Plex Experience: A constructive thread

[Yaracuy]

So here we are with the new Experience and as much as I loved the old app, this one is apparently here to stay.

I was thinking, why don’t we try to make the best out of it by pointing out in a clear and concise way the things that could be improved.

I know there are a million posts dealing with this but sadly, most of them are buried in mile long threads where the majority of posts are not constructive at all.

I’ll start by mentioning just a couple of things I believe should be handled as soon as possible.

• Theme music

Theme music is, at least for me, crucial. 100% of my TV shows and 80 % of my movies have carefully curated theme music and believe me, it makes a huge difference.

• Logos

Great idea on implementing logos. Some of them are good, some OK, some not good and others are missing.
There are a couple of Python scripts around to upload logos and they work really well but for portability reasons I’d personally would like to have the ability to use them as local assets.

There is a feature suggestion about this so if you are interested, go ahead and vote

Logos as a local asset

I think it would be more reliable if you could just put the logos alongside your movies and TV shows. Plex has a history of changing the artwork when it’s chosen in the Web UI. So it could be done like this: [Screenshot] TheTVDB has also clearlogos. Mostly for TV shows. This has the advantage that it’s you and not Plex that choses the logo.

• Background art

The background art, at least on iOS is cropped, which means that details are cut off.

Here is an example on how it looks in my iPhone

And how the original looks

As you can see, Kirk Douglas is gone and the Nautilus doesn’t look so good.

There are many other things but I wanted to start with just a few items

Feel free to post your ideas but please save complaining for another thread.

I am not sure who is the project leader on the Experience app for iOS, iPadOS and tvOS but I believe @Atomatth has something to say in the matter.

[Krandor1]

Downloads still are missing many features.

• Download X unwatched is needed and removing a download automatically after being watch
• (kinda needed for first one) sync of watched status of a streamed show to the download
• If I select a show to watch from the home screen and there is a downloaded version play the download and don’t stream
• download of playlist
• Better organization of downloads. As it sits it is one long list of episodes with the only sorting being “download time” “size” and “title”. Needs to at least be grouping by series, playlist, with more sorting options but the better route is to move it to a library view like it used to be with its own “continue watching” “recently added” etc

[dylanmsc]

Transcoding is not working properly when doing iphone <> chromecast to a tv.

The interface is obtuse and missing the old feature of being able to change the quality setting for whatever you are streaming.

[MrAniki]

The problem to be constructive you need roadmap, timeline and clear goals.

This app update marked as preview is a beta removing many existing feature without clear goal defined apart from the unsaid “push VOD at all cost”.

If it was preview, it should be opt-in and yes constructive feedback should occur incrementally. With this type of dump release, it takes as much effort to troubleshoot what is working and not working than migrating to an open source option.

What I understand so far:

• video is the only priority
• VOD is priority over user content
• There is a time criticality aspect as they rollout the app to all global platform iOS android without finish it or completing the feedback rollout
• Any bugs related to user content are not seen as a priority (download, theme, audio content, photo content, etc).

[gordonjb]

Not to turn the one “constructive” thread into another argumentative one, but every other post is whining about how VOD is the priority, Plex HATES their users and their content and they’re SHOVING it in our faces. I just opened my app and checked, I’ve done basically no setup beyond favouriting my libraries: I had to scroll past 16 rows of my content from those three libraries to see any Plex content right at the bottom

That doesn’t feel like priority to me, especially when you can turn it off. You can hate the new UI, I have my own issues I want improved with it, but people are being absolutely nuts about it in a very bad faith way

I mean look at the libraries access, half the posts in the other feedback thread are “libraries are too hard to access! Too many taps” and now they’ve put quick access pills right on the home screen people are complaining about that.