When you go to movies on the top menu hit the UP menu. Just press up on the dpad.
You will then get a list of all MOVIE libraries you have setup or have access to (from any server).
With the new UI Plex only allows you to have 1 of each type of library selected at a time. So one:
Movie
Show
Music
Picture
Other
Each one of these can be from ANY server that shares with you. This new UI takes a bit of getting used to since you no longer have all libraries a quick click away but allows for a lot of expansion down the road. For example you previously may not have wanted to have a lot of libraries due to screen real-estate of the listing of them but this solves that problem. You could for example create different MOVIE libs such as : Kids, Oscars, 4K, 3D, MVC, Oscar, Cartoon, Christmas, Halloween, etc
If you have kids then you could only share the libs they have access to so they may only have one library such as Kids. Once you select the Kids movie the first time or them, it will become the default.
Because the new UI doesn’t care what server the libraries come from it gives us some expanded possibilities such as having your pictures and music run from a NAS or router box which may not be powerful enough for transcoding. If you happen to use ShieldTVs which support HW transcoding and have 2 you could set them up as Plex servers. You could run Movies on one of them and TV Shows on another. It gives you freedom to split the load a bit among a few smaller servers vs using one bigger server. You can/mix match your local servers and your cloud servers. Maybe you only upload pics and music to a cloud server so you have your music available to you on the Internet and so you don’t have to have huge amounts of cloud storage.
You could have a library called NEW Movies or Recommended Movies that you have setup in the cloud while keeping all other movies local on your intranet. This way if you share to friends and have limited upload bandwidth all the “new” stuff your friends access will get played from the cloud vs your local server saving you bandwidth for when they need it to stream older stuff.
This new UI gives you the ability to blend the servers so the user doesn’t need to switch servers to access the content. Yes it does take a bit of getting used to since it is so different but that’s just a learning curve. I’m sure Plex will also refine this a bit as we go. Keep in mind this is a new UI and like any will get tweaked here and there to make it better over time.
As you can see it WILL give you a lot to think about and will be able to provide you a LOT more freedom in how you run your “system” down the road as more clients take on this type of functionality.
Plex is definitely on the RIGHT PATH for expansion and for allowing us more freedom in our setups even if we take a small hit on the UI for now which a lot of people don’t care for YET. It will grow on you as you get used to it and start to exploit the power it gives you/us.
Carlo
