Lack of choice for users in Post Play and elsewhere

General Discussions
1

Plex REALLY needs to allow users to have choice in the way they use Plex to play their media.

I will use the implementation of the “Post Play” screen as an example. Plex decided, possibly based on user input, that a “special” screen was needed that shows up after media plays to allow selection of the next item to play. They decided that Plex was better at choosing what to do next than the user themselves are.

In doing this Plex now interposes a screen after an item plays where a very few choices are presented and it takes a press of the back button or some such equivalent to get back to where the video was started. That is if you play a movie directly from browsing you have to press back to get back to browsing after the movie completes and, at least in my case, the Post Play screen always presents choices for movies that are worse than a simple random choice would be. ex. I played a “Harry Potter” movie for my granddaughters and the post play screen suggested “Dirty Harry,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Star Wars” among others and not even one of the other "Harry Potter movies. This is simply horrible programming or simple incompetence.

I will say that for TV shows the Post Play screen works well and I like it but for movies it is quite intrusive and make Plex a bit unpleasant to use.

Plex should allow enabling/disabling Post Play on a per-library basis and the same goes for the auto-play sub-function of Post Play. That is I should be able to say I want to have Post Play without auto-play on my TV shows and Post Play with auto-play on my cartoons and absolutely no Post Play on my movies. If Plex cannot do it on a per-library basis then they should at least allow the full Post Play screen to be turned on or off.

If Plex implemented Post Play without thinking that people might not like it then they screwed up and showed again that they care little for their users forcing everyone to use Plex exactly the same way. That is Plex is trying to make every Plex setup exactly the same making Plex an electronic equivalent of “Trac” houses:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

The first verse of “Little Boxes” by Malvina Reynolds
That is what Plex seems to want our media libraries to be. Different content on the inside but accessed and displayed and used exactly the same.

Plex should embrace diversity and when a new feature gets added that might be disliked by some allow the users as choice as possible in the use and implementation of that feature.

There are many other examples where Plex has decided that users are unable to exercise choice intelligently and therefore Plex should choose for the poor users but this one is simply the most recent example of Plex playing media God.

2

User options make Plex developers “sad,” but they make Plex customers happy.

I think I might put that in my signature…

3

Don’t use any of the official clients that force this on you, look at the unofficial ones without the ‘Discovery’ crap.

Regards

4

@NedtheNerd said:
Don’t use any of the official clients that force this on you, look at the unofficial ones without the ‘Discovery’ crap.

Regards

The problem with that is that I have grown to like the new Roku player at least as well as I like RARflix for TVs and its limitations for movies is not, quite, enough to make switching between two different clients worthwhile.

5

@Elijah_Baley, I almost spit my drink out on your first post. I could see it now:

Mom: How was you afternoon at grandpas, girls?
Grandaughters: It was great! First we watched Harry Potter, then Plex suggested we watch something called Dirty Harry or Dog Day Afternoon. We wanted to watch the movie about the puppies but grandpa said it really wasn’t about puppies. But he wouldn’t tell us what it was about. He just got really mad at Plex.
Mom: DAAAAAADDDDDD!!!

Sorry, it just popped in my mind that it went down like that … And I started laughing. I know it’s serious.

6

I agree completely. Us users are a diverse bunch and we like to play or handle our media in different ways. This is true for almost any piece of software, but it’s especially important for one that a lot of us use daily. I’m lucky that I actually like what Plex has done and I love the new Post Play screen on the Roku and the new behavior of playing TV shows. However, I do understand that not everyone will and even if the majority do like it, that shouldn’t mean the other users should have to deal with it. I don’t really understand why Plex doesn’t make more things optional. Something like the Post Play screen should definitely be optional on my opinion. When it comes to a feature like the Post Play screen, why can’t both parties (the ones that like it and dislike it) be happy? Again, I love Plex just the way it is, but I’d also like for everyone else to love it.

7

I agree with this as well. It works well for TV, but just does not make sense for movies.

8

I agree also. I doubt they will do anything about it though. Same issue with dashboard settings being removed. They have to know we would like to have these options available to toggle on or off. I don’t mind trying new things and new features, but please stop changing up the way I use the software.

9

I notice with tv shows, if you are on the last episode of a show it will auto advance to another show. This is dumb as well.

10

@hackztor@gmail.com said:
I notice with tv shows, if you are on the last episode of a show it will auto advance to another show. This is dumb as well.

I “think” it picks the episode from the On Deck list. In fact I “think” it automagically chooses the episode that is first in the On Deck list.

I guess it assumes that the first available On Deck episode is what the user wants to watch next.

Plex should NEVER try to guess the user’s desires unless asked. It is both stupid and arrogant of Plex to interfere with the viewing experience.

Plex, YOU DO NOT KNOW BETTER THAN I WHAT I WANT TO WATCH NEXT!!!

If a TV series is completed the interface should simply exit to whatever screen would be reached by a press of the “Back” button from Post play. It should NOT offer another show without asking.

Fortunately it is only one press of the back button to exit this unwanted intrusion into the viewing experience but it is one keystroke that I did not have to use before.

Plex, STAY OUT OF MY VIEWING EXPERIENCE!!

This is a case of writing a program to please the programmers and disregarding the needs/wants of the users. It is simply a case of “Plex knows better than the stupid users” so they will do the best they can to make sure the Plex developers are pleased and to Hell with us poor users.

The interface continues to gain in “pretty” and decline in “usability.” Plex is still the best media manager for my use BUT the implementation of Post play is a step backward and there are a finite number of such steps that can be taken before you step off the cliff or into something quite smelly.

11

I’ve used Plex for years and am a Plex Pass member.
I HATE this Post Play crap.
Continuous should mean CONTINUOUS! Not (sometimes) stop and force me to stare at the screen for 15 seconds.

This attitude is incredibly arrogant.
Give us the option to turn this crap off!

12

@kdaniel said:
I’ve used Plex for years and am a Plex Pass member.
I HATE this Post Play crap.
Continuous should mean CONTINUOUS! Not (sometimes) stop and force me to stare at the screen for 15 seconds.

This attitude is incredibly arrogant.
Give us the option to turn this crap off!

Technically continuous play does continuous. This is when u click the play button from the tv series/season screen. It will play next one right after another. This post play is the 15 second screen thing.

13

And what if you’re trying to watch things that are NOT TV SERIES/SEASON videos?
Travel videos we play in our office? Music videos we play at home? Non-TV videos we want to play CONTINUOUSLY! You have completely destroyed the usability of Plex and I’m looking to dump it all because you can’t seem to get the fact that if you change a fundamental aspect of how Plex plays videos you should give us an option to TURN IT OFF! Arrogant as hell.

14

I do private beta testing as a customer for a ftse100 company in the UK. In one of the recent rounds of private testing, they implemented something very similar… based on our feedback the idea has been binned and dropped from the actual release.

The problem that IT devs always have is that they assume the way they would use a product is how joe public would. The reality is very different.

If the finance industry there is legislation called KYC Know Your Customer… something Plex needs to begin to adopt.

15

Anybody have any solutions for bypassing the 2 hour shutoff limit? I want to have plex continuously play for my 2 year old without having to always go and restart it

16

@hackztor@gmail.com said:
Technically continuous play does continuous. This is when u click the play button from the tv series/season screen. It will play next one right after another. This post play is the 15 second screen thing.
Unfortunately this isn’t the case, the post play screen still intermitently interrupts playback of TV series.

The post play screen shouldn’t be allowed to get involved during any kind of play queue at all. If the play queue hasn’t finished then it isn’t ‘post’ playing, it’s still mid playing. If we absolutely must have a post play screen (and I would far rather it were simply removed completely) then it shouldn’t show up until after the play queue has finished.

17

This post play screen is the most anything I’ve ever seen. Now, music videos are almost unwatchable. I must deal with this screen even using shuffle and playlists. Go figure.

It’s not a bad idea for tv series, but it should be optional for other libraries at least.