Server Version#: 1.41.4.9463
Player Version#: 10.26.0.2578
I have some personal media libraries set up with the Other Videos type, using the “Personal Media” agent and the “Plex Video Files Scanner”. I’ve usually just let Plex index them however the default posters and backgrounds were selected. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try and pretty up the presentation in library view on my TV. So I started opening the video files in VLC, exporting a snapshot of whatever poster frame I think looks the nicest and then dragging that into the poster tab in the web UI.
The other day, I decided to take a look at my handiwork on my TV instead of just trusting however it looked in my browser. I was surprised to find that all my effort seemed wasted because nothing was using my selected posters. After a bit of trial-and-error, I noticed that the Library view on my nVidia Shield TV was actually showing the background images instead of all the posters I painstakingly exported and updated.
Is this how it’s supposed to work? I’d hate to have to go back and do all the same updates to each item’s background image. I’d have to track down all the JPGs across 3 different devices as I’m just using whichever laptop or desktop computer I’m closest to at the moment (plus, I like having 2 different images for thumbnail and player card views since it gives me more than one reference point for the content itself).
I saw this reported for mobile devices within the past couple of years. Here: Bug: Plex personal media shows background instead of posters
And here: Plex mobile showing background art instead of poster
It was reported for Roku in 2022 without any followup: Playlist Thumbnail Shows Background Image Instead of Poster
There’s also a report from last year for Google TV: Google TV: showing 'background' instead of 'poster' as thumbnail on personal files
There’s no response to the Google TV or Roku threads above so I don’t know if this is (poorly) designed behavior or an actual bug.
Edit: I’m leaving the original post in place, but I believe this is a bug.
Steps to reproduce bug:
- Create a library with the “Other Videos” type using the “Plex Video Files” Scanner and “Plex Personal Media” Agent.
- Scan in any valid video file.
- Click into the “Edit” window for the new video file.
- Click into the “Poster” tab and add an image of a solid blue rectangle.
- Click into the “Background” tab and add an image of a solid red rectangle.
- Click “Save Changes”.
- On a Roku device, navigate to the new library and note that both the Recommended and Library views show the new video thumbnail with the blue poster image as one would expect. Select the new video and note that the player card view shows the red background image, also as one would expect.
- On an Android TV, Samsung Tizen, or LG WebOS device, navigate to the new library and note that in both the Recommended and Library views, the thumbnail is incorrectly showing the red background image instead of the blue poster image.
This is the edit screen for the poster image where I changed it to a plain blue rectangle for easier illustration:
This is the edit screen for the background image where I added a plain red rectangle, also for easier illustration:
This is what the Android TV “Recommended” library view shows, which is the red rectangle when I expect to see the blue poster image. Samsung Tizen and LG WebOS also, incorrectly, show the red background image. Roku shows the correct blue image in the library views.
