I used the Roku New Experience in Preview and got used to it eventually. Some of the complaints are totally valid but some are just that the setting moved or changed but is still there. I got used to it and at least for me - I have all online services, discovery, and ratings disabled and only have a couple libraries - it’s mostly fine. I also have customized the heck outta my Home Screen (custom collections replacing standard rows).
Mostly, Plex did a crap job with releasing it assuming the dozens or so of us in the Preview and then posting to a single forum topic on the day of the public release as an “announcement” was enough to prepare new users of this huge change was enough for this significant change impacting a swath of their userbase. If they had just put out how to do in the new app what folks are used to doing in the old app with a lot of extra notifications ahead of time - like was called out in the preview topics by beta testers - the pain and shock factor woulda been a lot less. Plex assumes all users are always reading all things they ever say anywhere though… as if we’re as focused on their product as they are as employees.
There are a couple advantages I’ll grant though. The primary one for me is that it runs better on older Roku devices and the underpowered Roku TV than the previous version. The interface is a bit snappier and starting playback is faster - I have way less initial buffering. That’s its biggest “pro” column checkmark for me. Some navigation - at least Home Screen navigation - is easier too, at least for me who mostly stay on the Home Screen. Another is they put SHOW as a top level navigation option for TV shows now so you can navigate both season and Show level from TV detail screens. I had asked that they include that even when you have “only show single season” option enabled but that didn’t come through… maybe in the future if enough people ask as that’d be helpful (and more consistent UI\UX experience).
One reason a switch to Jellyfin or Emby can be difficult is that both of those platforms are missing some functionality and polish you can find in Plex. For example, file naming for matching is VERY different and Plex is a LOT more forgiving and flexible in that area. Also - those custom dynamic collections as Home Screen rows that I use are not available in Jellyfin or Emby in nearly so flexible a way or even at all in some regards (though it’s coming to Emby in v5 I believe). But at the same time Jellyfin and Emby are excellent at offline\local only solutions and provide a LOT of tweaking and confidence that what you set will stay that way. I’ve got Plex tuned for me and my family pretty well dialed in (and lots of watch history which I use for some of those dynamic collections) so there’s definitely a lot of friction\inertia to switching but after the last couple years I definitely am watching Emby\Jellyfin and I’m sure eventually it’ll tip the scale for me. I’d probably lean more sooner but I bought my lifetime several years ago so I don’t feel like there’s any financial aspect for me (there’s no voting with my wallet aspect).
I’m in no way defending Plex here … just look at some of my past topics\posts 
, particularly in the beta threads for this New Experience - but I did get used to this new experience and wasn’t quite so frustrated once the jarring changes wore off a bit. Most of my current gripes are with UI\UX decisions more than anything functional (weird spacing and alignments mostly).
Here are a couple things that might help reduce frustration for those jumping into this that came up for me in beta testing.
- The app no longer controls what services you see - local, discovery, plex movies and TV - it’s on your Account level. This makes the control less granular but does apply everywhere with one change (good or bad - good for me, maybe bad for others). So if you go to your account setting you can turn off all online services, the discovery features and the “shared ratings” function and you’ll pretty much ONLY see your local media stuff. I have “home” and “libraries” at the top of my screen and nothing else. It even removes the other services from your search. I never ever see anything but my stuff on Roku, iOS or Web.
- The order of your libraries - and thus the order of your Home Screen rows - depends on the order you “favorite” your libraries and this, I think, goes across platforms too (sync’s). This again is less granular control but more unified. Good or bad depending on opinion and use there. So no pinning and re-organizing. If you want Movies library first and TV Shows library second then favorite Movies first and then favorite TV Shows. If it’s in the wrong order, you gotta unfavorite all of them and start over (lame). Also, if you have no favorites\pins, your Home Screen can look empty and not have continue watching until you do or until you restart the app; the New Experience is supposed to pick up your existing ones at initial startup but sounds like sometimes it still doesn’t (was a bug that was “fixed” in beta).
Edit: Evidently they’ve added a “reorder’“ function in the pop-out sidecar menu if you hit “*” on the remote with a library selected. This wasn’t the case during Preview\Beta testing (we were told what I said above) so this is a change I didn’t ever see mentioned. Surprise! - Some of the cosmetic controls aren’t available because we’re waiting for server admin tools; which were originally promised to be available before the New Experience went to clients but obviously that didn’t happen. Things like logo\title customizing (including using text only instead of clear logos) and evidently that stupid stupid new “show\esason” card - which we won’t be able to turn off but maybe can control the art on it. I really hate that card…
There’s a way to customize the title manually but at the moment I can’t find that topic (it might be buried in the original preview testing topic) that explains how to do it but it’s floating around somewhere. Some of those titles are crap. - Get used to Roku buttons outside of the d-pad and OK. Hitting “back” button will jump you around to useful navigation points instead of having to hit d-pad several times to get to the same place. If you’ve browsed row on your Home Screen, hitting back will jump you to the front of that row, back again will jump you to continue watching, and back again will jump you to the top navigation. Hitting “play” instead of “ok” will start playback right from selection instead of opening details screen to then hit play (I forget this one all the time). This came up in the preview that folks had muscle memory that didn’t include using those buttons and it helped with reducing clicks in this new UI layout.
There weren’t that many of us in the beta but they did listen to some of our reports and they responded best with details. “It sucks” doesn’t get any attention but specifics seemed to work, though mostly on functionality; the UI\UX comments and criticism got ignored or waved away mostly. Having more people seeing it will bring more attention to these things as the beta tester population was pretty small. Personally I knew once it released it’d get more vocal and maybe get more movement on things so I’m hoping some positive changes will be coming… switching to another platform (probably Emby) would be annoying for me at this point so I’d rather put it off if I can.
