I recently got the new Verizon FiOS 4100AVR DVR. It’s a “whole-home” system that uses a Verizon-branded AndroidTV box. The box comes with the Google Play Store installed, and you’re encouraged to install the streaming apps you need from the Play Store. So, as a PlexPass member, I immediately installed Plex.
And I’m getting a somewhat subpar experience.
In order to pause, ff or rw content I am watching, I need to push up on the multi-directional ring and then press pause. On the main FiOSTV app, and other streaming apps I install such as AppleTV+ and Netflix, I simply push the OK button in the middle of the ring on the remote and the movie gets paused. But for Plex, I need to push up and then push OK to pause.
Is this expected behavior? Is this a bug? Is there a setting I can change to not have to push up first before I pause, rw or ff?
All the other apps on the box use the OK button as the pause. Why would Plex treat it differently? I’m willing to try another Bluetooth remote, but I would need to make sure it worked with all the other apps on the box.
Plex wants to standardize the controls for their apps across different platforms, so if you sit down with an Android TV device, Roku, Apple TV, etc the remote buttons do the same thing. So as a result they have changed the button layouts/actions to something they can duplicate on more devices.
Pressing the OK/Select button on the Android/FireOS app causes the UI to appear, and the on-screen pause button is highlighted. So you would be able to pause by pressing OK twice, instead of just once.
Ok, the double tap works. I ordered a Bluetooth remote with a play/pause button. I’ll try that out when it gets here on Friday. My wife is going to be thrilled to learn a new remote.…
That is… stupid. The app should respond the same as other similar apps on the same platform. If you have an android phone & shield tv (for example) it should behave like an android app. I know you’re just explaining their thinking, I am just hoping someone from plex sees this (and other people complain).
Okay, I understand what you meant but saying you want a hand-held touchscreen device and a 10-foot-UI device to be the same is exactly what people do not want around here.
Note that apastuszak ordered a Bluetooth remote with a play/pause button… implying that the remote his Android TV device came with did not include one. That’s nuts, in my opinion, as far as limited controls. But it shows that even within the same ecosystem you can have variations in control surfaces you have to plan for.
The Play/Pause button is the OK button. It’s a multi-function buton based on context. All the apps on the box recognize it as the play/pause button in the right context (Apple TV, Netflix, Paramount+, FiOS TV, My DVR). Plex does not. It always treats it as an OK button.
The new remote arrives tomorrow. We’ll see what the does.
This is my first Android TV box, so I don’t know what the remotes look like on other boxes. Searching online, I see that the remote for the Sheild TV and the FIre TV both have Play/Pause buttons. So, this could be a quirk of this particualar set top box.
I’m looking at various Android TV streaming boxes an Amazon now, and it looks all the generic streaming boxes coming out of China running Android TV 14 or newer don’t have a play/pause button.
I wonder if this is standard behaviour now for newer Android TV devices.
I installed a few apps off the Play Store that will not use the OK button for Play/Pause. So, Plex is not alone in this. I installed the Hallmark Channel app, and I can’t play/puase or ff/rw without using the new remote.
