Plex for Samsung - PBworksplexforsamsung.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/70504084/Plex...Plex for Samsung...

App Manual Ver. 1.006

Copyright © 2011 Plex Inc. All rights reserved.

Plex for Samsung

Application Manual

Developers:

HD1080 and Orca

Company: Plex Inc.



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Contents 1. Revision history ...................................................................................................................................................... 5

2. Description of the App .................................................................................................................................... 12

2 Objectives .................................................................................................................................................... 12

3 Functions of the App ............................................................................................................................. 13

4 The User interface structure ............................................................................................................... 14

3. How to use the app .......................................................................................................................................... 15

1 Let gets started......................................................................................................................................... 15

2 Preferences : General ............................................................................................................................. 18

1 Display clock in 24h format ................................................................................................................. 18

2 Clock Adjustment ...................................................................................................................................... 18

3 Send debug to PMS ................................................................................................................................ 18

4 Use transition animations ..................................................................................................................... 19

5 Request timeout in seconds ................................................................................................................ 19

3 Preferences Player ................................................................................................................................... 19

1 Playing Theme Music .............................................................................................................................. 19

6 FastForward in seconds.......................................................................................................................... 19

7 Rewind in seconds ................................................................................................................................... 20

8 Initial Buffer ................................................................................................................................................. 20

9 Pending Buffer ........................................................................................................................................... 20

10 Total Buffer.............................................................................................................................................. 20

11 Force Local Transcoding [Optional – not needed for normal operation] .................. 21

12 Local Transcoding Quality [Optional – not needed for normal operation] ............... 21

4 Preferences Sound/Subtitles ............................................................................................................... 23

1 Auto change from audio output ....................................................................................................... 23

13 Subtitles font size ................................................................................................................................. 23



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14 Subtitles color ........................................................................................................................................ 23

15 Subtitles are always on ...................................................................................................................... 23

16 Transcode subtitles .............................................................................................................................. 23

5 Preferences System (myPlex) .............................................................................................................. 24

1 Sign in to MyPlex...................................................................................................................................... 24

17 Quality from remote servers ........................................................................................................... 28

18 Direct play Shared content .............................................................................................................. 28

6 Preferences System Information ....................................................................................................... 29

4. Home view ............................................................................................................................................................ 30

5. Listview ................................................................................................................................................................... 34

6. Media carrousel .................................................................................................................................................. 37

7. TV Shows ............................................................................................................................................................... 42

8. Episode view ........................................................................................................................................................ 44

9. Playing content ................................................................................................................................................... 45

10. Music ................................................................................................................................................................... 47

11. Channels ............................................................................................................................................................ 51

12. Queue ................................................................................................................................................................. 57

13. Recommended ................................................................................................................................................ 59

14. Shared Content .............................................................................................................................................. 60

15. Special Functions ........................................................................................................................................... 62

1 Playing 3D content ................................................................................................................................. 62

2 Subtitle support ........................................................................................................................................ 63

3 Lost Server connection: ......................................................................................................................... 63

16. To transcode or not to transcode that’s the question................................................................. 65

1 Why would I need transcoding? ....................................................................................................... 65

Unsupported codecs and container .......................................................................................................... 65



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Remote playback is stuttering ..................................................................................................................... 65

I can only use Wi-Fi but my movie stutters .......................................................................................... 65

2 Local Transcoding V.S. Remote transcoding ............................................................................... 65

3 Local Transcoding .................................................................................................................................... 66

4 Local Transcoding Quality ................................................................................................................... 66

5 Remote transcoding ............................................................................................................................... 67

6 Transcoding is not always optional ................................................................................................. 67

17. End Word .......................................................................................................................................................... 68



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1. Revision history

Version Date Description

0.9.6 2012.03.27 -First submission of the Plex App

0.9.7 2012.04.24 - [FIXED ] - All Samsung issues

- [FIXED] - ALL - 2010 models don't support the opacity CSS feature. Textures have been added

with transparency effect instead of using the opacity effect.

- [FIXED] - ALL - changed behavior of the EXIT button (only for Samsung)

- [FIXED] - ALL - xml parser error for 2012 models

- [FIXED] - ALL - Mute (button) behavior

- [FIXED] - Home View - if you have a category with no content in it and pushed RIGHT ARROW

on your remote app would hang

- [FIXED] - Home View - if saw only recentlyAdded content and then set something in Progress

so you saw also onDeck and then selected another section which has no onDeck you could see

the content information from the before selected content

- [FIXED] - Movie View - if your Movie has no cover we will show the default Plex cover instead

of nothing

- [FIXED] - Season View - if your Season has no cover we will show the default Plex cover instead

of nothing

- [FIXED] - Player - possibility that the 2nd or more video you play was shown with wrong AR

- [FIXED] - Player - video was set as watched even when the device didn't play the video

- [FIXED] - Player - workaround for files where Samsung API gets wrong duration; Jump Forward

won't work from a certained point because I disabled it, if I wouldn't disabled it it would stop the

video; resume doesn't work correctly

- [FIXED] - Preferences - add, edit PMS, ... didn't work as designed

- [UPDATED] - Home View - added white circles to indicate if video is Unwatched/inProgress

- [UPDATED] - Home View - not selected row will be darkened

- [UPDATED] - Player - playing .iso files might work (only D-Series), it will play the whole movie

because of the workaround above. Problems with Jump FF and Resume are the same; there are

also problems with the correct AR, use the stretch function in the new OSD (no support if .iso

doesn't work)

- [UPDATED] - Player - using SEF Player for 2011 models which enables Audio change for 2011+

models

- [UPDATED] - Player - GREEN button for stretch Video is now in rightOSD under name "Crop

black bars form Video"

- [UPDATED] - Player - if video is paused and you "Crop black bars form Video", video will stay

as paused

- [UPDATED] - Movies / Episodes - better respond if media deletion worked, if media deletion is

disabled you can enable it from the client now

- [UPDATED] - Preferences - updated UI for new settings

- [NEW] - Home View - when you start the app the first time it will search for PMS in your

Network

- [NEW] - Home View - with the INFO key you can your video as watched/unwatched

- [NEW] - Home View - in the top right corner you see the hostname from your PMS

- [NEW] - SubSection - saves now which filter you used. e.g. you choose Genre/Action for movies.



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Come back from the Movie View and you will be at Genre/Action.

- [NEW] - Movie View - added Autoplay feature

- [NEW] - Player - Subtitles support for external .srt files (you don't have to convert your subs to

UTF-8, we do it for you ;-)

- [NEW] - Player - reincluded the Render Error event but checking now if it's true and showing

you what wrong is

- [NEW] - Player - new OSD (Audio & Subtitle Settings), enable it while watching content with

the GREEN button on your remote

- [NEW] - Player - new OSD, there you can change/edit Audio Track (2011+ devices), enable

subtitles, change subtitles, font size, color, position, offset

- [NEW] - Player - new OSD, there you can jump to a specific time in your video

- [NEW] - Preferences - enable / disable the automatically change of the audio ouput format (DTS,

AC3, PCM)

- [NEW] - Preferences - enable / disable that the App sends his logdata to your PMS log

- [NEW] - Preferences - change font size for subtitles

- [NEW] - Preferences - change color for subtitles

- [NEW] - Preferences - enable / disable that subtitles will always be shown

- [NEW] - Preferences - change the time format 12h or 24h

- [NEW] - Preferences - when you add a PMS you can choose between manually and Autodiscover

which takes around 30seconds

- [NEW] - Preferences - About Plex tab for additional information

- [NEW] - All - SmartHub / Internet@TV button exits the app

0.9.7.1 2012.05.08 - [FIXED] - All Samsung issues

- [FIXED] - ALL - toogle to toggle

- [FIXED] - Player - if video was paused and you jumped Forward, video automatically started

playing and after 60sec screensaver turned up (only C-Series)

- [FIXED] - Player - Video name could overlap in the OSD

- [FIXED] - Home View - if you have two or more movie sections it was possible that you see

some movies in the wrong section

0.9.7.2 2012.06.04 - [FIXED] - Subsection View - when you entered in the top entry of a subsection and came back

it didn't select the correct one

- [FIXED] - Movie View - didn't show the white circle for unwatched/inprogress if you had only 1

movie

- [FIXED] - Movie,Show View - style errors

- [FIXED] - Player - Couldn't watched anything from Unwatched subsection

- [FIXED] - Player - pause video and show error message when Fast-Forward, Fast-Rewind doesn't

work

- [FIXED] - Player - some content was not set correctly as watched when it was done

- [UPDATED] - All - removed TOOLS button for BD-Player devices

- [UPDATED] - All - better handling of button activity

- [NEW] - Player - shows the time which is left for the video in the OSD

- [NEW] - Player - current time will be shown while playing content in the BD-Player HUD

- [NEW] - Player - showing the loading pic while buffering

0.9.7.3 2012.06.18 - [FIXED] - Subsection, Preferences View - TOOLS button didn't work on TVs

- [FIXED] - Player - sometimes a video was set as watched but didn't start playing

- [FIXED] - Player - possible bug that you coulnd't play 3D content on 3D monitors

- [FIXED] - Movie View - sometimes the navigation hang for 2010 Models

- [UPDATED] - Subsection View - navigation should be a bit faster

0.9.7.4 2012.06.25 - [FIXED] - Home View - possible that the focus was on two entries at the same time



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0.9.7.5 2012.07.01 - [FIXED] - Player - showing anamorphic encoded content correctly

- [FIXED] - Home View - Video Name could overlap time/duration

0.980 2012.07.15 - [FIXED] - Home View - style error if Movie Name was too long

- [FIXED] - Player - style error in the OSD if Movie Name was too long

- [FIXED] - Player - disabled 3D capability check for connected TV because API doesn't work

correctly (BD-Players only)

- [FIXED] - Player - if changing audio stream didn't work it showed the wrong audio stream name

in rightOSD

- [FIXED] - Player - if you changed subtitle preferences while playing a movie and didn't save

them then they were still shown for the next movie but not used

- [FIXED] - Movie, Show View - saving the current position didn't work correctly if you had more

than 1 section of each type (Movies, TV-Shows)

- [UPDATED] - Player - Added black shadow line to subtitles

- [UPDATED] - Player - showing a little info popup when you change SUBTITLES or AUDIO with

the remote buttons

- [UPDATED] - Player - when you change subtitles with the SUBTITLES button after the last subtitle

it will disable the subtitles

- [NEW] - Player - added support for movies which are splitted into multiple part files

0.981 2012.07.23 - [FIXED] - SubSection View - style problem in contentRating when there is no data in it

- [FIXED] - Episode View - shows the wrong content rating picture in recentlyAdded, recentlyAired,

recentlyViewedEpisodes, onDeck

- [FIXED] - Player - RED button didn't work as it should (since 0.980)

- [FIXED] - Player - Player status could be wrong displayed when you jump Forward/Backward

while video is paused

- [UPDATED] - Movie, TV Show View - show a blank texture where no cover is loaded

- [UPDATED] - Home View - scrolling should be faster

- [UPDATED] - Player - shows an info text while parsing the subtitles

- [UPDATED] - Player - Subtitles will start from the bottom

- [UPDATED] - Player - workaround if resume doesn't work correctly

- [NEW] - Movie, TV Show View - use UP (previous page) or DOWN (next page) button on your

remote to jump to the next/previous page. This works only if you have more than 7 entries in

your section. The navigation helpbar indicates if UP and DOWN are available.

- [NEW] - Movie View - added pictures for video resolution, video codec, video aspect ratio, video

framerate, audio codec, audio channels, rating and content rating

- [NEW] - TV Show View - added picture for rating and content rating

- [NEW] - Episode View - added pictures for video resolution, video codec, video aspect ratio,

video framerate, audio codec, audio channels, rating

0.982 2012.09.05 - [FIXED] - Player - some parts from subtitles were not shown

- [UPDATED] - All - disabled that you can enable media deletion on your PMS from the app

- [UDPATED] - Player - set default buffer to 10 / 40 / 50

- [UPDATED] - Preferences - when you add manually/edit a PMS, app checks if the PMS is

reachable. Shows a picture as indication what the status is.

- [NEW] - Preferences - adjust the clock (up to -12/+12)

- [NEW] - Preferences - enable / disable that files will get transcoded on the PMS and then played

0.983 2012.09.20 - [FIXED] - Preferences - Black screen on 2012 models if no servers were available

- [FIXED] - Preferences - Blue button for dot input didn't work on edit PMS

- [FIXED] - Preferences - Long server names would overflow the box

- [FIXED] - Preferences - Clock Adjust Feature would accept invalid values

- [FIXED] - Preferences - Setting subtitle fontsize changed the position on screen

- [UPDATED] - Player - JumpForward and Backward do now have a pointer, so not every step will



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trigger loading

0.984 2012.10.06 - [UPDATED] - Preferences - Long Korean server names would still overflow the box

- [FIXED] - Preferences - Subtitle settings did not stick

- [FIXED] - Preferences - Main menu corruption when no PMS server was present

- [FIXED] - Preferences - The same server could be added multiple times

- [FIXED] - Player - Jumpforward/Backward would close the player on movies with bad timeframes

- [FIXED] - Player - Focus could move to the background when a popup was shown

- [FIXED] - Player - Loading animation was sometimes displayed when the movie was already

playing

- [FIXED] - General - Mute symbol and Volume control could both be visible at the same time

- [FIXED] - General - Pushing buttons inbetween pageloads would cause the app to close

0.985 2012.10.14 v 0.985 - 2012-10-14

- [UPDATED] - Preferences - Long server names did wrap around instead of being abbreviated

- [UPDATED] - Preferences - Server online/offline indicators are now updating realtime

- [FIXED] - Preferences - Exit and Return keys did not work correctly during auto search for servers

- [FIXED] - Player - Buttons could stop working after watching for an extended period of time

- [FIXED] - Main - Long server names are now abbreviated

- [FIXED] - Main - Setting a movie Watched/Unwatched did not work correctly

- [FIXED] - TV Show - Theme would not always play, even though a theme was present

0.986 2012.10.28 v 0.986 - 2012-10-28

- [FIXED] - Player - Problem with pause mode when pause was pushed before the movie started

on 2012 models

- [FIXED] - Player - App could get stuck in deadlock state on pressing FW/RW keys repeatedly

- [FIXED] - Main - Smart Hub key did not work correctly on some models

- [UPDATED] - Preferences - Better server online/offline detection

0.987 2012.11.15 v 0.987 - 2012-11-15

- [FIXED] - Player - App could get stuck in deadlock state. FF/RW will no longer switch direction

instantly but will now act like +/-

- [FIXED] - Preferences - Plex Media Server could not be detected when there were too many

invalid servers in the list

- [FIXED] - Main - Background images would not always update to match the correct section

- [UPDATED] - Player - FF and RW are now limited to 16X speed because some older models

cannot handle 32X correctly

- [NEW] - Preferences - Added option to disable all menu animations and fade effects to help

speed up slow devices

- [UPDATED] - ALL - Scrolling text would fade on irregular intervals

0.988 2013-02-27 - [UPDATED] - ALL - Application is now a single page app, this should eliminate shutting down

the application when pushing buttons in between pageloads.

- [UPDATED] - Movies/TV Shows - Screen is now scrolling and has a fast scrolling mode.

- [UPDATED] - ALL - New Volume and Mute onScreen controls.

- [UPDATED] - Autoplay wil now play any list that was present when playback was activated.

- [NEW] - Movies/TV Shows - UP/DOWN actions have been replace with an alphabet selection,

that selects items by first character.

- [NEW] - TV Shows - The posters show an orange label with the number of unwatched episodes.

- [NEW] - Filter selection - Added option to select "By Folder".

- [NEW] - Filter selection - Added option to search with IME input.

- [NEW] - Listview - Can now handle mixed content like Folders and Single items.

- [NEW] - Music is now supported.

- [NEW] - Photos are now supported.



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- [NEW] - Channel Directory supported. This is used for maintenance on Channels.

- [NEW] - Video channels are now supported. (with limitations)

- [NEW] - Music channels are now supported. (with limitations)

- [NEW] - Photo channels are now supported. (with limitations)

- [NEW] - Connecting to our myPlex cloud service is now supported.

- [NEW] - Video Queue is now supported. (when logged into myPlex service)

- [NEW] - Friend Recommendations is now supported. (when logged into myPlex service)

- [NEW] - Shared Content is now supported. (when logged into myPlex service)

- [NEW] - YT3D enabled content can be viewed in 3D if the device supports it.

0.989 2013-02-27 v 0.989 - 2013-03-17

- [FIXED] - Total time was displayed incorrectly in audio player.

- [FIXED] - Audio player could disappear when playing random songs in succession.

- [FIXED] - Scrolling to the left on the poster carrousel, could result in multiple focused items.

- [FIXED] - A-key registered incorrectly.

- [FIXED] - Splash screen would not time-out when there was a known but unreachable server.

- [FIXED] - Auto play included only visible item in the auto play list

- [FIXED] - Auto play did not work if there was not Media tag provided.(Old channels)

- [FIXED] – Auto scan for server could result in network congestion, resulting in server not

connecting.

- [UPDATED] - Disabled focus on subtitle options when subtitles are disabled.

- [UPDATED] - Improved Direct play detection. Will fall back to transcoding if unsupported codecs

are detected.

- [NEW] - While music is playing you can use FF or RW keys to skip to the next or previous song

in the list.

- [NEW] - Audio player shows current song index in autoplay list.

0.999 2013-04-12 v 0.999 - 2013-03-19

- [FIXED] - New XMLHttpRequest queue to fix connection flooding and timeout errors.

- [FIXED] - Alphabet selection closed too fast, so the next selected item was activated.

- [FIXED] - A-key worked as D-key in settings.

- [FIXED] - A-key function could be activated while pop was shown.

- [FIXED] - Main screen was not always loading after autoscan.

- [FIXED] - Deleting photos didn't work on the main screen.

- [FIXED] - Incorrect options were shown in the actionbar for images.

- [FIXED] - Pushing left while paused, could start playback.

- [FIXED] - Cancel AutoPlay would not always cancel playback of next item.

- [FIXED] - Single movies in a folder view would not play.

- [FIXED] - Single episodes in a folder view would not play.

- [UPDATED] - Periodic refresh of the server list, has been replaced by manual action (ENTER), to

reduce the number of open connections.

- [UPDATED] - Channels were not always detected.

- [UPDATED] - Autoscan would not always detect IP addresses in the high 200 range.

- [UPDATED] - Scroll speed in lists slightly increased.

- [NEW] - Added option to transcode subtitles, while transcoding embedded subs can be selected

now (PGS and VOB are not supported yet).

- [NEW] - SMI subtitles are now supported.

- [NEW] - Direct Play/Transcode rules are now stored in an XML profile.

1.000 2013-04-22 v 1.000 - 2013-04-22

- [FIXED] - Autoscan timeout has been increased to better detect slow servers.

- [FIXED] - Setwatched/Unwatched was shown on irrelevant items after pushing the INFO button.



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1.001 2013-05-11 v 1.001 - 2013-05-05

- [REMOVED] - Autoscan has been removed, it had too many problems.

- [UPDATED] - All preference setting screens have been updated to make changing settings easier.

- [UPDATED] - Listview now also support quick scrolling when the button is held down.

- [UPDATED] - Subtitle routine has been optimized so it takes less CPU cycles.

- [FIXED] - Audio output switching sometimes failed. Bottom OSD will now show output status.

- [FIXED] - Pressing Return or Exit while a movie was buffering could create a deadlock.

- [FIXED] - Resume time would show NaNaN when resume time was null.

- [FIXED] - Content titel in OSD would sometimes show wrong name.

- [FIXED] - Listview did not wrap text correctly on long titles.

- [FIXED] - Textual bug in TV-Shows screen.

- [FIXED] - Transcoding did not work for 2010 models.

- [NEW] - Enter button can now be used to pause and resume video during playback to better

support touch remotes.

1.002 2013-06-06 v 1.002 - 2013-06-06

- [FIXED] - Long loading times could occured if servers were listed but not online.

- [FIXED] - Thumbnails would not always show for myPlex items when the local server was offline.

- [FIXED] - Slideshow images could get stuck at the loading sign.

- [FIXED] - Slideshow start playback will now disable the screensaver.

- [FIXED] - Searchbox could appear for items unintended.

- [FIXED] - Pushing cancel on the onscreen keyboard could exit the app.

- [FIXED] - Entering numbers 1 or 2 would show as 1e and 2b on some devices.

- [FIXED] - Plex podcast could hang app if one would move to a different screen before buffering

completed.

- [FIXED] - Resolved a nasty memory leak that could crash the app when used over a longer

period of time.

- [FIXED] - Selection popup could reappear if enter was pushed in rapid succession.

- [UPDATED] - Changed buffer preferences and added auto mode.

- [UPDATED] - Background screens now do crossfade on all screens.

- [UPDATED] - Added more transparency so the posters are better visible.

- [UPDATED] - Posters and thumbnails got increased in quality.

- [UPDATED] - Changed menu animation

- [NEW] - Added a general timeout in preferences.

1.003 2013-06-26 v 1.003 - 2013-06-26

- [FIXED] - Buffer settings have been restored to allow for higher values on high bitrate movies.

- [FIXED] - Opening mediapreview was slow or could crash with very large libraries.

- [FIXED] - Subtitles setting were not saved.

- [FIXED] - Deleting items from the queue or recommended section was not possible.

- [FIXED] - Selections made with the Alphabet feature were not stored in history.

- [FIXED] - Exiting the Alphabet selection with Return, left some keys in a locked state.

- [FIXED] - There was an unintended delay when showing description text in listview mode.

- [FIXED] - Content rating icon was not visible.

- [UPDATED] - Force local transcoding now has 3 options: on, off or auto.

- [UPDATED] - Increased letterspacing in OSD, time was hard to read on 2012+ devices.

- [UPDATED] - Replaced the swirling loader with the loadingbar for the Slideshow.

- [UPDATED] - Autplay no longer shows the 3 second popup and starts the next item quicker.

- [UPDATED] - Autplay video nows play "back to back" without showing the Plex interface

inbetween.

- [UPDATED] - More Video channels now use Direct play and start faster.

- [UPDATED] - FLV has been added to the Direct Play profiles.



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- [UPDATED] - Audio output change is now triggered again after unpausing.

- [UPDATED] - Progress updates have been replaced with timeline, like other clients use.

- [UPDATED] - When media progress is over 90% of total duration, it will be marked a watched.

- [NEW] - Added paging to all mediapreview screens (Keys on TV = CHNL+/-, on BD = |<< /

>>|).

- [NEW] - Added paging to all listview screens (Keys on TV = CHNL+/-, on BD = |<< / >>|).

- [NEW] - Added Alphabet selection for Music: All Artists (Keys </>)

- [NEW] - Shared Content now supports Direct Play.(set in Preferences)

- [NEW] - Added support for more types of channels.

- [NEW] - Added support for Applications section.

1.004 2013-07-10 v 1.004 - 2013-07-10

- [FIXED] - Title display in lower OSD was missing season and episode information.

- [FIXED] - After a search with no results, some buttons still worked unintentionally.

- [FIXED] - Server names with apostrophes would show as '&apos'.

- [FIXED] - The blue "DELETE" button kept working unintentionally after it was used once.

1.005 2013-07-16 v 1.005 - 2013-07-16

- [FIXED] - Shared content categories without actual content will now show the default icons

instead of nothing.

- [FIXED] - Queue and Recommended categories are no longer available if you do not have a

local PMS defined.

- [FIXED] - The "Set as Watched/Unwatched" feature has been added to the Queue and

Recommended categories.

1.006 2013-07-23 v 1.006 - 2013-07-23

- [UPDATED] - Force local transcoding option now shows on, off or auto as text.



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2. Description of the App

1 Objectives

Important Note:

This app is a client for the freely downloadable Plex Media Server.

Before you can use this app your will need to setup a server first!

This app will not work correctly without a Plex Media Server!

The only exception to this rule is Shared Content, but we will get to that later.

Use a browser to go to: http://www.plexapp.com/getplex/

Then pick the setup file for the OS type you are planning to use:

Download and install the software.

Now use a browser to go http://127.0.0.1:32400/web to configure the server.

You must replace the 127.0.0.1 with the IP address of the server where you installed the PMS software,

if your browser is not on the same machine.

http://www.plexapp.com/getplex/

http://127.0.0.1:32400/web



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Now follow the instructions to add some content to the server and you are ready to use the app.

The main objective of the Plex for Samsung app is to provide access to a user's Plex Media Server. The

Plex Media Server catalogs and gathers metadata for a user's personal media (movies, TV shows, home

movies, music, photos, etc.) and streams that content over the user's network to Plex clients (such as

the Plex for Samsung app) in a rich and attractive manner. The app will make streaming content from

a user's network a much simpler, much more beautiful, much more exciting experience!

2 Functions of the App

Browse through your Media collection

Watch your Movies, TV Shows and Photos and listen to your music

Connect to our myPlex cloud service and access your content from anywhere.

Share your home movies and photos with your friends and family.

Select your favorite channels and watch or listen to them from your TV.

Resume the content where you stopped it (Movies and TV Shows only)

Watch 3D content (Half-SBS and Half-TAB)

Delete content from your Plex Media Server (*if server setting is enabled to allow this)

If you have an A/V receiver connected to your TV or BD-Player then the app automatically

changes the audio output format to AC3, DTS or PCM depending the audio format of your

content.

Autoplay feature that allows you to play one item after another and the user doesn’t have to

touch his remote.

If you’re TV Show has a Theme music the app plays this music when you enter the TV Show

(only if there is a theme available online)

You can set a Movie, TV-Show, TV Show Season or a single Episode as watched/unwatched.

When you finish a Movie or Episode the app sends to the Plex Media Server that you watched

this content and changes the indicator on that item. (No Multiuser yet)



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3 The User interface structure

Figure 1



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3. How to use the app

1 Let gets started

Before you can use the app you have to install the Plex Media Server (PMS) on a PC in your network.

You can download it here http://plexapp.com/getplex/ . After you have installed the PMS you have to

create at least one section which contains movies or TV Shows and preform a library scan so the added

folder gets indexed. When this is done you can start the Plex app on your Samsung device. If you have

not yet setup a Plex Media Server, please do so now before continuing.

When you first start the app it will ask you to connect to a Plex Media Server (Picture 1).

Picture 1

For now we will use the first option.

Press enter to close the message and select {Preferences} from the left menu and push Enter again.

Select Plex Media Server from the menu and push enter (Screenshot 1).

You are now on the screen where you can add your local server(s).

http://plexapp.com/getplex/



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Picture 2 To add an IP address you have to push the RED button on your remote. It is also shown in the navigation help bar. After you pushed the RED button a popup will appear (Picture 2.5).

Picture 2.5 Now enter the IP address of the local server you would like to connect to. Press [Add Server] to add it to the server list. Note: Some remotes behave a bit strange and will show 1e, 2b, instead of 1, 2. If this happens use the Blue button to remove the offending characters Now press the GREEN button to set a default Plex Media Server (PMS) (Picture 4). You can add up to 7



17 | Page

Plex Media Servers into the app. But only one at the time can be the default server. The green checkmark indicates that the app found the PMS. If it hadn’t it would show a red X. You can press the enter button to restart the reachability check.

Picture 4 So the configuration is done lets go back (RETURN button on your remote). Now you see the number 1 behind Plex Media Server. This indicates that you have entered one Plex Media Server IP (Picture 5).

Picture 5



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Let’s look briefly into the app’s Preferences, General, Player, Sound / Subtitles, System and About Plex

2 Preferences General

1 Display clock in 24h format

This will change how the clock will be displayed in the top left corner. Default is in 12h format which is

01:05PM. The 24h format would be 13:05.

2 Clock Adjustment

With this option you can adjust the clock from -12hours up to +12hours. On some devices the clock

didn’t work correctly so we added this option.

3 Send debug to PMS

This is good to help the user if he has problems with something. If you enable this the app will send

the log data to your PMS and the PMS will write it in his log file. This should only be enabled for

debugging.



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4 Use transition animations

The app uses many animations and fade transition effects. This can be a bit much for the slower devices

to handle. When this option is disabled, it will speed up the navigation at the cost of having no special

effects.

5 Request timeout in seconds

This will set the time that the app will wait to abort a request to a server or online resource.

It has no influence if the connection works fine, but it may help for slow starting servers that have to

wait for the hard-disk to spin up.

3 Preferences Player

Picture 6

1 Playing Theme Music

The first one is for TV Shows (Picture 6). The Plex Media Server downloads for many TV Shows Theme

music and the Plex app can play this when you enter a TV Show. I will show you later when the app

will play Theme music. So with this setting you can enable or disable the Theme Music.

6 Fast Forward in seconds

When you watch content you can push the RIGHT arrow on your remote and it will jump forward about

60 seconds. 60 seconds is the default value. If you want it to jump forward about 180 seconds then

you can change this here. If you hold down the button the indicator will make steps with the time you

set here. The movie will not jump during that time, but only after you release the button. This setting



20 | Page

will indicate how big the steps are when jumping forward (right arrow). Note: If the content length is

not very long, the steps are adjusted accordingly. This setting will only indicate what the maximum

value allowed will be.

7 Rewind in seconds

When you watch content you can push the LEFT arrow on your remote and it will jump backwards

about 60 seconds. 60 seconds is the default value. If you want it to jump backwards about 180 seconds

then you can change this here. If you hold down the button the indicator will make steps with the time

you set here. The movie will not jump during that time, but only after you release the button. This

setting will indicate how big the steps are when jumping backward (left arrow). Note: If the content

length is not very long, the steps are adjusted accordingly. This setting will only indicate what the

maximum value allowed will be.

The next three settings should only be changed if you want to play high bitrate content and it stutters.

It helped me on my TV (UE55D70090) that I could watch a movie with 30mbit as bitrate.

8 Initial Buffer

This buffer will be filled before content will start playing.

9 Pending Buffer

If the buffer drops beneath this value during playback, playback will stop and buffering will take place.

This buffer needs to be filled before playback will continue after a buffering stop.

10 Total Buffer

This buffer specifies the total buffer size for video + audio playback.

Note: All buffers are set to 0 by default and will show as “auto”

This mode will let the player use the default buffer values for the specific device. If

your content is high bitrate you might want to increase these values to a higher

value!



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11 Force Local Transcoding [Optional – not needed for normal operation]

Note: This setting will only affect LOCAL servers

(The ones you added manually to the list)

This setting toggles between 3 modes.

Off: All media will be played directly. (note that unsupported formats may fail)

On: All Media will be transcoded on the server. This means the app will tell the server to first

transcode the media before it is send to the device. This is a good option if you have problems

with some files that won’t play. Most problems are fixed when the media is re-encoded.

Auto: All media will be verified against a predefined DirectPlay profile. If your media matches

any of the profiles, it will use Direct Play. If no match can be made it will fall back to using

transcoding in order to play the file.

12 Local Transcoding Quality [Optional – not needed for normal operation]

Here you can define the quality level for local transcoding.

With this you can set the balance between quality and bitrate.

A higher number means better quality but more network traffic.

Note: Check the chapter about transcoding for more information



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Picture 7

Picture 8



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4 Preferences Sound/Subtitles

1 Auto change from audio output

If you disable this, the app won’t change the external output to DTS or AC3 depending on your media.

This is useful if you have your device connected to an A/V Receiver which supports only PCM.

13 Subtitles font size

You can change the size from your subtitles here. Default value is 22px. I already changed it to 30px

here. These values can also be changed during playback with the OSD (B key).

14 Subtitles color

You can change the color from your subtitles here. You can choose between white, black, red, green,

yellow, orange and grey. Default color is white. I already changed it to orange here. These values can

also be changed during playback with the OSD (B key).

15 Subtitles are always on

If you enable this the app will always enabled subtitles if they are available.

If subtitles are enabled, is a setting that is stored on the Plex Media, so the setting can be shared with

other Plex client devices.

16 Transcode subtitles

If you enable this the app will tell the server to embed the selected subtitle into the movie stream. If

transcoding is enabled and this options is on, the OSD menu for selecting subtitles will also include

subtitles that are embedded into the movie file, which are normally not selectable. If no transcoding is

used this option has no effect.



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Picture 9

5 Preferences System (myPlex)

1 Sign in to MyPlex

Plex has its own myPlex cloud service where you can do things like:

Watch online videos you saved to your queue to watch later

Watch online videos that your friends recommended to you

Share your photos or Home movies with family or friends

To use it a user first needs to create an account on https://my.plexapp.com

After you created the account and logged in, you can see which devices are connected to myPlex under

the tab “Devices”. (Picture 10)

https://my.plexapp.com/



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Picture 10

Before you can use myPlex on your Samsung device, you will first need to connect it to your account.

To do so select the first option in the System menu on your device “Sign in to MyPlex” and press

enter. After a few seconds a screen will pop up with a 4 digit number. (Picture 11)

Picture 11

Now memorize the number or write it down then go to your PC and log into the myPlex site if you

have not already done so. Change the url to https://my.plexapp.com/pin and a screen will appear

where you must enter the four digits that are showing on your device. (picture 12)

https://my.plexapp.com/pin



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Click the connect button and wait for the device to connect. When successful, your browser will show

picture 13 and your device will show the screen in picture 14.

If you entered the wrong number or waited too long, you can repeat the procedure from the beginning.

Picture 12

Picture 13



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Picture 14

If you have connected your device your screen will show your username and email to indicate the

account that you are logged in with. In the left bottom corner the login avatar is shown.

Picture 15

Once you are connected and have returned to the home screen, you will notice you got 3 new categories

on the left side:



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Queue (Only if you also have a local server defined)

Recommended (Only if you also have a local server defined)

Shared Content

We will explain these categories later.

For more information on myPlex service visit http://www.plexapp.com/help/

To disconnect from myPlex select “Sign out” and press enter again.

Note: Connecting to myPlex will only be needed one time, or after the connection

token has been removed from myPlex. If you connected the device once

successfully, the device will connect to myPlex automatically after you restart the

app.

17 Quality from remote servers

Note: This setting will only affect REMOTE servers

(The ones you connect to through myPlex)

This setting is comparable with the quality setting for local transcoding. Because myPlex content travels

across the internet, it might be required to limit the bandwidth usage in order to stop the video from

constant buffering. The default value is 7.

18 Direct play Shared content

Because the Shared Content is coming from the internet, normally it will use transcoding to adjust the

bitrate and resolution, in order to prevent stutter. If your internet connection is fast enough, you can

enable this setting to disable transcoding, for a better quality and faster response.

http://www.plexapp.com/help/



29 | Page

Picture 16

On this page you cannot change anything it just gives you some information about the app and about

your device.

App Information:

Tells you what the app can do and where you can get support.

6 Preferences System Information

Gives you information about your device such as:

model

name

type

from which series it is (this screen is from the Emulator)

if your device is connected via WLAN or LAN

current IP address

the 3D capability

App version

Link to the change log.



30 | Page

4. Home view

Let’s leave the Preferences View and go to the Home View, push RETURN twice on your remote.

Now you should see on the left side your sections which you create on your Plex Media Server (Picture

8). I have two sections here, Movies and TV Shows. You can push UP and DOWN on your remote to

scroll through the left navigation bar.

Picure 8

There are two ways to play your content. The first one is to play your content directly from the Home

View. To do so, push the RIGHT arrow on your remote.



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Picture 9

Now you see that the first movie is selected (Picture 9). It has a orange border around it and also the

name, year and length is shown under the movie poster. The navigation help bar shows you your

options.

If you want to watch this movie push the ENTER button on your remote.

If you want to delete the movie physically from your Plex Media Server push the BLUE button on your

remote.

Note: Deleting content must be enabled on the server. This is a setting in the

Media Manager of the Plex server. If this is not enabled you will get a warning and

are not able to delete anything.

The Autoplay (RED button) feature will be used most likely for TV Shows and Music. When you enable

it, it will automatically play the next item in the line after the current item has finished.

Note: Do not use Autoplay for photos. To start a Slideshow just press Play when a photo is presented

full screen.

To navigate around you can use all your four arrow buttons on your remote.

If you want to go back to the left navigation bar you can push the RETURN button on your remote to

instantly return to the main menu or you push the LEFT arrow on your remote until you are there.



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Note: TOOLS button section does not apply to BD-Players

When you push the TOOLS button on your remote a popup will come up where you can choose

between Picture Settings and Audio Settings (Picture 10). Those are the settings from your Samsung

TV/BD-Player. You can push the TOOLS button at any view or even when you are watching your content.

Of course the popup won’t come up if there is already another popup open.

Picture 10

Let’s close this popup and push the UP arrow on your remote (Picture 11). Now we have selected the

upper movie. You can see that the orange border is around the movie poster. Also the movie name,

year and runtime appeared above the movie poster.



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Picture 11

This row is called “On Deck” and you will see here content which is in progress. This means that you

have started to watch this movie before and stopped it but have not finished watching it until the end

(=Unwatched). If you want to play the movie push ENTER on your remote and a popup will appear

(Picture 12). Here you can choose if you want to resume the movie where you left it or if you want to

start it from the beginning.

Picture 12



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If you would watch the movie all the way to the end it will get the status “watched” and will no longer

be visible on the “On Deck” bar. If there are no “half-watched” movies at all, then in this case the “On

Deck” row would disappear and it would look like (Picture 13). Notice that the “On Deck” row is not

visible if there are no “On Deck” movies.

Picture 13

Now let’s look into the second option how to watch movies. Push RETURN on your remote. This will

put the focus is on the left (Main) navigation bar (Picture 13).

Push ENTER on your remote to go to the next page.

5. Listview

This is called the Filter/List View (Picture 14). These are several filters available.

You can narrow down your selection by selecting the desired filter or select All Movies.

Note: The Unwatched section means “not watched until the end”, and not “never

seen before”. This screen also supports “paging”, you can use the channel

UP/DOWN buttons on a TV remote or the |<< and >>| buttons on a Blu-ray

player remote, to swap pages.



35 | Page

Picture 14

All the filter options can be selected directly with the ENTER button. There are special selections starting

with the word “Search”. When you select that one you can use the IME to enter a search text and find

what you are looking for that way.

Note: On some models you will need to push the GREEN button before you will

see the On-screen keyboard. This keyboard may look different than the one in the

picture depending on the year and model of the device. You may also press the B

button again to get a QWERTY layout, but only if the device supports it. (2011 and

later)



36 | Page

Let’s select the filter “By Genre”, select it and push ENTER. Now you will see all available Genres based

on the movies you have (Picture 15).

Note: Not all the genres might be available to you if you do not have such kind of

movies.



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Picture 15

6. Media carrousel

I selected the Adventure Genre. In the top middle you can see that you are in the section Movies and

have selected as filter Adventure (Picture 16). In the top right corner you can see the number of movies

your selection has. The app shows you in the center of the display information about the selected

movie. At the bottom you see your movies which you can select with your LEFT and RIGHT button on

your remote. This is an infinite loop. That’s the reason why it might look a little strange, when you have

less than 7 movies.

Under the movie poster you may notice a little white circle. (Highlighted in green)

This is a watched/unwatched indicator. They can appear in three states:

Filled circle : The movie has not been watched

Half-filled circle: The movie has been watched partly, but not to the end.

No indicator: The movie has been watched, all the way to the end.



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Picture 16

When you push the INFO button on your remote you can change the watched/unwatched status from

your content (Picture 17).

Picture 17

With ENTER can you set this status. The popup will close itself and you see that the white circle appeared

under the selected poster because we set it as unwatched (Picture 18).

To watch a movie just hit ENTER on your remote.



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Picture 18

There are two ways to select a movie of your choice. The first is pushing the left or right button on

your remote. The bar with posters will slide to a side revealing new movies.

If you keep holding the button down, the screen will go into “fast-scrolling” mode.

The information on top will no longer be updated to speed up the scrolling, and an overlay with only

the name of the current movie will be displayed. (Picture 19). After releasing the button, the information

on screen will be updated and the screen returns to normal mode.

Note: This screen supports “paging”, you can use the channel UP/DOWN buttons

on a TV remote or the |<< and >>| buttons on a Blu-ray player remote, to swap

pages.



40 | Page

Picture 19

The second way to quickly find your movie in a large collection is by using the UP and DOWN buttons.

This will show a so called “Alphabet” selection which will allow you to select all movies starting with

character ‘X’. A box with a character will appear on screen. (Picture 20). By pushing up or down the

character will change. Keep pressing until you selected the character of your choice. Push enter on your

selected choice. Now the screen will show you all movies starting with that character. (Picture 21)

Note: If there are less than 7 different movies in your selection, they will be

displayed as duplicates; this is by design because the poster row is an endless

loop. Also note that only characters are shown that will result in a valid selection,

so if you have no movies starting with Z, the character Z will not be shown. There

are two special characters, namely the # which means “movies that start with a

number” and the * which will select ‘ALL’ movies.



41 | Page

Picture 20

Picture 21



42 | Page

7. TV Shows

Let’s go back to the Home View and look into TV Shows. Everything is the same here as it was for

movies (Picture 22).

Picture 22

Push ENTER to enter the Filter/ List view.

Also those filters are almost the same as it was for movies – push ENTER (Picture 23).



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Picture 23

Here we see in the top right corner that we have 25 TV Shows (Picture 24). In the center you get

additional information about the selected show. Left Next to the studio picture you see that the TV

Show has 28 episodes total, 0 watched and 28 unwatched. You can change the watched/unwatched

status with the INFO button on your remote. It’s the same procedure as it was for movies. The oranges

circles on the posters also indicate how many of the episodes are still unwatched for a better overview.

If all episodes have been watched, no orange circle will be visible.

Picture 24



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Push ENTER, to go into the selected TV Show. Now you will hear the Theme music playing, if the Plex

Media Server has downloaded one for your TV Show.

Note: Not all TV Shows have Theme music, if it’s not available, no sound is played.

In top-middle you can see what the current selected show name is (Picture 25). Right next to it that

this TV Show has 1 Season. At the left center you see the name of the season (Season 1). The number

4 indicates that this season has four unwatched episodes. On the right side you have additional

information about the selected Season. With the INFO button you can change the watched/unwatched

status for the whole season at once.

Picture 25

8. Episode view Push ENTER to go into the selected season. At the middle of the top you see what show and season

you are currently in (Picture 26). Right next to it that this Season has 1 episodes. At the left center you

see the episodes listed. The white circle on the last three rows indicates that these episodes are still

unwatched. The half circle on the second row indicates that you have started to watch this episode but

not yet finished it all the way to the end. On the right center you have additional information about

the selected episode. With the INFO button you can change the watched/unwatched status for the

selected episode.



45 | Page

Picture 26

9. Playing content

When you are playing content you can bring up the OSD with the INFO button on your remote (Picture

27).

Picture 27



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The OSD shows you for movies the Name and year and for Episodes the TV Show name and the

Episode name. It also shows the current playtime, total playtime and the time when the video will end.

To jump forward use the RIGHT arrow button on your remote.

To jump backwards use the LEFT arrow button on your remote.

Note: Press the < > buttons repeatedly to do several jumps in a row. During this

time only the indicator will move until you stop pressing. After releasing the

button the movie will jump to the assigned position. When a movie has a timing

issues it’s possible that the player will cancel the jump to avoid further problems.

Fast-forward (2, 4, 8, 16 times) and Fast Backwards (2, 4, 8, 16 times) work with the buttons on

the remote.

Note: not all movies support this. If a problem is detected, you will get a warning

that FF/RW is not available.

The buttons PAUSE, PLAY and STOP work as you would imagine.

When you push the GREEN button the OSD will slide down and the right OSD will appear (Picture 28).

There you can see information about the audio tracks and whether your video has subtitles. You can

enable/disable them. Change the settings from the subtitles. If you don’t save the changes from the

subtitles they won’t be available for the next video. The app will use the ones you set under Preferences.

With Jump To you can jump to a specific point in the video. When the time is red than your time is

after the total time. If so you can reset it with the RETURN button.

With ‘crop black bars from video’ you can stretch your video, if the aspect ratio is not corrected

automatically.

Note: Switching Audio or Subtitle streams, may require you to stop and restart the

movie. This depends on if you are using transcoding and if the device supports

these features. (2010 C-Devices do not support audio stream switching)



47 | Page

Picture 28

10. Music Music playback is supported throughout the application. This means you can browse photos or your

other media info while having some music playing in the background. Music is indexed by Artist or

Album and just like your other content you can filter or search what you are looking for. On the first

levels you will see collections (either and artist or an album) indicated by a folder icon. (Picture 29)

While you go deeper into your media, you will eventually see content that has a time indicator. (Picture

30). This content is playable. When you start playback of music (or Music Channels) a small music player

will show the currently playing song or podcast. (Picture 30)



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Picture 29

Picture 30

If you want to play the whole album, push the RED button to enable auto-play.

Note that the auto-playlist will be populated when you press playback. The player will indicate the

number of items in the playback list. (2/6 in picture 30) The list will be played even when you move

away from the current screen. To make a new selection stop and start playback again. The list is not

limited to albums, any selection can be auto-played.



49 | Page

When you browse around in the app, while music is playing, some buttons work differently.

Depending on the screen you are on. The player will follow you around (picture 27) with the exception

of the Media preview screens, where there is no room to show the player. In this case only the music

will be played. To stop the playback of music at any time, press the STOP button. In screens where there

is no left-right navigation, you can scroll through the playing song (not supported on transcoded file

formats like .flac). While music is playing you can uses the FF and RW keys to skip to the next or

previous song in the list.

Note that playback of music will be stopped if you start the playback of other

media.

Picture 27



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11. Photos

Picture 28

Photos can be browsed or shown full screen by selecting them and pressing the Enter button.

If a photo is shown full screen, and there are more pictures available in the current selection, you can

press the play button to start a slideshow.

For a brief moment an indication will be shown on screen about the current display time.

You can increase or decrease the time with the UP and DOWN button while the show is playing.

Note: The slideshow uses the Plex Media Server to rescale the images. When adding new images and

showing them the first time, the images may not have been processed, and may appear after a slight

delay. Please give the server some time to do its work, once the images are cached they should display

normally.

Note: Autoplay does not affect photos (Use the Play button for this). Autoplay

however can be used when you would like to play background music during the

slideshow

Just like the other sections, Photos has its own filter view. Only now with specific photo attributes.

(Picture 29)



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Note: Photos does not have a “by folder” filter, but it will reproduce subfolders

under the “All Photos” if the original folder had any subfolders in it.

Picture 29

12. Channels What are Channels?

Plex offers a development model for third party developers to add online content in the form of a

channel. You could look at it as a kind of app store inside Plex.

A special note on Channels: Channels are not part of the app, they are created by

other developers and we are not responsible for the working or content of these

channels! We do have a moderating team that will make sure that only approved

channels will be made available, but we cannot guarantee that all channels will

work on your device! Some channels are region bound and are not available, or do

not function, outside that specific region. Also, many of the channels require

transcoding; this will require a PMS server with enough CPU and Memory to do

so. Some channels use Flash, Silverlight or other external products to work. At this

point the App does not support all types of channels. We may add more types

later. In short: If it works, that’s nice. If it does not, we may not be able to fix it.



52 | Page

To add, update or remove channels you use the so called “Channel directory”

Let’s have a look at it. Select the Channel Directory and push Enter (picture 30)

As you can see there are several ways to explore the available channels.

Let’s selected “Featured” (Picture 31) and push Enter.

Note that there are 3 kinds of channels: Video, Music and Photo channels.

I’m a fan of movies, so let’s install the Apple Movie Trailer channel.

Press enter, select “Install” and press enter again. It may take a little while so please be patient.

After the installation has completed your screen should look like picture 33.

Picture 30



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Picture 31

Picture 32



54 | Page

Picture 33

With the installation complete let’s now look what has happened. Keep pressing return until you are

back at the main screen. Now you should have a section on the left called ‘Video Channels’ and the

Apple Movie Channel should be visible.

Note: At first the image may appear blank as the content needs to be updated

from the internet. This can take up to a minute, but will only happen once.



55 | Page

Picture 34

You can now use the channel just like you would use a movie section. Depending on the channel you

can browse and watch the content that the developer has made available.

(Picture 35)

Picture 35



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Music Channels will use the music player for playback (Picture 36)

Picture 36

Photo channels use the Full screen / Slideshow for display

Picture 37



57 | Page

13. Queue

Note: The Queue and Recommended category will only become available after you

are logged into the myPlex cloud service and if you have a local server defined.

Without a local server the queue will not be visible!

See: Preferences > System > Sign in to MyPlex

Picture 38

The queue allows you to mark online videos on the big video sites so you can watch them later or in

this case on your TV. To add a movie to the queue, you need to add the Plex extension to a browser

on your PC. Browse to https://my.plexapp.com/queue/help and drag the “Plex It” image to your

bookmarks bar. Now go and visit a video site like YouTube and select a movie of your choice. Click the

new “Plex It” link, and a sidebar will appear to show you that your movie has been added to the myPlex

Queue. (Picture 39)

Note: Not every site is supported and not all movies can be played or added this

way!

https://my.plexapp.com/queue/help



58 | Page

Picture 39

Refresh the Queue by selecting another category and return to it again.

Your selected video should show up as a new item (picture 40)

Picture 40

You can now select a play the movie by pushing enter, or select it from the list view.



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If you select an online movie you often have a choice of several formats, just like you would when

playing the movie directly in a browser. In this case a choice menu will be shown. (Picture 41) Use the

UP and DOWN buttons to select the desired format and press enter.

Picture 41

If you select a high resolution, buffering may occur more frequent depending on your internet

connection.

Just like with Movies and TV Shows you can set Queue items as “watched” or “unwatched”. You may

also delete items from the Queue if you want to remove them from the list.

14. Recommended

Note: The Queue and Recommended category will only become available after you

are logged into the myPlex cloud service and if you have a local server defined.

Without a local server the queue will not be visible!

See: Preferences > System > Sign in to MyPlex



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Picture 42

The recommended category (picture 42) is very similar to the Queue. The only difference is that you

do not pick the content yourself, but any friend you have on myPlex can recommend movies to you.

Currently only Plex mobile clients (like the iPhone and Android clients) offer the feature to make

recommendations.

15. Shared Content Note: The Shared Content category will only become available after you are logged into the myPlex

cloud service! See: Preferences > System > Sign in to MyPlex.

Note: You don’t need a local server if you only want to use Shared Content while

logged into myPlex!

When you start Plex the first time just follow the login procedure for myPlex as described in the System

section above. This category will show all the content that is shared with you through the myPlex cloud

service. Let’s consider a few scenarios where this would come in handy.

Say you have a girlfriend that has a Samsung TV, but no Plex Media Server and you have a nice movie

evening planned together. The only thing you will need is to make an account for your girlfriend and

share one or more sections of you PMS server with her.

At her house just install the app on her TV and log in to her myPlex account.



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The sections you shared on your PMS server at home will be available, right from her TV!

Or you made a great video and some photos of your new born baby, and you want to share them with

your parents that live far away. Just share your home videos and photos with them and they can watch

them instantly!

Browsing and playing the content works just the same as with the local content on your own server.

Note that the content needs to travel over the internet, so everything will be a bit slower than normal.

If you watch a video from the Shared Content section and your internet connection is a bit slow, you

may experience that the video will start to buffer often because the content cannot be delivered fast

enough.

In this case; go to the Preferences > System tab. (picture 43)

There you can adjust the “Quality from remote servers” setting. Try setting it to a lower value. This will

reduce the bandwidth needed to play the movie. It also will reduce the movie’s quality, but it should

help with the buffering. Default value for this setting is 7.

Note: the transcoding is done by the Plex Media Server on the remote side. Like

we mentioned before, it will need to be powerful enough to handle the

transcoding or constant buffering will occur.

Picture 43



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Picture 44

Note: Server information is cached on the myPlex site, so a connected server will

always be visible. That does not mean it is online! If you try to view data from a

server that is not available the app will show this as: “No Data Available”

16. Special Functions

1 Playing 3D content

The app supports Half SBS and Half TAB 3D content. The app switches automatically in 3D mode when

it detects 3D content but this works only if you name your files correctly. You must include “H-SBS” or

“Half-SBS” for Side-By-Side content and “H-TAB” or “Half-TAB” for Top-And-Bottom content, in the

filename of the movie you want to play. This is not case sensitive. An example as filename would be:

Kung.Fu.Panda.2.2011.half-sbs.1080p.mkv.

If you are watching 3d videos on YouTube (from the queue or a channel) and they have the word “yt3d”

in the title and are in the correct half-sbs format, they will also be able to play in 3D if your device

supports it. Note that some movies have the left and right images swapped around. You might have

to use the regular tools menu on the device to swap the left and right image around.



63 | Page

2 Subtitle support

At the moment only external .SRT and .SMI subtitles are supported. This means the subtitle file must

be placed in the same folder as the video file. Also important is the naming of the subtitle file. It must

have the same name as the video file + language information.

An example would be:

Video filename: Kung.Fu.Panda.2.2011.1080p.mkv ,

Subtitle filename: Kung.Fu.Panda.2.2011.1080p.english.srt.

Alternative Subtitle filename: Kung.Fu.Panda.2.2011.1080p.en.srt.

Note: If no subtitles are available, the subtitle selections in the right-side OSD

while playing a movie will be greyed out and show “none”.

Note: Remember to always update the library on the server after making

changes!

3 Lost Server connection:

In case your Plex media Server shuts down or a problem with the network occurs, there are two ways

to reconnect to your server after the problem has been resolved:

Solution one: Close the app, and restart it.

Solution two: Open the preferences screen and go to the Plex Media Server(x) section.

The servers that are not available will have a red cross next to them (Picture 30)

Bring the server online and press [ENTER] to refresh the list. A refresh can take up to 2 seconds per

server.

When the icon becomes a green checkmark (Picture 31) the server connection is ok.

If you return to the main screen now, the app will be reconnected.

Note: It can take up to 15 seconds before the status is updated.



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Picture 30

Picture 31



65 | Page

17. To transcode or not to transcode that’s the question Because there are always questions about transcoding, let’s talk some more on that subject.

1 Why would I need transcoding?

Unsupported codecs and container

Your Samsung device is pretty awesome when it comes to codec support and it will play almost anything

you throw at it directly. However there will be files that it just cannot play. Either due to an unsupported

codec or container or due to a wrong combination of those two. In that case your device will throw an

“unsupported” error and you cannot play your content. Transcoding can solve this problem for you.

Remote playback is stuttering

Another problem can occur if you are streaming content from a remote server.

Remote server connections travel across the internet and as we all know that is not always as fast as

we would like it to be, and this may result in stuttering playback.

In this case transcoding is used to lower the bitrate of the content so it has less data to transport,

resulting in smooth playback (at the cost of some quality).

I can only use Wi-Fi but my movie stutters

Wi-Fi is not recommended to be used with this app, but sometimes a wired connection is not an option.

In that case you may also have stutter problems when bitrates of movies become too high for a Wi-Fi

connection to handle. Just like with remote servers transcoding could be a solution for this.

2 Local Transcoding V.S. Remote transcoding

There is a major difference between transcoding for content hosted on a local server or content hosted

on a remote server. If you want to use local transcoding your server should be able to handle the extra

load that comes with transcoding. If your PMS is running on a NAS or a low powered machine,

transcoding is NOT an option for you!

If the server is not capable of keeping up with transcoding the stream, you content will stutter even

worse than before!

If you want to use transcoding on a remote server, that remote server is doing all the work. So again,

that remote machine should be able to handle the extra load. If the remote server cannot handle it,

transcoding is NOT an option.



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3 Local Transcoding

Under normal conditions transcoding for local content should always be “OFF”.

Transcoding will add delays in start and jumping within any media file, so only use it when it cannot

be avoided.

To enabled Local transcoding got to Preferences > Player > Force Local Transcoding

This has 3 options:

OFF, like it says, no transcoding is ever used (Default)

ON, this will ALWAYS force transcoding for LOCAL content.

Auto, this will use a so-called profile to determine if your content should be transcoded or not.

When the option is set to “auto” the app will check the containers and codecs that have been used in

the media you are trying to play. If these containers and codecs comply with any of the items in the

“Direct Play list” (Picture 32), they will be played “Directly” without transcoding. If one or more parts to

not comply, the file will be transcoded and the offending parts will be replaced by the server.

Direct Play list.

Type Container Video Codec Audio Codec

Video mp4 h264,mpeg4 aac,ac3,mp3,pcm

Video asf wmv3,wmv3,vc1 wmav2,wmav2,wmapro,wmavoice,pcm

Video avi h264,mpeg4,mjpeg mp3,ac3,dca,pcm

Video mkv h264,mpeg4,mjpeg,mpeg2video,vc1 mp3,ac3,dca,aac,pcm

Video mpeg h264,mpeg1video,mpeg2video mp2,mp3,ac3,aac,pcm

Video mpegts h264,mpeg2video,vc1 mp2,mp3,ac3,dca,pcm

Video flv h264 aac,ac3,mp3,pcm

Video 3gpp h264,mpeg4 aac,he-aac

Music mp4 - aac

Music mp3 - mp3

Picture 32

4 Local Transcoding Quality

To set the desired quality level for local transcoding go to:

Preferences > Player > Local Transcoding Quality

Note: that this will only affect the transcoding of Local content!

Quality can be set in a range from 0 to 12, where 12 is the highest quality (Q), bitrate (B) and resolution

(R) and 0 is lowest quality, bitrate and resolution.



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Transcoding quality table

Q 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

R 128 128 160 240 320 480 768 720 720 1080 1080 1080 1080

B 64 96 208 320 720 1500 2000 3000 4000 8000 10k 12k 20k

5 Remote transcoding

Remote transcoding works a bit different. The settings for remote transcoding can be found under

Preferences > System

There are two settings to influence transcoding on remote servers. First there is the option “Direct play

Shared Content”. If this option is ON, NO transcoding will be used, so it works like transcoding = “OFF”.

There is no automatic mode available for remote servers, it’s either ON or OFF.

The second setting is the “Quality from remote servers” option.

This works the same way as it does for the Local quality setting.

Note: This setting will only affect content from REMOTE servers!

6 Transcoding is not always optional

Some media files require transcoding in order to support playback on Samsung devices.

If you are running the PMS on a NAS, a fileserver or a low powered machine your will get a warning

(Picture 33) that this media cannot be played without transcoding. This is not an error, just a warning

about the limitations of the currently selected Plex Media server. This may also be caused by the remote

server in case you are playing Shared Content.

Your only option in this case is to try and “Direct Play” the media.

For local content set the “Force Local Transcoding” option to “OFF”.

For Shared (Remote) content set the “Direct Play Shared Content” option to “ON”.

Note: “Direct Play” might not give you the results you would expect or possible will

not play the media at all. For Channels there is no “Direct Play” option meaning in

this case the specific content cannot be played.



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Picture 33

18. End Word

If you need more help or just want to chat with fellow Plex users, you are always welcome to join us at

the Plex for Samsung forum: http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/forum/89-samsung-smart-hub/

I hope you will enjoy your Plex for Samsung experience and may it give you many hours of media

pleasure.

This app took a long time to build and test, if you like it and want to show your gratitude, please

consider making a small donation.

Thank you for using Plex!

http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/forum/89-samsung-smart-hub/

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