Plex: Watch Live TV and Movies Reviews

I love this app for it’s beautiful organization and easy to use interface. Having almost all my media in one place has always been the dream and this app has done that for me (for about 80% - still missing native audiobook support and support for eBooks). Having full control of my own personal media cloud and server has been incredible. The movie and show ratings from Rotten Tomato are awesome and being able to watch a trailer of something is convenient if someone wants a quick synopsis. I love being able to put all our childhood videos converted from VHS on my own cloud and give access to my family to see any of the embarrassing and amazing home videos anytime.

***DEVS: Would love to see a audio only version for Apple Watch for streaming or offline usage to listen to podcasts, music, audiobooks - Audible does this now which has been amazing. Being able to listen to this app media with only a watch and bluetooth headphones would be a game changer. Also native audiobook support and support for eBooks would basically round out any media needs I could possible want to have in one app!

Love what the this app teams does and always looking to see what they’ve recently added. More than happy to be a part of the this app Pass Lifetime member. Keep up the amazing work!

I have always had trouble with the iOS versions of Plex, even though I’m only connecting to a local server. Plex on my Roku has no difficulty connecting to the same server. It is extremely frustrating. I am now completely unable to connect to the server from my iPad, despite having tried logging out and back into Plex , logging out and using a wait list of local network connection, deleting Plex and re-downloading it, deleting all three instances of the iPad app from my list of allowed devices in my account, etc. For some inexplicable reason, my this app account has now decided that my iPad app is also a server, so some of the other client apps now list two entries for my iPad as servers.

Also, when my home Internet isn’t working and I can’t go online, even though my this app server is on the same local network/router as this app app on my phone, iPad, and TV, none of them are able to access the server. They all say that the server is unavailable. My SMB file sharing on the same Mac at the this app server works fine, so it’s not a problem with my local network. I would think that playing files in this app over the local network would not be affected by an Internet outage…

I’ve had so many problems with the iOS apps that I don’t see how the people at this app hope to entice me to purchase a subscription when I can’t even really use the features that a subscription affords. Plex is nice when it works, but far too often it doesn’t really work.

I have been a PlexPass member for years now and I couldn’t be happier. However, lately playback has been terrible. For example, if I shuffle anything a CD, a playlist, my library whatever I get this weird issue where two songs will just start playing at once. To fix it I usually have to stop the track(s) and either skip back a track or skip forward. Then one of the two songs will play properly. In addition, sometimes when I go to play a song in a playlist or CD (anything with multiple tracks) sometimes the track will not play. It will instead skip right to the next song and no matter what I do it will not play. The track is fine though because I can play it by accessing the file directly (not through this app). Lastly, ever since this offline browsing thing was introduced it has been glitchy. If I want to access my files on my server I usually have to toggle it on and off a few times before my library will show up. It works the same for if I want to access tracks synced on my phone too. Love the thought of being able to toggle, but has to be a better way. What ever happened to just clicking in the upper left corner?

Im writing this review on sept 23, 2020. Plex has change quite a bit from when it was first released. The organizational changes have been bad here and there but it still did everything quickly. That is no longer the case. I have multiple 4k apple tv boxes and they all are experiancing performance issues after the last couple of updates. Laggy, slow, unresponsive interface which require a reboot to fix. I have never had to reboot my apple tvs with such regularity. In the past i have been able to wait weeks or months before intentionally rebooting one. (I have automatic updates off... so no other reboots barring poweroutages etc.). I recommended apple tvs for their solid performance with this app but it seems that is one more thing they have abandoned in the pursuit of having animated startup logos and other foo foo nonsense. They just seem to want to add new features no one wants while detracting from the features everyone needs.

Devs, take note: I’m all too familiar with reviews being deleted. As a precaution, I copy/paste all my reviews for moments like this. As a customer who paid full price, I am disappointed to see this app be one of those companies. Here’s the deleted review:
I enjoy everything about Plex however it has an issue when I need to briefly swipe out of Plex to use another app (like check my email or respond to a text) and swipe back to this app. Anytime I do that, the player refuses to play and Plex requires a force quit in order to resume playback. In essence that means I can’t quickly jump into any other app on my phone unless I want to either setup the video as PIP or force quit this app. There’s another issue that further complicates using this app while needing to jump into another program. If I do setup PIP and go into another app, this app will not allow me to pause the video…anytime I click pause, this app will quickly unpause and resume playback. The only way to stop playback is to close the PIP player. That means when I swipe back to this app, the video is no longer active which is very much like force quitting Plex and starting from scratch. In short, Plex is cumbersome to use if you need to do anything else on your phone at the same time, even if it’s just briefly.

I decided to jump-in and get the tv tuners to take more advantage of my this app server along with the this app premium subscription. Now let’s start with the 5 stars and take away one star for each issue below. As they get fixed I’ll add a star. I’m struggling with the Apple TV app. The guide doesn’t jump to the current date and time. Ie. if I open the guide at 2pm. Then later I open the guide up at 7pm it will still show the 2pm guide but it’s all grey out. I wait a few moments for it to refresh to the current time but no good. I have to right scroll to the current time multiple times until I find the current time. Then I can select programs/Channel to watch. Also, when I select a recorded show. It spins and spins and spins then errors out. If I open the same show on my phone and stream it so it works, then I can go to the Apple TV and stream the show. I don’t know why it’s doing this. Why does it take forever to scan through all the photos? I would think it would generate thumbnails for all the photos so I can surf through them quickly, not have it take 20 seconds to refresh the 5 photos on the screen, then I scroll to the next group of photos and have to wait another 20 seconds for those photos to refresh. I get spoiled by the apple photos app. Make it work like that.

this app used to be a great product. The downward slide in quality and programming is becoming increasingly frustrating and has started me looking for a new product.
First Plex immediately crashes when you launch Plex . So you have to launch it twice just open. (I have removed and reinstalled Plex several time to make sure it wasn’t just a glitch with an update.)
Second, you take away the Sync function and replace it with Download. You state “Download works how you always wanted Sync to work.” So if that is the case why didn’t you just remove the functionality? The download function in Plex never actually downloads a single thing! I have tried to download an entire season. To the extreme that I left Plex running in the foreground with the screen lock off for 3 days, it still didn’t download the first byte of data. (With the little circle running around the bars.) This was after repeated attempts to download with it running in the background like you used to be able to do. So, figured okay I’ll try just downloading an individual episode and nurse it through the weekend, still have not successfully got a single byte of data.
You have managed to take a product with excellent potential and run into the ground.

I love this app but the iOS app can use some more attention. I don’t allow my server to be exposed externally so I use the offline sync feature for when I’m away. Now, whenever I open Plex it will start in offline mode like I left it before (I can see the big red banner) but it will attempt to connect to my server still. I’ll pick from the list of sources in the top left corner but it only shows my server as an option and it’s offline. To get around this, you have to open preferences and click the offline toggle 2 or 3 times usually before you can access your offline content. Another issue is that it frequently crashes when I pause the music with my headphones, I’ll unlock it and have to relaunch Plex . It’s a good app, but not a great experience. I’ll be happy to rate it higher if the first issue will get fixed.

EDIT: new update, unfortunately worse in performance. Same issues stated above but now includes that for whatever reason if I pause my offline music or get a phone call, then go back to resume, the music just stops playing. Sometimes the scrubbing bar moves as if it is, sometimes not. But hitting the play/pause buttons don’t do anything so I must kill the song and play a different one. I really love this app but Plex is going downhill.

I usually don't leave feedback regarding updates, but I must in this case...
I'm a big fan of this app, and mainly use it on Roku and IPad. I am extremely disappointed that the watch later feature was discontinued recently AGAIN which I used everyday! It was helpful to browse tv plugins on the iPad and add episodes to watch later......to then watch later on the roku....since the roku has NEVER had this feature since this app was born. Please bring back the watch later feature asap, and please add this feature to Roku too! Also, I am happy with the new podcasts feature but would love a listen later feature for that too! I do not like the webisodes feature and don’t care to see it but there is no way to remove it? Still need tweaking with customization options. this app is fantastic overall, but I'm giving 3 stars this time, because an update should not keep subtracting from the user enjoyment. Common sense says make things more user customizable, so people can choose what they want to keep and get rid of what they don’t want to see....and with as few clicks as possible too! Please fix what is lacking now, but once was there to enjoy.....for the 2nd time!!!

I finally decided to take the plunge and start my own this app home server after Google pulled the plug on Music and Movies. The setup was relatively easy, with small annoyances and a bit of a learning curve to get things finally rolling. Unfortunately, everything quickly broke down when it came to setting up the client on IOS. On everything else, this app works fine and as intended. On IOS I have nothing but problems ranging from downloads being unbearably slow (dial-up transfer speeds on high speed Wi-Fi), half of my media not playing at all, even though those same files work everywhere else through this app, and a general failure to update the client-side library when new files are added. Searching for these issues online brings me to many people complains about these same things but no actual fixes.
I’ve tried reinstalling my media server, restarting it many times, uninstalling the iOS app, setting it back up… nothing works. I tried setting up a competing local media server using the exact same folder structure as this app, and everything works perfectly, so this is definitely a this app issue with iOS. In its current state, it’s entirely unusable for me.

Plex can be great when it works and when they aren’t removing features that have been there for years. Several versions have seen end of life support with many bugs still remaining. You used to be able to swipe left or right between songs when listening and now you have to hit an actual button to skip a song, why remove a feature that wasn’t broken? I have a lifetime subscription and the developers are an absolute joke. Literally each new update breaks something else and their support structure is nonexistent. Smart playlists are broken when locally synced to devices and have been for awhile. Alternate artwork that has been changed and locked can revert back automatically even when locked just by playing that content. Forum mods say this won’t happen and yet it does bringing me back to their terrible support structure. It’s time consuming to deal with the many bugs that exist and continue to show up with each release. There are problems that were reported by multiple people in 2015 for example and the issue remains, five years later. I bought a lifetime subscription and wish it had the support it deserves because it definitely doesn’t.

The first time I downloaded the this app app I was able to create a free account no problems with it whatsoever, and the cool thing about this app, is that I can watch live TV channels, such as ElectricNow, and dark matter TV, and many others, I also have this app on my Roku, and I also lots of movies on this app as well, but one problem I’m visually impaired and whenever I go to look for a channel but I am I watch this app on my iPad and on my iPod touch, whenever I swipe for channels or to listen to the name of the channels, it only says the name of the TV show or movie that’s on, so if you could fix that feature that would be great, and another thing too, I would love to cast plugs to my Roku express, and my Roku premier, and whenever I go to choose a device to airplay or cast to for some reason it won’t let me cast so please fix that in and that would be great, love this app I get this app five stars, so to the developer of this app love Plex keep bringing new features and new updates, and keep expanding

Best solution to cataloging and playing media across many platforms there is. With a premium subscription and PlexCloud, one can watch videos from just about anywhere you can get a decent connection. While the interface does take some time to get used to, and the this app folks insist on changing it all the time, it functions well and actually manages watching or listening for you in a very helpful way, including remembering what you have seen or heard, and continuing in the right places when you come back to something in progress.

And the this app people are quick to address bugs and issues, and listen to suggestions for improvements. Just finished a trip to Italy and Germany, and had access to my media the whole time. In addition, this app’s database of images, sounds, titles, and cover art make the interface beautiful and helpful.

The lifetime this app subscription was the best decision for me. And no, I do not work for the company, and they did not pay me to say this. Just very pleased with how well this software works.

No other program for any computer of any kind has more than 1% of the bugs afflicting this app. I was a premium user for one month and one month only; though it was only $5, I resent it deeply. I joined the premium in order to transfer files; I tried to transfer a file; three days later, it was not yet 50% transferred, so I canceled and transferred it via OneDrive; it took 27 seconds. This is ALL due to the this app developers’ monumental stupidity, changing the files’ formats rather than just making their software read multiple formats. Those who praise this app have failed a rudimentary intelligence test; you could upload your files and play them in VLC or similar software in less than 1% of the time, with less than 1% of the hassle.

In addition, there’s the insane fact that the apps have no button to update a library. Add a video, wait six hours (if you’re lucky), and it will appear in your library. You cannot manually do this. MANY people have complained about this design flaw on this app’s forums; official responses have LIED and claimed that no one has raised the issue previously, when in fact there are a dozen threads stretching back years.

All in all, if you’re using this app, stop and find a better program, which is ALL OF THEM.

I Was looking for a means to view my video library and found this app to my liking. I can set up my library to watch movies as if I were back in the old days where Saturdays was an outing to go to the marquee at 12 noon to watch previews, three cartoons, the news reel, and two two movies . That took up five hours in the old days at the RKO THEATER. I can now reproduce that wonderful experience and go to the head without missing the story by hitting the pause button. The developers deserve a great praise for their hard work.
Update
December 2019
I now have over 3000 movies ; TV, AND home movies in my this app library, I also have over 4000 music files and 8000 personal photos that I scanned in from old album books and pictures lying around in trunks , paper bags and boxes. At any time I can access any photo, or video in seconds to show friends and family. What is nice about this app is you can consolidate your entire visual LP records old tapes and 45 rpm records and auditoria history in one app.
I have my this app on a WESTERN DIGITAL 10 Terabyte pr2100 NAS DRIVE using RAID 2 so that I will always have a back up in case something goes wrong. I also backup my this app library to a separate 10 TB drive unplugged and stored in another place.
My kids and grandkids can always review our family history at any time.
And by the way! They can down load videos and pictures to their phones from this app to show their friends or watch them on the plane when they travel.
Great App.

I have been using this app for years and all of a sudden the video was playing in low resolution even though I have a very fast WiFi connection with over 600 mb/s. The problem was the “Automatically Adjust Quality” setting was constantly making adjustments that weren’t needed and forcing a low resolution. Picture would look grainy then Hi-Def then grainy again. Was driving me crazy. As soon as I turned off that setting in Plex , all was good.

It took a while to figure that out after trouble shooting the WiFi and other settings in Plex . Movie night was ruined for that one Saturday night with the wife as by the time I figured out the problem it was too late to watch anything. I still gave 5 stars as I still love the this app interface. Just an FYI for anyone else having the same problem and maybe for the this app developers to address it.

Show titles don't load most of the time, rarely plays from guide for streaming, have to delete cache AND data just to get it to barely function, support forum full of extremely poor assistance, WON'T EVER LET ME LOGIN, 3 Months now, won't let me view anything without asking me to login, so WHY WOULD YOU BOTHER WITH Plex. So many other issues. Playback poor, freezing, screen locks up, etc. AND THEY WANT USERS TODO ALL THE DEBUGGING AND LOG IT ON THE FORUM. ( Instead of just enjoying a show like you want!!! You don't pay us!!! )Sounds like you need to chuck it and start over, but you can get almost if not every channel they offer on another app that works flawlessly EVERY TIME? YOU WOULDN'T! Don't bother. Doesn't work on smart TVs, doesn't let you log in, NO REAL CUSTOMER SUPPORT, no new shows or movies. Basically just another attempt to capitalize on the free tv market. Had you just had customer support this junk app might have been working properly after several months. Again, just don't bother with Plex, plenty more working apps that have the same shows. Update;. Broken even more now. Just a CRAPAPP

I love this app. It’s always been great (with jinks here and there). But the last major update to Plex took away my menu across the bottom and replaced it with a side menu that I can only access when I’m on the home screen. Here’s an example of why this is so annoying:

I primary use the this app App on iOS for music. So if I go to an artist > album > track. Then from there decide to go back to the artist > similar artist > new artist > album > track, and then decide to hit the search button > search another artist > choose album> track, then decide actually I want a different song, so hit search > track name and then decide, I wanna go back to the main Music menu, I can’t just hit Music. I have to navigate back > back > back x 100 until I finally see the hamburger menu on the left and can select Music. That’s incredibly annoying. Before it was easy to just hit Music at the bottom and go back to where I started without issue. If anything let me access the main menu without having to go back...

I've been using this app as a Media Server and iOS app for over 5 years now. Both the server and app complements each other and very easy to use. Plex has features such as sync which allows you to watch movies or TV shows on your local device without needing internet access. You can configure sync to auto download any number of unwatched episodes for a TV Series. So let's say for you have Season 5 of TV show '24' for 4 unwatched episodes synced and your iPad has Eps 8-11 downloaded. You can be on an airplane and watch Eps 8 & 9. You get to your hotel and sync up again. Plex will delete Eps 8-9 since they were watched and download Eps 12 & 13 since they are the next unwatched Eps. So this configuration will keep a rotating 4 unwatched episodes of '24' on your local device. Plex also displays metadata (Title, Year, recap, actors, directors, posters, etc.) of the movies or TV Shows.

After months of going back and forth, I finally took the plunge and paid full price for the Lifetime this app Pass. I must say, i was immediately disappointed by the poor interfacing with my AirPods. In particular, if I pause the music by a double tap to my AirPod, and the phone goes to sleep before I want to restart the music, Plex will not play music to the AirPods again without closing and rebooting Plex . To be explicit, connectivity is not restored by a double tap of the AirPod when the phone is off, on but on the lock screen, on and logged into the phone but not on Plex , or even when logged back into the phone with Plex open. Furthermore, opening Plex and pushing play will cause the progress bar to advance but there is still no music playing.

Please address this in a future update.

As another suggestion, there also needs to be a less clunky way to switch between online and offline browsing mode — maybe assume if no server is available default to offline mode?

I purchased the lifetime this app Pass. The best a/v decision I’ve made. I wish the sync process was easier for offline listening and watching FOR MY KIDS but for me it allows for granular control of kbps rate per song. Interface for me as a technologist is very much self driving and in-play. I think i paid around a bill for the lifetime this app pass a few years ago and it’s more than paid for itself. Plex is free for this app pass subscribers (monthly yearly or lifetime pass) but even for those who don’t do pass the cost of you have access to a this app media server with a decent sized media dB is worth the cost to get all the extras. We added a couple of homerun boxes and killed cable which is saving us almost a bill / 100
Per month alone so this app has been incredible for us at home and at the office and when on the road.

I love this app and it has given the chance to explore all the media I had but was previously buried in stacks of CDs and DVDs. Bought a lifetime pass years ago,so glad I did.
Having said that, the current iOS app and this app server have some seriously annoying “features”. Selecting repeat a track in the iOS app will sometimes repeat it, but more often than not, it doesn’t and stops playing anything else afterwards, meaning you have to restart the play queue.
It mixes together playing several tracks at once. This does not happen on the web app.
Playlists on the this app server sometimes get wiped out. The playlist name is still there, just nothing in it. When you have hundreds of items in the playlist, it’s impossible to recreate.
These items have been posted to the this app forum and others have the same issue, this app haven’t addressed them.

Love Plex. It has what I need for using my data and getting it anywhere. I don't understand the need to have a this app pass I don't use this feature as it is not needed. I do think however that the this app makers or any app or program designers should ever withhold the ability to have parental control. This feature is a security feature to make sure no children ever get what they should have and should be a default item in any app. When this becomes a standard non this app pass feature Ill give 5 stars. Its just the right thing to do. Beyond that all features are great app works like a charm. I took another star for not having the ability to have this app find all my movies. Vob and a few other standard movie types when ripped this app did not find and i have to now convert 400+ films to a mode this app will use. Silliness. It should at least do what XBMC already does. As Most that use this app also use xbmc for hone use since the XBMC interface is better for home use and streaming this app is best for. Ill return that star when it does other formats also.

I'm a lifetime PlexPass member; I use this app's various incarnations across tons of devices. Yes, every now and again something goes awry, but to paraphrase Louis CK, "You try building it and making it perfect all the time!"

It works 99.9% of the time for 99.9% of everything. Having worked in software development, I can understand how impossible it is to foresee every possible iteration and challenge, but this app is incredibly stable and reliable.

UPDATE: Plex is basically broken on iOS 12/iPhone X. Anytime I’m in portrait mode, the close/minimize controls are not accessible, which makes it impossible to send content via Chromecast. Even when in landscape mode, the controls seem barely functional. This has been the case ever since I upgraded to iOS 12, and is extremely frustrating.

For me, the this app app is almost perfect. I am currently on a 30-day trial and I already know what crucial annoyances are going to stop me from going full (or even lifetime) subscriber.

1. Their WebOS app is way behind the rest. For TV, you cannot use the guide, which makes the normal TV viewing pretty much impossible.

2. Argh! The track list unavailability in FLAC. Brings back the memories when you had to fast forward a cassette tape to find your next track on the album, or go ahead and listen to the entire album. No easy way to go to a particular song (or even see it, as you will be just looking at the album),

3. Problems with remote access cutting out in 2-3 seconds after enabling. It is super buggy and no amount of their troubleshooting worked for me.

These three issues are critical enough to dissuade me from upgrading and will be sticking with free version for now.

I know there are lots of people who want to make this app their primary DVR/TV viewing app but can’t for the above mentioned (1) reason.

I know there are lot of audiophiles who wish to have this app as their primary player/server but for the above mentioned reason (2) they just can’t.

I really hope devs take a note and address these crucial issues. I don’t know what else in this platform needs more urgent attention from the feature point of view - it has all the bells and whistles.