As a paying customer of Plex I would have thought that the devs would care what we think about the product and at least enter into discussions on issues that people are having, particularly with the backlash around the latest ios update but I haven’t seen a single representative of the Plex team get involved in these discussions to explain why the changes were made, what the future holds and address peoples concerns.
Do they care at all that a large portion of their users are upset about the new app and find it really unfriendly to use. I have kids and pensioners using my Plex server so there’s a lot of varied content and a lot of confusion with the new app that is not being addressed by anyone from the inside.
This is really poor PR from the Plex team. All it would take is a couple of forum posts to address the concerns of the people that are struggling with the new version and then at least people would feel like they are being listened to rather than ignored. Ignoring customers is not a great idea.
Come on Plex, show us your listening.
Plex does not believe that users on these forums represent their users in general. They consider most/many of us power users that use Plex in ways that are not generally used by the “normal” set of users.
Plex uses some esoteric, mysterious and unknown to their user base “metrics” to determine how “real” users actually use Plex.
The only thing that Plex seems to do on this forum is provide some help by a few “ninjas” and even fewer “employees.”
Many of us have become quite disappointed at the level of responsiveness Plex shows on these forums.
Plex, the system, is the most reliable of the media systems available to most users but Plex, the company, is far from the best at listening to their users.
@AuroraMedia said:
As a paying customer of Plex I would have thought that the devs would care what we think about the product and at least enter into discussions on issues that people are having, particularly with the backlash around the latest ios update but I haven’t seen a single representative of the Plex team get involved in these discussions to explain why the changes were made, what the future holds and address peoples concerns.
Plex does care what our users think.
Do they care at all that a large portion of their users are upset about the new app and find it really unfriendly to use. I have kids and pensioners using my Plex server so there’s a lot of varied content and a lot of confusion with the new app that is not being addressed by anyone from the inside.
“Unfriendly” is a subjective term. Plex will not get into arguments on usability as that is all relative to the person using it. Discussing things like usability, friendliness, or intuitiveness will not lead anywhere. If you would like to discuss specific items, we are open to hearing suggestions.
This is really poor PR from the Plex team. All it would take is a couple of forum posts to address the concerns of the people that are struggling with the new version and then at least people would feel like they are being listened to rather than ignored. Ignoring customers is not a great idea.
If you can point me to specific items I would be happy to address them, but these to be be specific. I am not going to debate generic comments since there is nothing we can do to address those, such as:
“too many clicks”
“not easy to use”
“the old way was better”
I think the main problem that people have is the difficulty in getting to the libraries, particularly those people that have multiple libraries of the same type like me. I have Kids TV, Kids films, normal TV and Films, documentaries and Stand up comedy. In the new version these are all smushed together under Shows or Films so getting to the library I want is awkward.
I think the thing that would make this update more usable for people like me would be to allow us to add the browse view of the library directly to the home screen, that way we can customise the home screen to give us a direct access to each of our libraries. Are there any plans to allow that or can that be added to the development?
Another thing is just to communicate better with the people that use the product. There didn’t seem to be any announcement or warning that this was going to be changed and nobody has spoken to the disgruntled users that are struggling with the new UI. Even if it was just an explanation of why it’s been done and what the road map is for development so that people don’t feel like they just being ignored. I think that would help a lot.
Thanks, Alan.
For me, I find technical support frustrating. For example, at the moment 4k direct playback is totally broken on FireTV gen2 (and I presume gen3 as well?). When you play a 4k direct play file exoplayer2/Plex report that its direct play at 4k but the app/player appears to not follow the API directions set by Amazon for switching the display to 4k so your content plays at 1080p (as confirmed with fireTV debug overlay and/or TV info overlays). This is an issue that has threads going back to oct with no fix. Even people supplying logs etc. This is not some fringe case and I assume a lot of people don’t actually realize their TV is not switching to 4k mode (for me it’s obvious as my LG tv tells you when it’s switch modes). here is an example with logs https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1686875
here is the issue being raised back in OCT.
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1686573
If you go to the device support list for plex it lists the FireTV gen 2 as 4k…well it’s not currently, is it…and hasn’t been since at least OCT…and most of the advice you get is “buy a shield”. It annoys me that I pay for plex to help support it but the last year the plex player on Amazon hardware has been a mess and I feel like besides paying for plex pass my issues are ignored.
this is the sort of thing that annoys me. bugs like this and where a video fails 2 seconds in and you have to start it again. These things have been going on for months with no fix in sight yet we have gotten VR support over fixes. I have VR headset but really how much of the userbase has VR…and if they do I bet not all of them want to watch TV in VR. I am all for new features but look after your core users first. Make sure you can actually use the devices you say you support.
I personally feel we need a propper Plex Pass users way of reporting bugs. I propper website form that makes you upload logs etc. then people can upvote or whatever for visibility.
