It feels like a lot of these “everyone” and “nobody” anecdotes often break out into newer vs established users. I used Plex long ago… stopped for quite some time… and came back to it. How I setup it up now vs how I had it setup before is very different.
A number of things that seem to get folks upset about the recent changes seem to impact longer standing users who developed their environment based on the features available at the time and leveraging those functions to fit their needs like setting up individual libraries based on genre.
Having left Plex and then came back many versions later, when I setup my new Plex library I had to adjust my expectations. I personally like a number of the changes being made lately but I feel like those changes are easier for me to incorporate because I had a new setup vs my old setup. I created one library for movies and used the filters for managing genre views which meant the change to “recently added” hub didn’t impact me as much as it did others who were using “recently added” as a combined list for the different genre libraries.
Perhaps some of the devs\employees could provide some clearer “old way->new way” evolution documentation to act as a bridge for some of these situations? Not everyone moved up the feature chain as the feature changes happened; with newer features relying on adopting some of the “new thing” from a year or two ago it will feel like a broader jump for some people than maybe Plex expected - particularly long time users… their loyal base.
Wow, that was incredibly thoughtful and I really appreciate it. There’s definitely some truth in that for me since I’ve been using plex for going on 4 years now.
Still, though, the problems lately have mostly been that the new ways are not working (sometimes, not all all). The quality of the Plex for Android releases has been just terrible for 3 months now. Home screen changes where it’s not even possible to get On Deck to appear. The 8.12.xx versions where the most common audio/video formats would not play. A never ending series of versions where Live TV playback just doesn’t work (especially watching a recording in progress).
But for sure, the old vs new issue is really on point. Longtime users that have a large number of libraries have been justifiably upset about the disaster that has become their home screen – with endless “Recently Added in …” lines with repetitive content and no real way to fix it. And it basically happened by accident with no warning and no fix for months.
I prefer the old way of doing the home screen. But this is colored by the poor quality of the product for months now. Because of that experience, I don’t trust that the new server based approach to the home screen is going to work reliably. Right now, it doesn’t even let me show On Deck.
Another Old vs New issue is that older users have become jaded about what Plex promises and what actually happens. The state of Live TV/DVR would be the clearest example of that.
I assume that you meant “each library to contribute more items to the hub”.
Right now, the new On Deck (CW) is only showing the first 12 of my 40 or so On Deck items. So the content I want is not on my home screen and there is currently no way to get it there.
My On Deck is made up of TV shows recorded by DVR and old comedy series that my wife and I watch during lunch/supper. At any given time, we are rotating 15 or so series for variety. With the way On Deck works, the most recently watched is first and the next one to watch is at the far right. But it’s not there because of the currently limit of 12.
So the home screen is useless to me. The desired content just isn’t there. The only way to access the full On Deck items is by navigating to specific pinned libraries on the side menu.
So instead of the items I want being at the top of my home screen. I am now navigating amongst various libraries all the time. Thank you, Plex, for “improving” my TV watching experience.
The 8.15.0 version should be pulled until the app is modified to respect the existing “Maximum number of On Deck items which will appear” server setting.
So, if I understand you correctly, the limit is coming from the server but not from the setting that is already there. That does not make any sense. Why force a limit on us when the setting for this is already there?
I still say that the version should be pulled. Why go out of your way to upset your users unnecessarily? Frankly, I don’t trust promises for the future anymore. I fully expect that developers will get distracted onto something else and we’ll be abandoned yet again.
Please note that since the issue of the limited number of On Deck items was a side issue to this original thread, I have created a new thread directly addressing what I think will be a very serious issue for users.
And if you’re saying that this problem needs to be addressed in the server binaries, then I think 8.15.0 should be pulled until that has happened. We don’t need Plex piling yet more problems on us waiting for the problems to be fixed “in the near future”. This home screen disaster has already gone on for 3 months. I think your idea of near future is very different from mine.
This is all I’d personally like them to fix ASAP … they made a change they knew will be managed by that setting before it was setup to be managed by that setting which feels like disregard for the customer (paying customers in many cases). A lack of consideration.
That forced 12 item Continue Watching\On Deck limit doesn’t even impact me right now and my Plex setup is improved by the other recent changes … but this specific fumble … I can understand why folks like @MovieWiz are taking it personally.
You are right on the money there somedavidw. And the problem is even worse than what I suspect you know. Those server settings for On Deck have been their for something like 2 years now. This is not just an issue of them doing things in the wrong order. This is a matter of completely ignoring what was already there.
People fought to get those settings added even though Plex thought this was an “uncommon” issue. We just keep revisiting the same things over and over again.
I was penning a fairly lengthy reply to try to counterpoint some of these posts. Then I realized a few things:
These recent UI changes feel specifically targeted to me and my use case. Likely because…
… I’m just a typical Plex user not a power user, so…
… my opinions aren’t particularly relevant in this thread, and…
… what I was writing started to feel defensive, and Plex doesn’t need me to defend them.
So I’ll just say that I believe them when they say they’re trying to make the user experience more enjoyable for the majority of their users; because of that, I tend to be more understanding and tolerant of their mis-steps. And that it’s unfortunate that a (vocal) minority are feeling negatively impacted by these changes.
Hopefully when the dust settles everyone will feel as catered-to as I do right now.
The theory of the new server control over the home screen is probably a good thing. It will avoid the need to configure all my clients when I have to uninstall and go back to an older version.
My main concern now is simply the hard coded limit of 12 items when they already have a setting for that. If people only want a max of 12 on deck items, they can set the limit to 12. My current limit is 60 (probably about 10 higher than it really would ever need to be).
They’ve blown the rollout here. It’s such a huge unforced error. So they should wait before pushing 8.15.0 to everyone, especially given the problems that many users have had with the home screen for 3 months now.
Me, I don’t even really care that much – I’m using Jellyfin until Plex gets its act together. No problems accessing my on deck items in Jellyfin. Everything I want right at the top of the screen when the app opens.
I’m a recently retired senior software developer/programmer/manager. I’m just trying to be the adult in the room and call out bad behaviour when I see it.
Oh, and by the way, Jellyfin also uses a server based approach for controlling the contents of the home screen. The concept is not new to me. It has pros and cons. The server approach avoids the repetitive configuration on all your clients. On the other hand, some clients have much smaller screens where you might want less content or a different layout – and a server based approach doesn’t easily allow for that.
But for now, I’m upset (well, I in the collective sense speaking for people that use the product the way I do) because I haven’t been able to configure my home screen in Plex properly for 3 months and this new 8.15.0 version makes the problem so much worse.
What if I want all of my recently added TV shows from all of my TV show libraries to be grouped together? Same goes for my movies? I don’t seem to be able to do this anymore with this automatic view. I have 14 libraries with about 7 TV show libraries and 7 movie libraries to keep everything grouped based on content. With the previous manual view, all TV shows, whether they were classic TV, DVR’d TV, current TV, or 4K TV, would all be in one recently added TV row. I can’t seem to be able to group them like that anymore. I’ve been using Plex for 10yrs and have been a lifetime member for just as long. This is annoying more than anything.
Oh, and for my .02 for CW and OD, it’s an annoyance, but not the end of the world. I dislike that it’s capped at 12 entries, as I often have more than that when my partner and I decide to binge a whole show to let the DVR stuff to build up. But, I get the complaints that others have stated. It really feels like Plex is moving to the advertisement model for non-paying as well with paying users and trying to grab that extra revenue. Honestly, if I want to watch free content, I don’t use Plex. I prefer the Roku channel and Pluto as they have better content.
I too have extensive library groups. Should have given us an option for multiple non combined On Deck Hubs. Currently, there’s no way to ungroup those either, or remove other unused hubs. These updates are a real PITA.
side note: It’s interesting that there is a move to server control for the UI, but not for online content which is still an account based customisation (which I had to manually switch off for my parents, sister, sister’s kid etc in their accounts). …perhaps this is coming too?
well, then the user would get it, but from the admin that allows it. Tbh, I was only thinking out loud and haven’t given it a lot of thought.
…wait, doesn’t the same problem apply for a user connected to more than one Plex server re: recently added etc (in that one server wants it ini way and another server wants it different)?
