My primary Plex client is the Android TV client on the NVIDIA Shield. One annoyance I’ve seen with the latest update to Android Oreo is that the artwork used for the new channels are the Background artwork instead of the Poster artwork. This is understandable since it seems the Android TV UI expects the images to be in 16:9 aspect ratio, rather than the more vertical aspect ratio of a poster.
However, the annoyance is that the images I select for Background artwork are just that… background images. Pleasant images designed to look good with a bunch of text and other UI elements laid on top of them, not images that are supposed to be wholly representative of the show or movie. For example, the background image I have for Game of Thrones is a wide shot of King’s Landing; attractive in the background, but unless you’re already familiar with the series, not a good representation of what it is.
My proposal is thus to create a new artwork category that uses 16:9 aspect ratio images and is used in preference to Background artwork when the show/movie needs to be represented. Possible names for this category are Billboard (ignoring the fact that real billboards are much wider than 16:9) or Wide Poster. Billboard artwork should be populated from the same source as Background artwork by default and should default to the same as the Background artwork if unset, but it would give those of us who care an opportunity to tell Plex exactly what images we want it to use in specific contexts.
