While Apple pushed out a lot of nice goodies in yesterday’s Apple TV update, not everyone was happy. Those who use the Trailers hack PlexConnect to run the Plex media server on their Apple TVs found that it no longer worked.
Fortunately, a fix didn’t take long. Developer Paul Kehrer has posted an illustrated tutorial to his cleverly-named langui.sh site which restores the functionality of the hack. It’s a little fiddly, but from the comments it seems to be a reliable fix.
The Plex iOS app was updated back in July.
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Ha that’s funny. Especially after the story over on TUAW said that it was unlikely a fix could be done due to Apples implementation of HTTPS. So for those that use Plex, I’m curious what the advantage is of this software. Why not just convert your videos into a compatible format and call it a day? No hacks to maintain and nothing to break. Seems simpler to me. What’s the draw of Plex? I’ve tried it on my Mac and found it to be rather clunky.
The advantages are huge. I have all my media in one single place, complete with metadata. From there I can stream it to any of my units (such as my TVs, iPhone, iPad, you name it). It will keep track of what I’ve already seen and what I haven’t seen. It’ll even keep track of where I am in a single file, allowing me to start watching something in the living room then stop and resume exactly where I was in the bedroom. For journeys by plane I can sync files to local storage on my iPad with a single click. I can also watch media from my friends’ media servers with zero configuration, and they can watch mine. When needed (because of unit requirements or bandwidth) it will transcode media in real time. It’s just a supreme solution, all rolled into one.
Other than watching from a friend’s media server, every single one of these can be done with iTunes. I guess I just don’t see the appeal and I still find the Plex UI clunky on my Mac (back when I tried it). I guess it could be better now. I don’t really see any advantage over streaming things straight from iTunes. If you prefer it more power to you, I just don’t see the point.
If you bought all your media content within the iTunes framework, then yes you are correct. But MOST of us don’t do that. We have a tone of stuff on disc, on MP3, video I’ve recorded over the last 30 years, yes 30 years. Can I play that back in iTunes, while on a plane, or in a hotel while on vacation – On Demand? No. I can’t, you can’t. iTunes is great when your collection is tiny, or purchased via a single source. Mine isn’t. Plex (or StreamToMe) absolutely allows me to take my collection with me and play it back on my device of choice.
As for converting everything to a single format? Really? I did that in the 80’s, twice in the 90’s, again in 2003, then again 2009. I’ll NEVER, ever do it again. Plex (or STM) plays back any format, on any device, without pre-converting the media.
Anyone know of a tutorial that can show me how to install Plex on aTV 6.0 rather than fix the broken update?
Thanks in advance.. :)