Lets see if I can lock this (mods: please lock it if you can). Not overly interested in the usual pile on, but I can’t find a more useful way to get feedback to plex, while not just doing it privately, which isn’t much use to anyone in the longer term.
OK, so fairly long time Lifetime PP user. I have movies, tv, music, audiobooks, all sorts on my server - surprisingly most of which I own (come on, a load of music comes from the early-00’s…)
I use Plexamp a lot (thanks! love it, got 25-30 years of music collected on my server… I don’t sub to any streaming services, buy a lot from Bandcamp and Beat Port) and Prologue for audiobooks (buy them from audible (removing DRM isn’t hard if you pay for them) and more recently, other DRM-free sources, but play them in a decent player which neither audible nor others are).
Occasionally play video/tv/etc on iOS (iPhone, iPad). I find the new UI there to be pretty good. It’s a bit of an adjustment from the old one, but fine - I’ll get there.
The exceptions for me are the last three tabs - Live TV, On Demand and Discover. Given the choice, I would NEVER have these enabled. I have zero interest in the content on there. It is cable-tv time-filling BS. I use Plex to avoid broadcast TV, and these three tabs are basically the worse of broadcast TV.
I’d LOVE to be able to promote some of MY libraries to those three tabs - TV, Movies, Music Videos maybe?
The Home tab is similar - the top is fine. The bottom is … wasted space. (same with Plex Popular. I give zero … cares… about what others are watching, I spend enough time finding my own stuff from other sources)
So, overall, on iPhone and iPad: I’d give the new app about a 7. I’d love to turn some things off and / or promote other bits, but overall, I don’t hate it, and it’s early days.
Now for Apple TV. Until today, I’d not tried it for a month or 2. Initially it felt like the iOS version, on the TV. Except, ya know, I don’t use my fingers to navigate, so if I want to go from Recommended to Browse, and I’m looking at the "W"s in my list… thats a LONG way to scroll up. Worse if I want to go from TV to Movies.
Thats been fixed with Recommended etc down the left side (yay). Now, moving between libraries… press up from Recommended gets to you that list at the very top maybe? not to the top poster…
The player is better (vrs November last year) but not great. It finally does skip back/forward and pause on the touch controller. But if the chrome is up, and I press back to get rid of it - bang, out of the video. At leat the timeout on the chrome is a bit quicker than it was… I guess.
Thats the area which would get my paying for Firecore until it’s fixed. Hell, I’d settle for some kind of double tap of back to get out of the player… but pressing (not swiping) back/forward and the middle should skip and play regardless of whats focused.
Thats about it from me - still interested to see where you are going with the Apple TV app. Not the world-ending disaster some are saying it is (maybe they thought that having a female lead in Ghostbusters, or Star Wars, ruined their childhood or something…). But it can and needs to be better.
