I have a library of Snowboard Movies that I have setup with Scanner “Plex Video Files” and Agent “Personal Media” so that it doesn’t try to match them incorrectly on a movie database.
All the folders are named correctly and have a cover.jpg image. In library view, the movies display correctly with the cover art in all other plex players apart from the fire cube, which displays them with background art /screen shot instead. All other libraries display correctly in the fire cube player.
Plex (wrongly) believes (on some clients) Poster Images can be used in a library wherein a ‘Screengrab’ of the material will be the ONLY image.
How’s that gonna work, exactly, Plex?
Answer: It’s not.
Landcape is the only sane option.
Roku (almost) has it right, but still suffers some ignorance about the reality of the situation.
The reality is Poster sized images will never work with Other Videos.
If you take the time to ‘create’ artwork - it’s gonna be wrong most of the time 'cause there is no client standard, so even if we have to create artwork for EVERYTHING in Other Videos - it’s gonna be mostly wrong.
You can probably find, or create a landscape image - as soon as you place it, the client app will cram it into a Poster Sized Box. If you create Poster sized images, Plex shows you it’s version of a Vertical Cell Phone image on the Nightly News, 'cause the box it’s shipped in is Landscape.
It’s User Lose/Lose situation.
Meanwhile - Plex seems unconcerned - since it’s been this way for at least 10 years - despite our screaming about it regularly.
OK, I figured it out. If you are adding Libraries for your Ripped DVD Movies, TV Shows or even DVR’ed Moves and TV Shows, but creating “Other Videos” Libraries you will not get Posters to show up on a FireTV, Only Backgrounds. Plus you have to manually match each video file with Posters and Backgrounds. Of course after doing this for all of my DVD’s and DVR’s, I found the solution.
You need to created Libraries for “Movies” and “TV Shows”. Once you do that, Posters will show up on a FireTV! Not only that, but Plex will automatically download both Posters and Background for each video. Out of over 300, I only have 3 or 4 that were identified incorrectly by movie or date. East fix is to just select “Fix Match” and it will give you other options.
I sure wish Plex Support or someone had shared this with me after posting here, several Facebook Groups, and even several YouTube Channels.
Anyway, I thought I would share here, so if anyone still has the problem or are Plex newbies like me, they can save a bunch of time. For now, I am a happy camper and even caught a lucky one day Lifetime PlexPass deal for $88.
