Why do I have a Show and\or Season card at the front of my episode row now?
Is that this?
I’m already IN my show or season so why do I need a Season and\or Show card first in my episode list too now? All it does is duplicate “play next” when there’s already buttons\actions for playing the next unwatched from the show and season level and that detail screen already … why add another one that just duplicates the background art and makes me have to click more to get to an episode in my episode list now?
Who was asking for this “feature”? What is it making better for users?
I know I said I was done - and I’m going back to the Public release because somehow the updates are making it worse instead of better - but seriously this just boggled my mind and I had to ask…
Edit: Plex has a hierarchy for Show\Season\Episode - why mix it up? The only place that happens is by special function in the “Recently Added TV” hub.
I don’t use Photo or Music or Live TV or Plex Movies and TV or Discovery or Social or Reviews and I essentially only have a single Movie library and a single TV library which makes my interface needs pretty low. I mostly stay on the Home Screen since I customized it a bit to make it easier to just play something me or my family want to watch from there.
So, having went through a few layout changes with Plex over the years, as long as it is intuitive and efficient and makes some sense as an evolutionary change that still feels like “Plex” - even if it’s not exactly how I’d do it myself - I’ve been okay with most changes. The new layout initially on Roku felt a little different but not drastically so and mostly still felt familiar and worked fine once I got used to it (other than the few things I’ve mentioned in this thread).
The old layout was pretty basic and the new layout is more dynamic and art centric. Feels more “modern”. I have been getting used to it and was growing to appreciate it as a nice refresh; particularly since some functionality was improved as well.
The biggest adjustment has been muscle memory with the remote and for the most part that didn’t take as much change as I thought it would take for me or my family. Hitting “back” worked as expected and even if there were more clicks in navigation in some cases, there were improvements in other ways so it kinda balanced out.
Some of the recent enhancements have changed my opinion there so I am concerned about future development and my initial apprehension about Plex’s new business model investitures outweighing good user\customer centric decisions. Enshittification essentially.
Customization is probably the 3rd factor for me. Being able to flip some things on\off and update art and metadata to fit my particular preferences better. But New Experience feels like I’ll have less customization. That might be related to the Experience apps coming out before the server side controls are available - including the ones Devs promised would be there before release, but Mobile got released without them anyways - so even if that’s true, those aspects and information aren’t accessible outside of occasional dev statements in random threads so I can only judge based on current situation or some hearsay from other users.
The removing of Music from TV interface didn’t impact me personally because I already preferred PlexAmp on my phone but I can appreciate removing it being a huge impact on many people. I hope Plex either brings it back or makes a TV app - a PlexAmp for TV has been a request for a long time. I think it would actually promote Music as a feature of Plex since these days most people’s best audio equipment is tied to their TV; this would be particularly true if audio book support got sorted out. I do realize though that personal music libraries are kinda niche.
Removing Photos from TV isn’t a surprise because I think the majority of people use Google Photos or Apple Photos so if browsing photos from TV is a need they get AndroidTV or AppleTV for a more native experience. I hope a Photos for TV does come out though because I like having alternatives competing with Google and Apple.
But I say all this feeling like trying to provide input is a waste of effort anymore so… guess I can’t help false hopes outside of a few specific devs. I really don’t wanna have to switch platforms and lose all the investments I’ve put into Plex being part of my home media infrastructure but I’ll switch not because of some layout change but because I won’t trust or support a company on an enshittification route.
It’s been bugging me for a little while where the live TV guide design has actually come from… Usually someone makes a change and then it gets ripped off.
Well… I’ve just spotted it. There is a live TV tab along a top menu in Amazon Prime apps on all TV platforms. It’s pretty much the same. It’s also crap in prime as well although it does feel snappier to use.
Yes, please do. Mind you I’m a HUGE Plexamp fan. Hopefully that option’s being considered as well. Rolling that out to more platforms like Roku would definitely address this. I’ll wait to hear what y’all come up with.
This new UI is a huge step backwards. It came up on my kids ipads and both of them came to me unable to navigate to anything they wanted to see. “Where did X go?” I figured this was the fact that one of them is 5 and simply got lost. Nope. It’s just… gone? As an adult it took me 5 minutes to get deep enough into the new UX to find the show. Now I installed this preview on my Roku and it’s just as bad. My giant TV is taken up by a ton of wasted space, my libraries are just… gone? I guess they’re the small buttons in the middle, but I can only see 1 row of “stuff” with >50% of my screen taken up by poster stuff. I don’t know who the target audience is, but when a child and an adult alike cannot simply find shows they want - something even Amazon and HBO (Sorry, MAX) are able to do - you’re going way off the rails in the wrong direction.
This is something that is still being discussed and worked on. I don’t think we have landed on a decision for the release yet, but I will add this comment into the discussion (and personally I hope we end up here for favorites as well).
Not trying to start an argument or anything, but I did @ you (and a few others from Plex) on my comment whether the new logos would be available if there is no localized title for the Movie/TV Show. Currently it looks like no (which is very questionable). Sadly no one from Plex responded to the last few comments on the thread. I tagged you here:
And here I clarified why this current behaviour should change:
If you just didn’t see it, then I apologise . It’s just that like I and a few other users have tried to explain why this current behaviour for the Logos is not really great for international users, yet we stopped getting responses from Plex.
These topics get really mixed up and hard for people to track with Forums so it’d be so much nicer if Plex had a real bug\feature tracker; even a roadmap without dates. It would cut down on so much miscommunication and repeated work and user dissatisfaction to be a bit more proactive about information accessibility.
Evidently, that functionality to customize the logos, along with better management of them, is planned. The impression I got was also that the pulls\calls (whatever dev language you wanna use) are still not great for it. It’s pulling season logos for shows logos and like you noticed the language function is off too. Check out this thread: Where are the logos sourced? - there’s some info in there how to update the logos manually too.
Some centrally located information about the planned admin improvements with some specifics would probably help with some of the dissatisfaction with the Experience.
I dunno why I keep doing Plex’s job for them… these are their official support and service forums in place of tickets and bug trackers. I must be super bored letting my “help out” switch get flipped.
I see you used an imp emoji, but if you added music and photos back you do get 3 steps forward here – towards your goal of feature parity with your old app.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” seems like an appropriate idiom when discussing how far you have to go yet.
Same here. I share my self hosted photo library with my three kids and their families. We all upload around 50-100 photos a week. We use Plex to share and my grandkids and their elderly great grandparents and easily view the recent ones on the home screen. Plex makes it easy as we all use various tv platforms. If Plex follows through with removing the photo viewing from the tv clients, my family told me to find another solution. My grandkids and the great grandparents can not use mobile devices or web versions.
. It’s just that like I and a few other users have tried to explain why this current behaviour for the Logos is not really great for international users, yet we stopped getting responses from Plex.
