When I interviewed Plex at CES we talked about an update that was coming for Plex that would bring better video support and more features that was dependent on improved HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) support in the Google TV OS. In the latest update rollout out for Google TV (3.2) HLS enhancements have been added and Plex are taking advantage of the update.
The new version of Plex adds support for more videos formats, more channels, subtitles and audio streams. This is possible because Plex can transcode the video formats that are not supported by Google TV and stream them over HLS. There are also some additional fixes in the new version.
Get the new version from Plex’s download site.
Yep – it’s rolling out as we speak! We started receiving reports a couple days ago from users that the latest patch release for Google TV is being rolled out and happily we can confirm that it does include the enhanced HLS support we’ve been talking about for so long. So go grab the new Plex release to make sure Plex will make use of the new enhanced HLS support – bringing you broader video support, more channels, subtitles and more.
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What does it all mean?World peace!? Well maybe not quite – though we’d like to think that it brings us one step closer!
We’ve covered what this will mean for you in some detail in my previous blog post – but here’s the quick summary:
Subtitle support – please refer to the wiki for detailed instructions.
Support for selection of audio streams – from the client’s video detail pane.
Broader support for video playback – because Plex will now be able to transcode videos that aren’t in formats friendly to the Google TV.
More channels – again because of transcode support and channels that use flash and silverlight video (from Windows and OSX Plex Media Servers) will now work.
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What more?Here’s the full set of fixes in the 2.0.3.3 release for Plex for Google TV:
Auto-update Plex configuration upon detection of Google’s Enhanced HLS Patch (as discussed above).
Improved video playback error handling and messaging.
Fix so that clicking on the play button from details plays the correct movie.
Fix for video playback problems on a variety of channels.
Fix so that video controls disappear / reappear as they should (AGAIN).
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