@shnhrrsn - thanks for the beta… literally just run it for the first time so wanted to put fwd my first run thoughts, experiences and finally some questions.
But first off - really great work!! very encouraging to see this kind of development for plex on the atv4
Love the use of the vertical menu, reminiscent of PHT
Nice big posters, just the way I like it for sofa browsing
I like the TV show list view, nicer than the official plex app view IMO (episode thumb could be bigger in the top left hand corner)
A few things I can’t quite get my head around…
is the TV on deck feature missing? I would like to see direct navigation to next up episode or currently playing episode in a season etc
does this data pull directly from my plex server? I ask as it appears to change my movie posters and I experience a syncing movies page
Experiences… conscious its Beta, so not intended as complaints and they are just my opinions
Experiencing a regular bug with navigation where every now and again ‘left & right’ just doesn’t work, whilst other times ‘up’ becomes disabled to bypass I have to quit the app (menu/enter still work).
*please note: the disabled navigation appears to carry over to the apple TV navigation, which seems very odd… so much so, I’m wondering if its a wider issue with my atv rather that just the ‘Catch app’
At one point ‘Watch Now’ & Most Popular’ were denoting the same movies so I was seeing 2 rows of the same posters
I’m guessing its by design, but I really dislike the fact that moving across the top Menu (libraries & settings) it auto jumps to the section when you land, either that or it just jumps far to quickly
Although I like the vertical menus ‘All Movies, Queue, Most Popular, Recently Released etc’… I’m trying to work out if there is actually a need for it, as a majority of these menus are already available as horizontal poster widgets. If the menu could be removed/hidden (possibly to the left) it would be great to have the whole page as a list of menu/widgets with the posters (hope that makes sense). Would be great if the current 10 poster limit for the widgets was opened up to 25 or more.
Requests… if I may be so bold (I wouldn’t usually, but I really like the direction this app is going)
Integration for Home Users… seems I currently have to login as a user, rather than my main plex account and have the option to switch Home user accounts (family members etc)
the ability to re-arrange the vertical menus (I prefer ‘Just Added’ at the top)
top shelf support from the atv home menu
search and a vertical alphabet when browsing All movies
Sure you already have lots on your to-do list, so realy hope this long list has been received as intended ‘encouraging helpful feedback’ …like I said, I wouldn’t usually bother, but really like what you are doing here. Keep up the great work!
Some nice design and performance improvements … it gets better with each iteration … thanks …
I find the Queue challenging. I know it’s supposed to represent what’s “On Deck” on TV Shows you’re watching ie: next un-watched episode., but I guess I’m so used to Plex’s “On Deck” interface, this one seems cluttered. Is there a way of showing the Episode number the poster is referring to? Perhaps as a mouse hover, or underneath the poster?
@mini.PLEX thanks for the feedback, I do really appreciate it! I plan to address most items on your list, though I can‘t promise everything.
“On Deck” is missing, the “Watch Now” feature is intended to replace it, but given that everyone’s mentioned wanting it, I’m going to get it added
Catch pulls data from Plex, TheMovieDb and TheTVDb. The syncing you’re seeing occurs when it’s pulling data from TheMovieDb/TheTVDb. You can switch back to Plex posters in Settings, however syncing will still occur as Catch makes use of additional data that Plex itself doesn‘t expose. Just a note on this: Build 57 was syncing too aggressively due to a few bugs specifically around movies, they’ve been resolved and it should happen less in build 60.
I’ve noticed the issue with nav being disabled, I thought this might be an TV bug, but I’ll investigate.
Home support is coming, unsure if it’ll be in the next beta or a subsequent one
I’m working on making the media stacks (vertical menus) re-orderable
Top shelf should already be supported, but I plan to add customization to it as right now it defaults to the first TV section it finds
@shnhrrsn - Hi, I am experiencing issues launching the latest beta after installing from TestFlight, it launched fine first time around and then won’t launch even if I quit the app.
are you aware? any tricks to get it to run again on the atv? I have already installed it fresh twice and the same thing keeps happening.
@“mini.PLEX” @jrdnlc I haven’t been able to reproduce and of my family/friends I know personally using it, no one else is reporting this.
I’m also not seeing any crashes reported back to Apple — did you guys happen to turn off sending diagnostic data to Apple when you setup your Apple TVs?
You can check in Settings > General > Privacy, under “Diagnostic Data” the first option should be “Send to Apple” with either “Off” or “On”.
Once it‘s on, directly under it is another one called “Share with App Developers” which should also be “On” (note: this won’t appear if “Send to Apple” is off).
If both are on, you can go into “Diagnostic and Usage Data” and see if Catch is listed there.
I look forward to testing. Just has a minute to register and that worked. Color schemes, of the buttons in particular, seemed erratic. More soon. Thanks!
Tested a few minutes of various video and everything including trickplay with my 3rd party remote went well. ATV Top Shelf didn’t update after watching a few minutes of something. I’m still a bit confused about what Watch Now is vs Just Added. I’m still impressed with the TV coming up section, all episodes, upcoming episodes, and all the potential features related to that.
Hope to see things like file specs, Rotten Tomatoes and theme songs added later. Is DTS audio possible with Catch? Keep up the good work!
Just downloaded the beta vs 1.0 (62). Looks nice play back is snappy. Really first crack impression is that this is really nice. Not sure if you are using the native tvOS player but I would guess not since the playback is almost instantaneous. The official Plex app using the native player usually buffers a bit. Nice work. Locking forward to more goodness.
Something I notice is the function of the touch button on the Apple remote. For most video apps when I click it the video pauses. Her it is only trying to skip ahead or behind. When I actually click the right or left side for a skip ahead it does skip ahead but I have to click again for the video to resume.
