know what is going on and what is important. This doesn’t happen.

    4 Months later, the person sending the mail asked me what the status of that is, I didn’t know because I was busy with our other stuff that actually followed our organisation.

    This feature is super-duper important and already promised to some customers so it needs to happen quickly. Okay, we plan it in a release and I start working on it. The Plan was that since this was a “1 Task Process”, doing that in our existing process, wouldn’t make much sense and we decided to do this in a separate process that then relies on the codebase of our “main” process. While working on it, more and more issues popped up that made it really complicated to do it like that because our existing code just relied on a lot of things even if they are not in use. This meant that, to use it in the capacity as I needed, I would have to rip a lot of stuff out of the existing codebase and made this more commonly useable even though this wasn’t “used” in the process anyway.

    Yes, that sounds weird but you need to know that this is a codebase grown over 15 years so weird things are to be expected.

    I do all of that and the sales team has a meeting and I was asked if I had already something that could be presented there, which I had, sort of.

    This is presented in that meeting and suddenly this is not enough. “There needs to be other places to be involved in this as well and the customer needs to be able to make changes after the fact”.

    So, from the initial “1 Task process” we are now at a more complex process to handle the additional stuff of involving a separate entity of the customer, starting another process and being able to make changes to the initial variables.

    I don’t necessarily have a problem with changing things, but the utter lack of thought or planning of the person submitting the feature request is what drives me nuts. I mean, you had 4 months to think about what this should do and all you could come up with were 4 bullet points that just barely resemble the current state. Adding to that, the constant emphasis on “This is important and needs to happen ASAP”. I mean, in literally every mail that person sent to me was the “this is very important, this needs to be priority”.

    It is like, yeah dude, I got that the 2nd time you wrote that to me but you could have at least invested some time yourself to properly think about this more than 10 minutes. To maybe notice that what you want isn’t enough to do what you need.





  • Yes, I am aware of those changes but what has this to do with Plex Home?

    From those changes, as long as you, the Server Admin, has Plex Pass, your Users would still be able to stream remotely without having Plex Pass themselves:

    When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee.

    And there is nothing being mentioned that sharing your Plex Pass features to your Plex Home Users will change in any way.




  • I would disagree with the last sentence.

    Astrobot was actually a game. It was more like any other game that taught you how to play the game with the implemented features. This could have been any other game doing the same thing but it came directly from Sony.

    Looking at the “Welcome Tour gameplay” video, this isn’t even close to what Astrobot did. It is a Hub in which you get told what those features are with minigames for that specific feature.

    My point is: If the only point is to advertise the functionality of the console, charging any sort of money for it is not productive for what it should be achieving. You want people to learn how to use your console and then charge money for it will do the exact opposite. People won’t buy it because there is no benefit to actually buying it.

    Any other game would teach you how to play it anyway.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJoAaOClzrY



  • Some other perspective here…

    I think that this information would be possible to highlight, you could, for example, have an announcement channel that is read only for the regular users.

    However, that doesn’t mean that this will reduce the number of questions though.

    Even discord has a search function, granted it is not great but still, if you are willing to search for something you would be able to find it.

    But this is the problem. For your regular users, it is much easier to simply ask that redundant question again and again instead of doing the least amount of searching yourself.

    Heck, I had questions in some communities in which I copied the question in the title and searched on Google for it and got an answer in the first result.

    What I want to say with this is that those redundant questions will be asked regardless of the platform.

    What I think is worse about discord, especially as a help or support platform, is that it is a walled garden. All the knowledge accumulated there is locked away and cannot be found unless you are on discord and search for it. At least on reddit or Lemmy, you can still find the answer for something if you are looking for it.

    I think that discord can work as a platform but only to a number of users. I have such a thing for a plugin that I am maintaining but there are not even 30 people on there. But I also give direct support and figure out issues that are either because the user did something wrong or it is an issue with the plugin. If it is a reaccuring problem I put that in the wiki or the FAQ otherwise, it is a bug report as a new issue so that the information are something you could find.




  • Man, my banking app recently switched to a different keyboard. One that doesn’t allow integrations like bitwarden. I also cannot copy paste my password into the password field so I have to enter my 32 character password by hand.

    Mind you, this is not an app that does ANY banking in the first place it is just to authorize access to my bank account or for transactions.

    So it is always a few minutes copying the password, making sure I haven’t miss-typed on the shitty keyboard or because of my sausage fingers and then being logged out of my bank account in the browser because it took so much time copying that password.



  • Because VLC is a completely different Application in how it works than Plex.

    Plex is, first and foremost, a Client-Server Application. Without a Server, you won’t be able to play something. VLC on the other hand is a complete standalone player which has to play (almost) everything that you throw at it. VLC also has network discovery so that you can actually play content from a network share.

    That is another difference, for Plex, you don’t need a network share because the data is directly coming from your Plex server. VLC, on the other hand, will always need direct file access.

    Plex itself also relies on the client device to provide the necessary compatibility to play the content you want to play. When something isn’t playable, Plex will have to make it playable by converting (transcoding) it. the higher the quality of the content, the more processing power you need.

    For example, according to Plex itself, you need a CPU with 2000 PassMark Points to transcode a single 1080p video stream. A 4K HDR stream requires 17000 PassMark Points.

    VLC cannot allow to not be able to play something on its own because if a player cannot play something, is it really a good player? However, with Plex, since it has the Server infrastructure in the back, it can allow itself to not bundle every possible compatibility in each client on every platform because if something isn’t playable, as said above, the server will make it playable.

    So, Plex most likely had to transcode your file into a compatible format and your server is most likely not strong enough to do that in an adequate timeframe. VLC didn’t need to do that and only needed to work over the WLAN to create a buffer of the data.




  • You know, I was really sick and tired when they updated the nvidia shield with the new android TV version that makes most of the screen show stuff that are basically ads. It didn’t even let me show only stuff I was interested in and this constant “oh you are hovering over this item for 0.000001s so you seem to be interested in this, let me start the video for you with audio” no god damnit I was reading something else or got a text.

    I had to install a different launcher so that I could only show on the screen what I actually wanted to see. I have basically removed or reduced all ads as much as I ca.

    Lately, I was at my parents place and they don’t have that stuff. Even the 1.5 minutes of ads for a free service is so disruptive to me watching something.

    What has this to do with PlayStation?

    Well, on the shield you are still able to install a custom launcher that is more to your liking, you could disable the internet access and completely stream your own local content. But on the PS, you don’t have that option and are completely at the mercy of what they think you should watch and see on your screen that you bought with a console that you also bought with your own money.