Like everyone else, I’m here because of the interface change. I just want to point out to other users that it’s not a mistake or bug. It’s doing exactly what it’s designed to: drive you to their ad based videos (which are often the same content that you already have BUT WITH ADS!) while intentionally adding friction to access your own media.
The system isn’t broken. It’s doing exactly what they intend it to do. Instead of cutting their expenses, they are trying to squeeze more revenue out of the existing user base. The encrapification continues.
To Plex employees: Smart TVs already include thousands of channels of ad supported TV and Movies that don’t require me to even launch an app or navigate your horrible interface. You aren’t ever going to be doing it better than Samsung/LG/Roku/Hulu. Whatever vision you have for the company, this is not going to work out well. The main draw of Plex, your NICHE, was always our own content with NO ADs, which you seem to have forgotten. Plex ad supported media was an interesting feature when it wasn’t being force fed to the user base like this.
I do not mind you monetizing free users, but I am not a free user. I PAID, and now you are playing games by adding friction to accessing my own media and funneling me to your ad supported media. Many of us use Plex specifically because we do not like the ads. You already know this because you have the usage stats from the apps telling you we don’t like your offering. You are alienating your core user base and destroying your brand to do this. Don’t believe me? I brought receipts. Jellyfin (which is completely free btw) now exceedes Plex’s monthly downloads on Unraid by >50% and the change is accelerating. Some of that might be update frequency, but that’s irrelevant. I know that you know these moves you are making is alienating your users.
Maybe you really do just want to shed us? Fine, but once I actually make the effort to switch, it’ll be next to impossible to ever get me back. You will definitely lose entirely what ad revenue you were making from me when your app was more user friendly. I hope you come to your senses, and at least offer Plex pass users the previous app experience, but in the meantime: GitHub - wilmardo/migrate-plex-to-jellyfin: Migrate watched status from Plex to Jellyfin
The main issue is the change to the interface is making it objectively harder to access my own media libraries regardless of where the Live TV is placed. Disabling Live TV does not revert the UI. People are complaining here and all over Reddit about the same exact same UI change. It’s patently obvious the purpose of the change is to drive users to Live TV/Discover.
Why are you pretending not to understand the problem?
You are right though, I can and should do something about it:
You stated your problem as being forced into navigating Plex’s ad-based videos. You can disable that.
If you’re moving to JF, good luck. Their clients are generally sub-par. And if you share with remote users, you’ll have some additional hoops to jump through (I’m open to providing some tips of you need them, I use JF as a backup server myself).
But just realize the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. It’s certainly different, though.
There’s even a feature suggestion to roll back to the previous interface:
It’s gotten a total of 307 votes and over 3,200 views. Just 86 unique viewers have commented. Is it possible that this new interface isn’t as widely despised as you think it is?
(Keeping in mind that Reddit is the Mos Eisley of the Internet.)
What I can say from my experience, as someone who loathes the new experience, is that I personally know 9 other people who also despise the change but none of them are on the forums. They have all expressed their dissatisfaction to me directly. I have seen many others on here stating similar.
I can guarantee there are many, many people out there who do not like it but are not sure how to have their voices heard. There are also going to be a lot of people who are users of a server and do not understand that they can raise their voice in opposition because they are just used to getting garbage redesigns from the big players (Netflix, D+, Amazon, etc) and they can’t do anything other than take it and deal.
What’s your point? It seems like it’s that a lot of people don’t come to the forums to voice their opinion about the “new experience.”
I can tell you, from 30+ years of working in the customer support industry, that folks don’t generally call, or write, to express their pleasure (with very rare exceptions) with a product. They do so to complain. The above-referenced feature suggestion should have far more votes than it does given the very vocal (minority, it seems) outcry.
So, tell your many, many people to voice their opinion and vote.
Legitimate question: When was the last time you visited an Internet forum to tell a manufacture/developer what a good job they were doing? You certainly haven’t here.
(And for what it’s worth, I offered to help the OP with tips for navigating remote access on JF if they needed it.)
You very clearly understood my point, and I’m not trying to start a fight with you. I’m just pointing out that in my circle, 9/10 people have not expressed their dislike and voted for change. Multiply that by hundreds and you have a large set of users that are unhappy.
Several of my users are elderly and in no way could even remotely figure out how to create an account here and vote. I could do it for them but that seems unfair. All I’m saying is just because there’s only 307 votes does not mean there’s only 307 people that hate it.
You are right though, people don’t often express their love for an app when it works. I have been in IT for over 20 years, I get it. I almost never hear from anyone when things are working. Only when they break.
If you dig through all the backlash that initially happened though there were a LOT of people who had never even visited these forums before and made their way here simply to voice their opinion and a lot of those people made it very clear that they had to do so because Plex has almost zero customer service outside of the forums.
@pshanew@Krazeh its getting old seeing you two respond in thread after thread after thread saying to just disable. Management at plex must love you two, as you continue to poke other community members into rising them to get a response on this topic. You’d be better helping folks (and yes @pshanew I see you today assisting someone with renaming media which is great and your going above and beyond, this is how to help and is a better use of your time), however the responses in this thread are just rage bait.
Finally, you do realise your comments on disable are only partially true. Remember discover credits CANNOT BE DISABLED. So, anyone regardless of what else you have enabled or disabled if you select something from a discover credits page will take you to plex content, and that’s ad driven. My own son with special needs has done this so believe me I know!
So, in support of the OP, yes its working exactly as plex management indent it.
That is an old feature suggestion that has been marked as solved with an update that has already been issued and definitely does not solve the problem. Plex has said they do not intend to move back to the previous sidebar: Plex Roku Preview: A Faster, Simpler Navigation Experience
Genuinely do not understand why they believe it had to change in the first place. The sidebar was more click efficient and apparently more well liked. Moving between TV and movies is a real pain — it’s highly unintuitive. Used to just be left then down once or twice and click. Now it’s up, right, wait for the menu lag, then down twice and click. Objectively worse. For what? One more movie on the screen?
You are cherry picking one relatively unknown feature suggestion as evidence that it’s not widely disliked. I, myself have 3 other people in the house that have all complained about it. They do not have plex forum accounts.
You only need to search Plex Roku interface and it’s really easy to find different discussions where people do not like this. The feature suggestion never even comes up, but I voted for it all the same to make you happy.
Regardless, I’m not going to argue with you anymore about it. I don’t like it. I have clearly articulated my reasons for that. Even if you do not agree, you have presented zero reasons why the change needed to be made or how it improves anything. Just whining because I and others don’t like it and had the nerve to make a post about it.
Don’t presume to suggest to me how to use my time.
Their initial post was specifically regarding how to navigate the interface without seeing the “ad-based” videos. My response was intended to address that. You can completely turn that off, which I pointed out.
Why does every simple thing have to turn into a fight? I’m trying to help people, as you pointed out. I have no agenda. I don’t care if the new experience succeeds or fails. I just point out tips which might help folks when appropriate.
(I will add that I know there’s current bug where some Plex content can still be accessed under certain conditions, such as view an actor’s “known for” content. My understand is that it’s been identified and is being worked on.)
It was never my intent to argue with you. You can disable the Plex stuff, enough said.
It was never my intent to justify the change. I’m not sure why you thought that, it’s interesting.
Please, don’t be so defensive. I was initially trying to help you. I genuinely thought you were unaware of the ability to remove Plex’s stuff from your view.
You’d probably like the current Roku preview channel app. When you navigate to “Libraries” you get a vertical list of all your favorited libraries. If you just press the select button, it will take you to your default library view (which I assume most folks have set to Browse).
Or, you can press right into a sub-menu where you can see your recommendations, collections, or playlists. It’s pretty awesome. Hopefully it makes it into the Apple TV betas soon.
Yes, left hand menu is a huge waste of space for sure, unless its collapsible, now it’s hidden until you need it and extremely more useful to list your libraries than the monstrosity of cascading menus they put in the new Roku UI. Or even worse, the horribly placed and awkward side to side scrolling menu on mobile.
Also they made all the posters bigger so you’re losing even more posters on screen. I really don’t get what they’re thinking but it is what it is now and all we can hope is they will replace it in 10 years with a new new experience that will almost certainly just be a redo of UNO
