Latest beta claims to improve the navigation in the player…
I still hate it.
Please, please Plex team… just give us the native player.
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Agree completely!
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Completely agree. The native player is hands down the best user experience on Apple TV. Youtube is definitely the worst, and Plex’s implementation is at least better than YT, but that’s not saying much. It is still very annoying. I also don’t want to learn the quirks of a new player for every single app.
Additionally, can we also use the native keyboard? Voice to text with the siri remote and typing using an iPhone’s keyboard are both missing in the new UI, and probably will remain missing till integrated with native keyboard.
This new experience is a massive downgrade.
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My biggest sticking point now is that not only have Plex ignored this (and other things) as an issue for nearly 2 months, but that most changes made to the Preview are entirely bug-related with no hint of listening to the feedback on this forum about the actual design principles of the app. If you’re not interested in that feedback then why bother with this forum preview instead of just the normal TestFlight betas? That’s where bug fixes should happen and with regular releases.
Unless you’re highlighting something that Plex wants to work that isn’t currently working then it doesn’t seem they have much time for us.
I don’t subscribe to the “Plex is ■■■■” camp, but the experience throughout a Preview that they have asked for feedback on has certainly made me explore the other options which I’ve not seriously done since I started using Plex in 2015 (I think…)
Just enjoying the current app while it’s available and hoping that I’ve prepared enough to switch services when the change becomes forced.
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This was the reason I uninstalled the beta in the end. If Plex is really going down this route… make a new App Store bundle? I can’t see a world where I’d choose to use Plex with this new player over the old one. No single benefit of the beta can override this.
Ditto in the ‘this is making me seriously look at alternatives because they cannot be serious with this new player’
Or expose Users to other players?
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The player in the latest beta is still awful to interact with.
Swiping down on the remote trackpad to show the controls remains slow and choppy.
There’s zero indication to the user of what is highlighted.
Scrubbing is still imprecise, unpredictable, utter garbage.
Seriously Plex team, just give us AVPlayerViewController.
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Totally didn’t even realise you could scroll down. Because I tried to do the Apple TV standard thing of tap or click to bring up the controls. Can’t tell what button I’m about to push. Don’t even bother scrubbing because I can’t actually get to the spot I want.
I’d actually rather they stick with the current outdated native controller than this one. At the moment I open up the beta hoping that I’m used to it, press play, watch about 2 minutes, and then switch back to the original app because I can’t handle how bad it is.
OSes write a native controller for a reason: because it interacts with their controller devices in a way that is uniform across all kinds of experiences making it easy for someone who uses the device they own to navigate all the experiences on the platform with similar control methods. The Android people don’t particularly care if their player looks different to the Apple one so long as the player matches the player for other apps on the same platform as they’re used to the platform, not the app.
I’ve been reasonably okay with most of Plex’s decisions in recent years. I tried and quite liked Discover and still use it. I don’t use their free On-Demand service. I’ve currently got their reviews system enabled (not sure if it will stay that way - I’d rather only friends and not strangers too). I’m happy to enable and disable the new more controversial features as I need. But if this player becomes the only option, that on its own is enough for me to no longer use Plex. My. only regret then would be that my lifetime subscription means I can’t impose a financial message upon my exit.
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As an app developer I understand that this standardization across platforms means that more of their code can be shared across all platforms, hence leading to less maintenance around each specific player for each platform, but you can’t do that at the expense of significantly degrading your user experience.
I still hate the Youtube player, and they’ve been working on it for years. Moreover, even the Youtube app still sticks with default keyboard so that Apple TV users can get Voice to type and iPhone to Type. Plex’s custom keyboard not only takes these features away from Apple TV users, it also replaces it with what is probably the worst on-screen keyboard.
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Totally get that, and for the actual app itself I’m completely onboard.
I think that the general design of Apple TV apps (their physics, focus effects and things like that) would make a good general model for what their unified app should look like but that’s a different topic.
However from the play button onwards, always give me the native player.
Like when you watch a video in Safari on iOS. The website is the same and branded and stylised as per YourFavouriteWebsite-dot-com but open a video up and you get good ol’ Apple full-screen video player (usually - a few very bad exceptions).
I don’t love the new app design. I think it’s got a very long way to go and some bits require actual overhaul and not just bug fixes. But I’m onboard with a new universal app. The actual player experience is the worst player experience I’ve used on any device I’ve ever owned ever (except YouTube on Apple TV which is usually equally bad).
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Finally had a chance to test the preview app…
I know it’s still a beta, but the non-native player feels unnecessarily sluggish, clunky, and broken on the Apple TV — and the blown-out HDR issue doesn’t help either.
I’ve mentioned this before, but there’s definitely an anti-Apple sentiment within the halls of Plex. It is what it is. The past and present backhanded comments from employees about Apple’s design language for the Apple TV make a lot more sense now.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such widespread agreement that a company is heading in the wrong direction (with the player), yet we’re basically told to just deal with it.
Developing for the lowest common denominator — seemingly a 2016 Roku TV — isn’t a good approach. The Apple TV is considered a premium device for a reason, but this current direction undermines what makes it premium.
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It’s the Roku comment! I own Roku/Android and Apple TV and I’ve always preferred the playing interface of the ATV version, but I remember opening up the Roku and scrubbing and thinking ‘wtf is this imprecision and awful UI’
I’m now on the Experience beta too, and I just cannot find a single way that this player is an improvement. No user would ask for this. No user would prefer this.
Honestly I could deal with ATV being ‘behind’ on updates if that’s what it takes to not use whatever this player is.
And FWIW, Infuse’s Player UI is fantastic. Booted it up for the first time in a while and was like ‘ah, it could be this good’.
And here we are 
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Infuse has issues also but it is so much better than the current preview UI
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It’s early days, that is why it’s a Preview
I think the issue people are talking about is that there is no pathway for it to ‘get good’, preview or not people here disagree with the approach.
That’s why the OP is talking about AVPlayerViewController, which is incredibly versatile. There is a good way of playing videos on tvOS, and then there is this.
I’ll quote Apple here, as what it’s going is in no way best practise. The emphasis is theirs, not mine.
Best practices
Use the system video player to give people a familiar and convenient experience. The built-in video player provides an exceptional video playback experience that offers consistent interactions and behaviors that let people concentrate on enjoying immersive content. If your app truly requires a custom video player, reference the behavior and interface of the system video player to help you provide an experience that people can instantly understand. A custom experience that diverges slightly from the system-provided experience can cause frustration because people don’t know which of their habitual interactions they can continue to use.
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Massive +1 here. A native player experience is a must. Very few apps can get away with a non-native apple tv experience – apple has put in a huge amount of effort to make that experience feel good. If plex thinks people wont churn over this they are out of their minds.
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It’s not about being lazy, it’s about putting limited resources into where they can have the biggest effect and they have determined that a single code base targeting multiple platforms will allow them to deliver features and bug fixes easier.
It’s lazy and will make the UX worse at the end of the day.
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It’s the sort of thing that really Apple should refuse to approve the app when the only good reason to be using a custom video player is so that they can dumb it down to the lowest common denominator.
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Seems like forever since the last update
Last update was 20 days ago, so almost 3 weeks now.
