So the new engine to fix the complaints about the aging AppleTV client is only in the New Experience track… definitely would be frustrated as AppleTV Plex user.
I’d been debating trying AppleTV on my aging Roku TV but seeing all the back and forth in these areas the last several months have me just sticking with my familiar Roku setup (with DTS passthrough the ATV doesn’t have - though I’d like Plex to update the 7.1 DTS passthrough support).
Some good info in this thread… thanks all!
Edit: I happened to have a new DTS-HD MA 7.1 file so tested it… it direct played!
Guess one of the updates in the last few months silently addressed it. Thanks!
Edit2: Nope… still buggy. Some 7.1 play now and some don’t… same setting for the rips so dunno what’s different. Also, oddly, the “Audio” settings option disappeared and re-appeared on two different Roku devices while fiddling… anyways that’s all off-topic. Got excited… sorry for the distraction.
Came back to answer some of the follow-up questions, but you all seem to have addressed most of them in the past few hours. Thanks @pshanew for clarifying around the state of AppleTV right now. What you said here is totally correct right now:
I will add to clarify as the terminology has been challenging. Typically we have multiple builds like: Production, Beta, Nightly. We added a “new” one for AppleTV that we called the “Experience Preview” which was intended as an alpha->beta release. It was capped via Testflight to 10k users. That is where that terminology came from. We used similar terminology for the mobile apps.
For Roku - we will NOT be releasing an “experience preview”. We are skipping straight to the beta channel next week with the new look and feel. Why? Because Roku isn’t a ground-up re-write, it just gets the new look and feel (along with some under the hood improvements). Is it perfect? No, (hence: beta) but this will be an extended beta and we hope for some solid feedback. I am using it right now and generally outside of a few focus issues and some messiness around Live TV it is performing really well for me.
Now you’ve got me kind of interested…is the Roku platform not part of the new combined dev platform (which was supposed to be the entire goal of the new app?) Or are only Android and IOS/tvOS using the new dev platform?
Roku uses Brightscript which is similar to JavaScript or Lua but different (from here). We have mentioned elsewhere that our “more unified” codebase is based around React native. However, I think there are some assumptions in your comment that don’t quite fit right. On the client side, we do want to gain some efficiencies and work to reduce the client multiplier, hence, React Native. On the back-end, we have also worked to standardize the API and data layers and that is something we can take advantage of all over the place (including the Roku client). So there is no true singular “combined dev platform” here. Our web client is another example more along the lines of Roku than the mobile apps.
Not a re-write? A re-write of which code? The Preview code released on Apple TV, or the existing Roku app?
Will this be like the Preview app? Can we have multiple Plex clients instead on Roku simultaneously?
I’m just curious because I have THOUSANDS of videos with manually entered metadata that isn’t recognized by the new Experience on Android phone (Samsung Galaxy).
I don’t want to be that guy really but how is this different from what you said about the Android Mobile app beta? It was in beta and you guys seemed to be listening to feedback. That was great. But then all of sudden it just released. And it’s still absolutely not stable, at least for me.
Can you guarantee that it won’t happen with ATV, and perhaps clarify why this happened with the mobile client?
Will some of the issues around Live TV be fixed before the Roku app is pushed to production? There are some huge misses in Live TV in the current production android mobile app (DVR Schedule and Watch from start or live) and the only saving grace has been that Roku doesn’t have the same problem.
They put in a “fix” just recently but might not be completely fixed yet.
I use the cast\crew feature a lot so definitely want it to work right and well. I even have a feature request so it’ll work right with editions tags; definitely want it working right for it’s base function.
Will a new Roku apps also be released this week for Amp and Pictures, or is this function still retained in the new app (as it’s based on the current app).
If that’s the case, this is going to be very confusing for people - apps available for one platform, but not the other(s) and vice versa.
This seems to be the opposite of what was communicated even this was announced.
This would not simplify the platform or benefit users.
