So first of all let me thank the plex developers for making what is becoming a very fine addition to the stable of really good plex clients. I've actually set this up in my theater room and I like it quite a lot. There are some things I do and don't like and some quirks so I thought I'd share them to see if anyone else felt the same, and also to let the dev's know my (yet another) opinion.
1) Love the new voice stuff with the Select 1, Select 2.
That said - I think the overlay is not transparent enough so it would be great if we could get it tweaked a bit. The whole reason we like the cool movie posters is they are eye candy. The current method defeats that and uglies up the product. I think a more elegant solution is in order, perhaps a caption on the top of each selection instead?
2) Recently Aired is there, but for some reason recently added is not, and I'd much rather have recently added than something like "More from NBC" (which is irrelevant, attribution to a broadcasting network isn't important to the consumer when they have cut the cord, genre would probably be more relevant. Just one man's opinion, and if you are getting a kickback from NBC (not sure why they would do that) I guess then by all means proceed lol.
3) The UI in general needs to be polished, I think it is a bit more kludgy than it needs to be. I think the departure from the Android and iOS UI (from a few months ago) is probably understood, and perhaps even warranted but this UI is moving rapidly in the wrong direction.
4) It would really be great if you could seriously think about adding a randomized play list maker. So people could say click a "TV Mode" button and watch random movies and television shows in their collection. Hell I would be open to having a toggle so I could "Choose" to have advertising (ala hulu method between shows) to support your efforts even more than the lifetime membership thing. I think it is important to make sure the advertising option is a choice, but... why not? Especially in a "TV Mode". Sometimes you just want to throw some television on (old school style). You could have channel buttons that emulate the channel flipping of a TV, but simply start new shows instead...
Anyway those are my thoughts. Have a great day and thanks again for all you have done!
1) We generally use the MS provided UI for the voice UI, with the fade out and green text. Having said that, I tend to agree that it muddies up the posters a little. We may take a look at cleaning this up, thanks for the suggestion.
2) No kickback at all, I promise! But even for cord cutters we see benefit here for many people. e.g. I like to be shown what BBC, HBO etc. content I have.
3) Can you provide some more details on this? As you've probably seen, we have a similar UI across TV, consoles and Roku so this is definitely an intentional direction, so please let us know what troubles you on this.
4) Would a 'shuffle all' at the TV or movie library work for you, like in other clients? If so, that's on the list of 'reach app parity' that we're working on
Again, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts! Hope there's some answers there.
1) We generally use the MS provided UI for the voice UI, with the fade out and green text. Having said that, I tend to agree that it muddies up the posters a little. We may take a look at cleaning this up, thanks for the suggestion.
2) No kickback at all, I promise! But even for cord cutters we see benefit here for many people. e.g. I like to be shown what BBC, HBO etc. content I have.
3) Can you provide some more details on this? As you've probably seen, we have a similar UI across TV, consoles and Roku so this is definitely an intentional direction, so please let us know what troubles you on this.
4) Would a 'shuffle all' at the TV or movie library work for you, like in other clients? If so, that's on the list of 'reach app parity' that we're working on
Again, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts! Hope there's some answers there.
Thank you for your great reply.
1) I see, using the MS provide UI probably saves a lot of time. I'm glad you see what I'm seeing about the eye candy though. If the UI provides for setting a transparency I think you could find a sweet spot that made it look better... (just a suggestion).
2) LOL glad to hear it, although can't blame you if you did something like that. Anything to keep this project alive and well I'm game for. Plex is by far my favorite solution. I guess I just miss my recently added, I like being able to find a show I downloaded like... "Oh yah what about Hunter... let me grab that". On the Android UI it was easy you just click the Recently added and you find what you are looking for as it doesn't qualify to be in Recently Aired. It just seems like having it listed by original broadcast source is cool... but depends on use. It might be nice to maybe have a check box setup where I can go in and say "I want Recently Aired, Recently Added, etc... etc.." and it displayed that first. I don't know.. I'm afraid I'm not contributing much to my case here :)
3) I'm just really used to being able to click on the library name (like new unsorted) and then having the ability to filter by All, on Deck, Recently Added, Recently Released, By Folder, Synced). I can't seem to do that on xbox or htpc version. So it gets frustrating. I did just check the android version and it is still the same so, I think I mispoke. Perhaps the issue is I'm an ass and I'm not patient enough. It sounds like you guys aren't finished with what you are doing with the Xbox version and that is my problem. So for that I'm sorry.
4) A shuffle all would be great (at both the tv and movie sections for sure) but a shuffle all at the top of the tier (in tv, and movies) would be even better. On television you get tv shows, but also movies. So it would be great to be able to have that effect. Shuffle all with a filter would be pretty sweet too... (for instance Shuffle all "Recently Aired" or "Recently added" etc...). I know the channel changing sounds gimmicky but think about how easy it would be to change the content you are watching to another shuffle by having a "Channel" button that is really just a "shuffle again I don't want to see this" button. Surfing the "Channels" is a lot easier, and faster than say trying to figure out what you want to watch. I am sure a lot of people have a big collection. I'm a little ashamed to say I have about 250TB of drive space on 10 arrays for my home theater and while I don't have 1/2 of it filled yet (I'm at about 42%) sometimes I'm a little lost as to what to watch. Content overload is _real_ I feel like my wife swaying back in forth at the store while she decides what shoes to try on. I can't be the only one :) This channel thing is a gimmick but I think the concept would help sell a lot more people into moving on with plex. For instance, when my friends come over for the first time they always look at me with this odd look when I say we don't have cable or sat. They all understand when they see the content and that I have things an hour or so after they air. But the biggest comment by far is that it is too complicated to deal with. They are used to the "Clicker" and just changing the channel. So while the nerd in us needs a filter and absolute control, there should be room for the chaotic, the unplanned... the "clicker!" ;)
