I have tried to write this a million different ways and it turns into a rant! So, I’m going to keep this succinct:
Whoever thought it was a good idea to ditch the native ATV player for whatever vibe-coded nonsense you’ve started using needs sacking. I understand the need to try and have as close to a unified codebase as possible but this is one change that is a real regression in fidelity. I can live with (just about) the new interface if I have to. But, in the name of all that is holy, on the ATV app, please just use the native ATV player, the loss of functionality is a serious problem, surely you can keep 90% of the same code whilst calling the native ATV player for the app on ATV? I don’t mean to be rude but you are not Apple, your Devs are not Apple Devs (sorry not sorry), stop trying to re-invent the wheel and halt the enshitification of Plex.
Textbook on how to not develop av release software. I cannot understand the reasons behind this botched update. Toilet garbage. Moving on to Infuse I’m done with this grift crap.
I sort of feel sorry for any of the devs working there. It’s got to feel very depressing knowing that the users hate the software they’ve released and that they could do a lot better if the company would let them.
I wonder how meetings are? “The beatings will continue until morale improves”
Yeah, same. I can’t imagine how disheartening it is to have their stuff be called vibe coded. For all we know it is, but regardless this is not the quality we’re used to from Plex.
I do feel bad calling it vibe coded but it feels so slapdash I am lost as to how else to sum it up. I fail to believe that including code that determines the OS the app is running on, and if it is tvOS it calls the native OS level player rather than the apps’ own player would surely allow the app to still use the same codebase across platforms without divergence.
The entire New Experience has felt vibe coded from the beginning, almost two years ago. They went through a couple of rounds of layoffs while it was being released on mobile and it’s been downhill ever since. They have listened to some feedback regarding the interface usability but, again, for two years they just keep saying “we’re looking into navigation.” How long does it take? They’ve had all the feedback they need. We’ve practically held their hands and given it to them, yet they persist in this “vision.” It all screams venture capital investment and it just sucks.
None of this even scratches the surface of the loss of features compared to the previous version. They swear up and down they are still committed to the media server users but their app says otherwise. The entire thing is built around the focus of their hosted VOD content, which isn’t even a good experience. The ads are awful and so long, and usually not even in the correct language.
I’m sorry Plex but we’re not being fooled. We see what you’re doing and it’s awful to your users, long term or brand new. It’s a “Terrible Experience” now. And the small handful of yes-men in here that think it’s amazing, good for you. Far more outnumber you. Go check Reddit and App Store reviews. It is 99% negative regardless of platform.
Biggest thing I miss is the line that would show where you paused if you scroll forward or back and a “snap to” return. Rookie mistake removing that. I’d guess that’s a 1 minute vibe code fix.
The loss of the snap to position and the scrubbing feature are, as I understand, to do with Plex moving away from the native ATV media player and replacing it with Plex’s own media player. Given all they would need to do is put a check OS function if tvOS x.x.x call native ATV player, else use Plex Media player (note I haven’t coded since I had my Commodore 64 plus). I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t do that, seems insanely lazy and short sighted. The only reason I can think for dumping a better media player for your own is Apple bringing in some rules which prevent you using it, or hubris to believe you can deliver a better experience with your own media player. Spoiler: You can’t, haven’t and never will.
But besides that, a custom player would be much more powerful than using the native one in normal circumstances. The problem is that the quality just isn’t there in the coding at the moment.
It’s not the idea that’s wrong - it’s the execution.
In principle I can’t disagree. That said the native ATV player is, in this case better. It’s the one the AppleTV app and a lot of the other apps on ATV use. Even looking at the basic functionality lost since dumping the ATV player, the plex player is lacking fidelity. Why reinvent the wheel? Especially when the company which built the wheel you’re replacing has built a much better wheel (apologies for the incredibly laboured analogy)…
The Apple TV player can directly use the hardware to decode the file formats. It may be limited in what it can support but hardware decode is always better than software. Plex’s software player could be better in that it could handle many more formats and adapt over time, but now it’s limited to how much raw cpu power the Apple TV has. Which is why they dropped support for the HD.
My Apple TV HD still directs plays all my 1080p content perfectly fine in the old app. If I were to upgrade I would suddenly lose that hardware for absolutely no reason other than their unified code base pipe dream.
I also have an Apple TV 4K and from most of the comments I’ve read, it also still handles most 4K content better than the new app, simply because it’s offloading the decoding the hardware. I’ve had far too much experience with software decoders and they just love to destroy your cpu.
It absolutely is. Hardware decoding will be significantly easier on the hardware than software. Software decoding, even on the 4K, is going to overheat it and shorten its lifespan.
It’s the same reason we prefer hardware trancode (live encoding). It uses the dedicated hardware specifically made for the task instead of maxing your cpu cores, and it’s faster anyway.
