Long time user, 15 shares, no one is really angry… just lots of user confusion and stupidity.
I’ve got them trained to use search, and search by interest topics, or click on interests, but WOW.
Nothing has gotten easier. Just more convoluted and inconsistent. I too prefer the Kodi or web interface to ANY streaming interface, and I just don’t get where Plex is going with this.
I can only hope this is an interim code rewrite that was necessary, as a steeping stone to something much more useful…
Then again, I would hope they would just state that plainly instead of all the BS responses.
elanCTO and Co-Founder
I’m sorry, but per the blog and the post above, plug-ins are not coming back (at least not in their current form). To reemphasize, less than 2% of our active users actually use them , so I would hesitate to call them a key feature (while realizing that different features are important to different people, vive la différence).
But why disable them in the retro version and in the Web version?
That is a conscious decision on your part. It would have taken no effort to leave them in.
And to be honest, given the strong response on this and other forums regarding plugins I don’t think many here believe only 2% of users actually are using plugins.
Personally, I thought / think plugins SUCKED. Rarely worked, and I had most of them. Clunky, slow, and just plain not great. The only plugin worth a ■■■■ was subzero, and Plex has fixed that with Auto Subtitles from a variety of sources. I occasionally used the search and update plugins, but most people seem to be whining about watch plugs like Trakt. So many other ways to do this. Then again, if you can’t remember what you’ve watched, that already says a lot about many users. I have zero users or family members using plugins. Hulu and Netflix already do this for you… The only folks that seem hung up on this are folks that are trying to do all of this as free as possible, and it’s just not realistic -
As I said before, we didn’t disable them in the retro version; I’m not sure why they’re not working for you. As per the blog post, we’re usually removing from apps as we perform bigger upgrades. Given the Roku app was a complete rewrite, that’s why it happened there.
The Fire TV interface used to very nice & almost indistinguishable from the old Roku UI that everyone is crying over losing. The lovely Fire TV UI was replaced a long time ago with the horrible Android TV that was vastly inferior from an ergonomic point of view. Obviously not enough users complained at the time for us to be given Fire TV Retro as a sop.
There is a solution to the horrible Fire TV interface & that is to purchase at modest cost MrMC which is a version of Kodi with the naughty Add-ons removed. Th interface is more akin to the old Fire TV & Roku UI & the playback engine is superior to any Plex produced client app. MrMC is also available for iOS & Apple Tv unfortunately as it is based on Kodi it is not & never will be available for Roku.
Kodi is not a media server. It’s a reasonable client with excellent playback features but there are no centralised library features to share out among local & remote clients.
I find that using MrMC with the Plex extension as my Plex client gives me the best of both worlds. I get the robust full featured Plex library plus the excellent Kodi playback engine with a client UI that is like the old Fire Tv & Roku UI i.e. the UI that we all prefer.
So, I use PKC with Kodi due to the lack of a proper subtitle support. Kodi let me change subtitle color, plays ass/ssa without a flaw and furthermore I can customise the UI/Skin.
@elan
Sorry, but if you would read through all the forum including the deleted ones you will see that the most people here are upset about the last features. It seems that nobody asked for all the online stuff (news, podcast…) and the crumbling as still there. Now you deleted some features (cloudsync, plug-in) which eventually blow up all this dissatisfaction.
May I suggest to analyse all the feedback of the last two years about online stuff and rethink if every decision in this direction was the right one.
Yeah I quit using the Fire TV version of Plex back when they f’d it up and made it look like crap. I now use Kodi with the Plex for Kodi add-in which works well (until they decide to f it up too).
Respectfully, I feel like you can’t see the forest for the trees here, @elan. Also, the new UI is not a tactical blunder—it’s a strategic mistake. The big picture your company is strategizing for itself, and the priorities that it has, leaves long-time loyal users feeling left in the dust. On top of consistently heading in a direction many (most?) users (and especially admins) disagree with, the company also is very dismissive, arrogant and even silent when it comes to support issues or feature requests it feels are not in its interest to respectively address or implement.
Also, replying to users who are critical of your company’s policies and practices with “yeah, but…” comes across like you (and by extension the company) really don’t have the humble, contemplative introspection that is required to fix this mess rather than make it worse.
And it doesn’t help that the primary reason you yourself are in on this discussion feels like damage control instead of a wake-up call. Like, we were telling you to put the gun down—please, put the gun down please—but you went ahead and shot yourself in the foot anyway. And now, as this self-inflicted gunshot wound is more serious than the last few, you’ve decided to staunch the bleeding rather than ignoring it and hoping it will go away on its own. It doesn’t mean you realize that shooting yourself, not the bleeding, is the actual problem. To call it a tactical blunder is to suggest that you simply shot yourself in the wrong place or from an inconvenient angle.
We can argue semantics, but if we’re conceding we made a mistake on the UI and are actively working on remedying it (not just on the Roku), then maybe we can end up in the right place.
If instead we stuck by our guns, based on a strategic direction, you would be right
I’m not sure what you’re referring to specifically, but there are nuances to most situations, and I’m trying to have an open conversation here. I would hope you’d prefer that to just lip service.
Wow, that metaphor got all dark, but I’ll borrow it. We shot ourselves in the foot; we then shot proceeded to shoot ourselves in the thigh. We finally realized that we had a bit of a gun control problem, so we took some time to buy a gun safe and properly heal.
@elan I think there is still a disconnect in what you want to deliver (with all proper fixes) and with what we users want. By and large we don’t like the new menu with categories but it sounds like (correct me if I’m wrong) that this isn’t going away and just some improvements might be made to it.
Is that correct or is the new menu system being reconsidered and done away with?
But first you shot yourself in the foot in the state of PMP. Took your car and went to the county of Xbox and shot yourself again.
Hopped on a train to PS4 city and shot yourself once again.
Looked out the window, saw Android pass by and figured “Yo, let’s shoot myself again”.
Your friend iOS offered to help, but when you got to his place your gun unloaded in your thigh.
He brought you to Roku hospital, but you didnt like that doctor so proceeded to shoot yourself in the arm.
Why should we believe you when you say you’ll never use your gun again at this point?
I really wish you fix this mess, but there’s been a huge disconnect between what we’ve wanted and what we’ve got in the past 3-4 years since I joined, so it’s hard to trust you. Very hard.
