Hi folks!
I wanted to clarify a few things related to the experimental player that will hopefully help keep the conversation here on the right path.
Playback Stack
The new Experience Preview app only includes the experimental player (and AVPlayer for certain fallback scenarios). It does not include MPV, and there are no plans to do so. This player stack is the future of Plex playback on Apple platforms.
While we managed to include the experimental player in the current app, it was retrofitted into a old and bloated playback stack that’s been there since 2014 and has gone through many iterations. This is the reason why, for example, there’s stuttering in the current app that we can’t reproduce on the Experience Preview app. The only reason why we did this was because we wanted to have a build available for you as early as possible, much earlier than we could have any of the new experience ones available. Your testing and feedback is invaluable.
So, let me be clear in saying this: the current Apple TV app will not be getting the experimental player in any public release.
Player UI
The player UI in the Experience Preview app is different than what we had before on the tvOS app, yes. But it’s much closer to what we’ve been doing in all our other TV apps over the years, and much closer to the video player in other modern Apple TV apps as well (moving away from the dated 2017ish design). It’s done both with the goal of having a consistent Plex playback experience across all platforms and also making it easier to access controls that were previously hidden and hard to access (we’re all used to the weird sliding panels in the current player, but for new users these were hard to find and difficult to use!)
The new player UI is here to stay and there are no plans to revert back to the old one. But the new UI is also not finished and final yet, and as we continue to build out the new experience we are iterating over the design and improving things, we know it’s not perfect yet, so keep you’re eyes out for more improvements.
We also understand there are some core Personal Media features missing from the Experience Preview app and playback experience that haven’t been added yet. For the vast majority, these are on our roadmap and will make their way back there soon. For example, we’re actively working on implementing file info/details, multiple version support and playback settings from the details screen.
Our Vision
We believe both the new experimental player stack and the player UI to be the best possible playback experience for our core users (which includes us!), but also understand that it can be sometimes frustrating to deal with big changes like these that you have little control over.
We’ve been working on being more transparent, and plan on continuing that effort. We want to share more of our roadmap over time, be involved with the community and yes, definitely expect more fireside chats as the ones we’ve done before.
Finally, I want to show my deep appreciation for all the hard work folks have been putting into testing edge cases and constantly provide great feedback. We couldn’t have gotten where we are without you, and while there’s still a lot of work ahead of us, we sincerely hope you’ll come to love the new UI as we iterate and improve things.
Next Steps
So, where does this leave this tread? Personally, I’d like to keep it open so we can continue gathering feedback and fix issues in the new player.
If you have feedback about the Experience Preview app please post it in that thread, and if you have thoughts you want to share about Plex’s direction feel free to open a new thread in our forums for discussion.
If you have any other thoughts about anything I just wrote, shoot me a DM.
