Amazon Fire TV Plex UI glitches

General Discussions
1

Dear Plex ninjas, dear Plex Android development team,

I am a Plex user. I use it regularly and I like the Plex ecosystem very much… if you want to jump directly to the problem I have, start with the sentence below starting with “BUT…” :smile:

Editorial remark: I don’t want a fight on whether somebody thinks I should switch player devices or whether or not somebody thinks, the Fire TV gets less love than other devices. Please stay away from this thread, if you want to answer this way. Keep this thread clean, please. Thank you.

Since I do not own any Apple devices and I do not like to have computers (be it laptops or mini-computers) integrated into my home entertainment environment, my choice was to have a couple of Fire TV 2nd gen… together with my Android smartphone (seldomly used with Plex) and my Android tablet (used only when watching while taking a bath).
I also have an Amazon Alexa device hearing anything I say… :smile:

I am Plex Pass subscriber. And I live in Germany.

I cannot use many of the advanced features of Plex because I use Fire TV.

  • Live TV (not possible with FireTV client)
  • DVR (not possible with FireTV client)
  • Plex via Alexa (not possible in German, plus not possible with more than one FireTV)
  • I do not use Plex cloud (privacy concerns)
  • I do not use Plex Sync (since I do not want to use it outside my home, maybe one day I want that)

Therefore, I would be happy if the FireTV Plex app would be a perfect experience for me as a TV junkie.

BUT… unfortunately the Plex App for Fire TV (which is developed by Plex Android development team) is not of the same standard than the Android App and I really cannot understand why.

Please work on the following details within the Plex for FireTV app:

A - Play theme music on TV series. It was possible a long time ago befor the overhaul of the FireTV UI. It is possible on other Android apps. And my wife is asking for that. So please help.

B - Choose audio, video and subtitle tracks on the move or TV series content page (the page which holds all the info of a certain movie or episode. On FireTV, you can see that there is a number of audio, video or subtitle tracks, but you cannot choose between them, no drop down menus for that… you can do that later while the movie is playing, but I would be happy to change the subtitle settings for all episodes of series of XYZ before starting to watch. It is working on the Android app, but not on Fire TV. I simply cannot understand the reason for that.

C - Naming Fire TVs within the Plex universe. My router can see all my FireTVs and also see the MAC addresses of them. My QNAP device can see the different host names and the different MAC addresses. But my Plex server just says “Fire TV” to all of them. No room for an individual name that I can choose either from within the Plex App of the Fire TV or the PMS devices screen. This has many side effects (for example, when trying to play movies on one of them, or trying to use Alexa voice control for any of them. Even in the Alexa App, I can assign names to them… if you see any of these, is simply irrelevant, you could just offer the given names being editable.

These are my main issues with the app for the player I love. I enjoy all the nice things that you are developing, and I don’t see any of these being a massive hurdle. Please help me to bring these things to the attention of the Android development team and to assist in helping these features become reality (they are standard things on other Android platforms).

Thank you very much.

2

Dear Plex ninjas, dear Plex development team for Android…

the following dialogue happened here between my wife and me…
She: “Plex just stopped the episode… it just stopped”
Me: “Honey… did you do something?”
She: “No, not really”…
Then I joined her and observed that the Plex app got an update…
Me: “Honey, the software just updated, you need to restart Plex now”
She: “But I did not do that.”
Me: “Yeah, I know, just start Plex again”
… a few seconds later…
She: “What did you do?”
Me: “What do you mean?”
She: “Look… looks destroyed”
Me rubbing my eyes…
Me: “Wasn’t me”
She: “How do I start the episode now?”
We took a moment to look at the new/different design and I instantly found out that changing audio/video/subtitle tracks now on the film content page (though a bit cumbersome with lots of clicks) and that changing PMS servers is totally different now, but it worked. My wife did not care too much, she wanted her episode…
… a few moments later, my wife screamed… “Theme music is working again”.
Me: “Yes, babe”

In short words: Thank you guys!!! You found an easy way to solve a couple of problems with v6.4.2 for FireTV.

Just visited the Amazon Plex app page to find out that you changed the design to “Android TV” for FireTVs.

I looks not as good as before, but more configurations are possible, theme music is working…

I already found a few glitches, but we have to wait with that till my wife finished watching her episodes.

I like the idea to minimize work load by having only one ore two different UIs that are kept up-to-date more easily and which can be maintained without hiring even more people. Good move, even if I dislike the new design (maybe I get used to it over time).

Congratulations!!!

For the glitches I already saw, I will open up further threads.

3

Sorry wrong thread… too many new interfaces.

4

I don’t normally leave comments for apps but as a paying Plex pass user I’m distraught over the new Plex app for fire to - this morning I had a beautiful fully operational Plex and and tonight I came home and thought as first the TV was acting up when I saw the hideous oversized icons on the screen - I hate they menu layout - far too many remote clicks to get to where I want to be. I’m trying to watch my programmes with a remote in through the shortest possible route, not use the remote to train a dog. When I finally get to my item say the tv shows I’m faced with a long drawn out path to find the show, then the season, then the episode and if I click in the wrong place it just starts an episode without even knowing which one I’m watching, on top of which, I don’t need a graphic icon to highlight an episode when it’s playing, it’s not a stereo! I’d also like to watch my programmes as I did before without the constant screen flickers and jumping, stalling - unless you’re TRYING to induce me into an epileptic fit. and it’s not me because the setting are the same as they were on the previous app - I’m watching the same show I was the morning and it’s a totally worse experience this evening. The resolution also looks different (I.e worse). I wish I could say one positive thiing about this update but I can’t. And I can’t believe a bunch of what I assume were adults got together and looked as this version and thought this was an improvement on the previous version. You did all see and USE the previous version right??? The ONLY reason I bought a fire stick was because it has the Plex app on it - I haven’t even had it a year, and I one night you’ve just ruined that too. I hope to god that as a company, I assume wants to continue making a profit, that you do read this and all the other complaints about this upgrade and take them seriously and sort this mess out sooner rather than later - because people spend a lot of time, money and effort on getting their content onto Plex and if the end result gets wasted because of a bad app then you might as well just cancel Plex altogether, Obv there are bigger things going on in the world but some of us find refuge, solace and relaxation in tv/movies and which is probably and justifiably why you have had such a strong negative reaction to it. In all my history of technology this is one of the worst “UPGRADES” I’ve ever had the misfortune of being involved in. I was fearful of the upgrade offered on the PC server software but at least that gave me the option to ‘skip the upgrade’ (probably because you had an idea of what was going to come back to bite you) I had already read the reviews and unfortunately these fears have been confirmed - so it’s a shame you didn’t offer me the same ‘skip’ option for the Fire tv app.