As you may have noticed, we’ve been working hard on a rewrite of the Plex application for our smart tv platforms. Following up the on the previews for Vizio SmartCast and Samsung Tizen and now we are ready to present to you a preview of the webOS application!
Just like the Vizio and Samsung versions of the preview, this application has been rewritten from the ground up, taking advantage of WebGL for better performance.
This preview release should include much of the same features as the existing webOS application, but there are still a few features that are currently missing (like TIDAL and DVR scheduling) as we work towards feature parity. However, we did bring in some much-requested features as well like Skip Intro and a the Live TV Guide.
We will eventually be replacing the current Plex app that’s in the webOS store with this version once we’ve reached parity and ironed out the kinks. We’re looking for feedback and reports about functional issues with the preview app. Does anything not play as expected? Does a particular action cause a crash? Does clicking a button not perform the action? Is something not displayed on the screen correctly? While we’re certainly interested in feedback about UI/UX of our apps in general, this new preview app is intended to follow the same basic UI design of our other current (TV layout) apps.
How to access the preview:
webOS 3, 4 and 5 UHD devices (webOS 2 devices are not supported at this time)
Users will be automatically redirected to the preview one time when launching 4.29.9 or later for the first time.
To opt-in manually, make sure you are on version 4.29.7 or later of the Plex app.
Choose ‘Enable Early Access’ in the user options menu of the current app. If you want to return to the old app, select ‘Leave Early Access’ from the user options menu in the preview version of the app.
If you don’t see the option to enter early access, try restarting the app / TV and try again
Known Issues / Limitations:
Subtitle sizes are different
TV Show Theme Music
Unable to change language / search term when searching for subtitles
Preview images while seeking aren’t displayed
Stopping a played episode doesn’t show the post-play screen unless you watch to the end of the file
How to report issues:
Please open a new thread using the webos-preview tag to ask questions or report issues with this preview. Please include the TV model and webOS TV Version. To find this, from Settings, All Settings, General, TV Information.
Wow - first impressions very slick and marked improvement on UI in terms of clicks to play, speed and visuals. Thank you for the very obvious hard work!
There is no “i” button anymore, but under settings i see the video is not transcoded. Whitch should be always the case on my setup. But audio its always transcoding which is also normal for me but i cant see it displayed
Good start, but it needs some work. I’ve noticed the following things:
The preview version of the app doesn’t migrate the settings from the old app. Everything is reset to default.
The setting “Maximum H.264 level” defaults to 4.1 in the preview, but it defaulted to 5.1 in the old app. In both cases the default value is shown as recommended in the selection, so the preview actually recommends a lower version.
The new settings menu is not translated to German.
The LG “magic remote cursor” (motion gestures instead of arrow keys) doesn’t seem to work at all. Neither in the menu nor in the time bar while playing something.
I don’t like that it shows the poster of the TV show as background in the pre-play screen. The old app had an option to disable this (by selecting “Blur”). The preview is missing that option in the new settings menu. Please bring it back.
Selecting a different audio/subtitle track in the pre-play screen is too complicated. It needs more button presses than in the old app and needs navigation through multiple screens.
The library filter settings are ugly and too big. The old app had a small unintrusive bar, but the preview shows big grey boxes.
The german translation for the filter bar in the libraries is wrong. The “by” in “x y by z” is tranlated with “von” but it should be “nach”.
The old app showed the title of a TV episode for a short time when starting playback. The preview just shows “buffering”. I liked the title information.
The “big jumps” (or chapter jumps if the file has chapters) with arrow up/down during playback don’t work any more.
The timeline during playback takes too much vertical space. E.g., when you jump forward/back with arrow left/right, the whole lower half of the screen is covered by the timeline. And most of that space is wasted, either by a way too big series title or by just empty space at the bottom (where the buttons are usually shown, but aren’t after jumping).
Even though the timeline is way bigger now, it shows less information. I’m missing the remaining runtime and the clock-time when the current file will end. Instead, the total runtime of the file is shown twice.
I can’t find the information overlay at all in the preview (the screen that shows technical details during playback).
App version: 5.0.10
TV model: OLED65C9PLA
webOS version: 4.8.0-52203 (goldilocks2-gyeongju)
Time format always reset to 12 hour and not 24. If you set it it goes back to 12 like it’s never set
The posters are very big, taking up a large amount of real estate and you cannot even see the seasons of a series without scrolling down. Need to be smaller or be able to choose it to be smaller
gj cremor. Thx
The missing big jumps with arrow up is a big problem for me.
also i want to change the language (audio stream) and subtitles more on the fly.
some shows i watch in english. Maybe plex could recognise and remember. At least to change it every time at the beginning should be easier
If the audio is transcoding the video also transcodes…
Did not happen in the previous app.
AC3 Audio (Direct Play)
TrueHD Audio (Transcodes Both Video and audio)
All 4 files that I tested were:
4K HEVC Main 10 HDR
with TrueHD audio
I also tested with and without subtitles. Same behavior. So it’s not the subtitles.
App version: 5.0.10
TV model: 55SM8600PLA
webOS version: 4.8.0-52002 (goldilocks2-gyeongju)
Really liking the new speed.
However I had the same issue as some other people with 4k content, it wanted to convert to 720p. I went into settings and had to kick up the default ‘Remote’ quality settings, even though the server is on the same network. However, now everything plays happily at original.
I’d say you need to add a slim bit on the left hand side, it took me a while to figure that I needed to scroll all the way to the left to get the menu to unhide. Add a permanent slim down version I reckon just showing icons.
Not a massive fan of the background with the obvious gradient lines, looks a little ugly.
Also loving the new totally black background behind the plex logo when loading the app up, looks great on my OLED tv. However it does a few transitions when loading the app, big plex logo with grey background, then smaller/normal sized logo with grey background then finally goes to the nice black. I’d try and get it for a black background for all, looks less messy then. Nitpicking a little here though. Great app
This was for me how the PLEX app always responded on my LG 65C9. While Xplay works fine with TrueHD tracks playing as Dolby Digital… i would be fine with Plex transcoding TrueHD to DD+ if it would only transcode the audio part. Even with SRT subtitles it transcodes everything when audio is TrueHD.
Something that is fixed though is Subtitle Burnin on auto now properly renders .ass subtitles with Direct Play. In the past you needed to put it on “image subs only”. PGS subs still cause transcode.
Interface does look snappy, background looks ugly, rather have something without a gradient in it.
Audio/Subtitle track selection should have a direct button in the playback screen, instead of going into the submenu’s.
Yeah and as I mentioned above all the 4K files do that.
This 1080p file with TrueHD direct plays
I tested many TrueHD and TrueHD Atmos demos by dolby and all direct play the video and transcode the TrueHD audio to EAC3 (as it should) Note: They are all 1080p
I also tested a few of their Dolby Vision samples. They play correctly and trigger Dolby Vision in the TV. These are EAC3 so there is no Audio transcoding. If they were TrueHD they would probably transcode (both video and audio) and lose the Dolby Vision.
Speed is good, but lack of the up/down 10 minute jump is a deal breaker. I watch a lot of sports recordings where I often want to skip through up to an hour or more of pre-race intro content.
Settings don’t seem to save / work. After leaving the settings screen and coming back in they’ve reset back already.
This was for me how the PLEX app always responded on my LG 65C9
No, I don’t think it was like that.
It transcoded TrueHD to DD+ (only audio) but if you enabled subtitles it would transcode everything.
It was the subtitles that didn’t work together with TrueHD. Now it’s even worse. Although I pretty positive they will fix this. Its the first iteration.
My biggest problem, flac files transcoding and not direct play, is solved!!
four issues with first use:
Selecting an album and then on the three dots selecting shuffle crashes the app screen. You can get it bach by pressing return a number of times.
Right arrow on my remote fast forwards in the tracks a few seconds iso playing the next track
The app crashes while playing back an album, or the screen goes black, the song keeps playing but the controls don’t work anymore
Still not able to select time-shown for a photo in the photo viewer, and the LG screensaver still interrrups the slade show. It should be disabled! (Were issues in the old app as well)
Cosmetics needs improving:
No track progress shown on screen, just the album artwork
In the old app, the screen jumps to prevent burn-in. This has now stopped
The menu is too large, the old one was smaller and you could see many more albums and movies on the selection screens. Size should be either smaller or selectable.
