Roku Preview has now been updated to the new experience (Plex would love to hear from us)

Plex Experience Preview
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I was really hoping this meant the clock was going to be present in this release. Hope it’s soon.

In swapping back to Public as primary use for now after using New Experience for the last few weeks here are a few things that came up.

  1. All that extra padding on the left side really stands out when switching between Public and Preview; the entire experience feels off-center and weighted to the right side of my TV screen on Preview. On Preview I feel like I’m seeing “less”.
  2. Missing the clock - I know y’all said it’s coming back eventually but I really really miss having it and is primarily why we switched back to Public as daily use - just part of our habit from several years of having it there so very noticeable that it’s gone.
  3. The new Show tab in navigation row on TV detail pages is nice to have but the show\season tile in the episode list is jarring\weird for multiple reasons detailed at that link.
    The fact I can’t go to a Show or Season level on a single season show in Preview also feels odd (it’s not in overflow menu either). I can see why there wouldn’t be much need for that in cases of single season show but it’s less uniform now. Since “Show” is now in the navigation row with Season I think it’d be useful to go ahead and make that more uniform and display the show\season navigation row even for single season shows.
  4. Those awkward navigation choices just feel unpolished but don’t come up a lot in daily use; in other areas it’s better - See #5
  5. The new back button functionality on Home on Preview is a good update I think - when scrolling across a hub row hitting “back” jumps me to the first item in that row, hitting “back” again takes me to continue watching row, hitting it again takes me to navigation menu. In Public “back” takes me directly to navigation row, which I got used to and some may prefer, but I have come to prefer the Preview navigation myself as I am primarily moving through Home rows for content selection and playback, not jumping to other areas of Plex.
  6. I’d still like the Libraries row removed from Home as it definitely feels redundant and weird to click past since it’s a different size\height on Roku Home compared to other rows and with the limited Row visibility already. At the very least I’d really like to be able to turn it off like I can with any\all other rows on Home.
  7. About the row visibility - having only one row at a time visible with only the header of the next row barely showing above the TV edge makes it feel like there no “more” to scroll down. Particularly with the next row after continue watching being the library navigation row. The public version includes a bit of the tops of the posters for the next row which makes it possible to identify a bit of what’s in that row and feels like Home extends past the bottom of my TV screen. The way it is in Preview feels like it stops at the edge and there isn’t more to Home but a Continue Watching row. That Library row makes that even more so in a way since it’s a short row for navigating to a new area rather than content - which is already at the top of my screen in a dedicated nav bar - so you’ve pushed my content quick access via recently added and recently released or custom rows and instead bracketed Continue Watching on my Home Screen both top and bottom with “navigate somewhere else”. Preview doesn’t feel like it naturally promotes scrolling down the rest of Home Screen to access my content like Public does. If that makes sense?
  8. I still like the “dimmed art” option in Public for detail pages and that it stays static and fills the screen while scrolling those details but I don’t mind the Preview way of scaling art into place either. It’s a preference that may be nice to have as options to customize maybe. The snap-in of the art on Public doesn’t feel as smooth as the scaling animation on Preview so that’s nice that it works decently even on my clunky Roku TV but it could probably still use some optimizing and some work with centering the art better maybe (and sometimes it still flashes a previous background).
  9. It takes a bit longer to play media. It’s only by a bit but Public gets into playback faster than Preview. I assume that’ll improve over time though. Preview interface itself, on the other hand, is snappier than Public.

Overall, New Experience Preview has been fine. Less of a problem than I initially thought it’d be and if the majority of items mentioned as feedback are acknowledged over the course of Preview before being sent to Public - not like how the mobile apps where handled - then I think Experience will generally be an improvement over the current Public version (though that show\season tile “new feature” decision has renewed my apprehension and I already lost confidence in community feedback having any real weight or appreciation). I only use Plex on Roku for one local Movie library and two local TV libraries so my use case is a focus on navigating and playing back my content so my priorities might not be the same as folks who use LiveTV or Plex Movie\TV services and such.

Not really “Preview” related but it might be useful to mention the Roku remote button functionality in intro screens after install or major updates maybe? Not all apps follow or use the same scheme for buttons - the YouTube app doesn’t play your selection if you hit “play” you gotta hit “OK” but in Plex hitting OK or Play do different things and folks might not realize you can start playback from home rows by hitting “Play” instead of having to hit OK twice - I forget sometimes myself if I’d been using YouTube a lot. AppleTV on Roku does some funny things too so depending on the services folks have it can set different muscle memory that might make Plex feel more clunky than it needs to be. Maybe something in settings area can have some controls info like they do for video games? Not everyone is going to come dig through support articles about button functions (which aren’t really in the support articles anyways) and not all of them are intuitive between Roku channels\apps.

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There are just so many more clicks now to get to a menu and then to navigate to a library. I’m finding myself clicking the Back button so much that I usually end up on the exit/switch user screen. Plus, the Back button isn’t even intuitive, the arrow buttons are, but they are worse.

It used to be one Back button and a click on the specific library.

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I don’t think you’re wrong at all. I think this Experience release will see a big preference difference between legacy Plex admins and more recent Plex customers.

Particularly for folks with muscle memory focused on the D-Pad vs including Back\Play buttons; I had to switch my muscle memory around between Preview and Public. When I initially jumped into Preview it felt like too many clicks until I got used to using Back more. When I returned to Public I kept jumping to Navigation when I meant to just go back to Continue Watching after browsing other Home rows. It does take getting used to the differences which can be awkward particularly after having used that muscle memory the same way for years. My eyes still look for the clock and get thrown when I see a gear - so much so that was one major reason I switched back to Public.

Even before Experience got released I’d forget to take my finger off the d-pad and end up hitting “OK” twice to play a title from Home instead of just hitting “Play” (once to go to the detail page and again to play). It just feels natural to keep my thumb on the d-pad vs moving my thumb to a different button even if the d-pad ends up being more button presses; feels more efficient in a way. I mentioned this in an earlier post that I think it comes from game controller habits because my old TV remote habits definitely had my thumb moving all around the remote by touch. :slight_smile:

Apple has a similar thing with simplified remote but I think it feels more natural to move my thumb around because its layout is a bit more compact and the touch functions force you to think of more control variables. Plus the buttons tend to function more uniformly between apps and there’s no service specific buttons - I would hit those by accident when those were first introduced on Roku remote - and they moved some other buttons around on newer remotes so maybe that promoted leaving my thumb on d-pad.

Anyways, the reason I mention the older vs newer Plex users is that earlier Plex users are admins who often built out multiple libraries and are used to navigating via library pages because “home” wasn’t that functional in the past. Organizing and browsing titles via multiple libraries was a typical setup and recommended by Plex reps to manage aspects of HD vs SD, genres, kids vs adult, sharing controls, etc. Plex introduced functionality over the years - consolidated continue watching row, automatic version playback, Editions support, labels, filters, Smart Collections and Home row customizations - and pushed people to stop using multiple libraries and focus on Home Screen and those new features. A “legacy” setup in a way now. It wasn’t a very good push but Plex kinda assumes all users heard it and would follow this new best practice even though it was only really mentioned randomly from forum reps; likely based on daily internal discussion not actual user education and direction (common problem - assuming they know about it themselves everyone else must know it too). I did consolidate my libraries eventually and did spend time customizing my Home Screen so I rarely browse libraries directly anymore in which case the Preview navigation works well for me - better than Public once I got used to it. It wouldn’t work as well for folks with lots of libraries who prefer to browse by Library - that definitely is more clicks now even with the weird library row.

So I think with this Experience some of the clash will come from that Plex expectation of users following their new ‘best practice’ and many newer customers using their other services conflicting with folks still using Plex primarily for local media and in the way it used to be recommended (which takes a lot of effort to change). It’s a common problem with tech services and companies who lose - or purposefully change - focus on how customer\user base use the product and I think many would agree Plex definitely has done that over the last few years particularly around local media with the change from Plex Admins to Plex Customers.

One reason I haven’t switched to Emby or Jellyfin is that those products are missing a lot of these features I’ve gotten used to for setting up my Home - particularly custom smart collections and home rows as well as automatic version playback (and Plex’s more flexible file name matching). BUT for folks used to “legacy” Plex setup Emby\Jellfyin would likely be a great match - particularly for folks who will be missing Music and Photos from their TV setup or are still on a Plex pay plan - and Emby is adding their version of smart collections and home row customizing in an upcoming release.

So I think some of the Experience stuff will fall into that expectation of Plex use - customers who like Plex Discovery and Movies\TV will get more outta it for sure - and that will create friction for adoption and will likely push even more Plex users to those other products. And Plex likely okay with that since us “plex admins” are local media centric and that’s not Plex’s primary focus anymore.

So, since pointing out problems without providing solutions is just bitching and not helping, for those admins who are used to multiple library management I would suggest consolidating those libraries down which makes Smart Collections way more useful and then using Smart Collections to make useful Home Rows to reduce the need to navigate to Libraries directly. It’s not hard to do but can take some time and you need space and fiddling to do it easily without losing watch or change history. I’ve mentioned my own setup in other posts around here in more detail but maybe useful to mention it here too.

I have turned off the Plex built in “Recently Released Movies” row from Home (I leave it enabled on Library Recommend) and created a Smart Collection to replace it. My Smart Collection works exactly the same - titles ordered by release date - except it only includes unwatched titles. That way as I watch my recently released movies that row doesn’t keep movies I’ve already seen displayed. Works a peach. I’d tried to do the same for TV shows but that built in row works kinda special as it mixes episodes and seasons and a smart collection can’t really replicate it well and it just doesn’t quite work the same; plus with TV shows sometimes it helps seeing those previously watched episodes listed.

The other rows I’ve built are around presenting randomly displayed titles to make it easier to pick something to watch. I have one that shows 30 randomly selected action movies from 80s/90s/00s as my “nostalgia action” row and another that does similar random presentation but with titles I haven’t watched at all or haven’t watched in over 4 years - kinduva “deep cuts” for my library. I have some “don’t include” rules on those (like no anime titles (that’s a different collection but not its own row)). The rows dynamically change too - good and bad that it does that sometimes depending on timing.

Doing that has made it much easier to do a “what do I wanna watch tonight” pick without having decision fatigue browsing 1000 titles in my library or jumping between different libraries. Kinda picked it up from my very old school video store days of creating employee favorites or themed shelves on the New Release wall to prompt folks to rent other titles. :slight_smile:

Anyways - sorry for some of the tangent but I think it relates. I don’t really think it’ll impact Plex themselves at all but maybe it’ll help those of us legacy admins that are still using Plex, for now, manage some of the frustration. I know my opinions on UI\UX things aren’t gonna make any difference when all they really want from us are bug reports as their QA dept. But at least I’ll have said my piece and tried, which is really just self-satisfaction I guess. :slight_smile:

And I’m trying to just finish out my investment in Plex… had a blip of hope but like lots of relationships “it’s different this time” lasted only a week or two. :slight_smile:

Sorry for all the text - this type of stuff falls in my wheelhouse a bit so it’s interesting to dig into in many ways but as a user\customer\admin it can be very frustrating to experience.

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We could use a Home, or Top Menu button. Not many choices on a Roku (Home brings us to Roku Home).

Maybe the Select Up button?
(Select Left used to bring up the Side Menu, so Select Up would make sense)

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Plex released an update to the Plex preview channel - 8.2.2

FIXES:

  • Don’t show the label for the search navigation item.
  • Fix a crash when deleting an item and close the screen as needed.
  • Fix center scrolling of item rows.
  • Fix possible crash on movie details screen.
  • Fix possible crash when closing screens.
  • Fix issue where the favorite option was missing from the All Libraries view.
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New Bug:

The newest Roku preview does not see the previously assigned user star ratings from the original app. Instead, in the Roku preview you see the “Rate and Review” button. If you click the button, no star rating is shown (empty stars). If you set a star rating in the preview app, then it will show that star rating.

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Question on navigation.

After clicking Libraries from Navigation menu I’m shown this screen:

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My cursor is still on “Libraries” (green arrow) but everything in the display is as if I’ve already selected “TV Shows” (yellow arrow) since it’s my first Library listing. Also, TV Shows is highlighted as active, but it’s not really, because my cursor is still up on Libraries. I still have to click down on the remote to get to TV Shows and then I can click into left hand navigation stuff or down into the filters anything with the TV Show library being displayed.

Would it make sense for the cursor to actually jump to “TV Shows” after clicking on the Libraries option? Essentially, after clicking Libraries from any other screens, instead of the cursor being at the green arrow, should it be at the yellow arrow? It felt weird to me that after clicking “Libraries” and seeing my TV Shows highlighted and TV Show library being displayed I still had to click down to it.

Now if I clicked Libraries and wanted to move onto another section of navigation - like back to Home or LiveTV then that’d make sense if it acted like Public where it automatically switched as you navigated through options in left hand navigation but Preview doesn’t actually switch displays to what’s highlighted, it switches to what’s clicked, so once “Libraries” is clicked maybe the first actual library should be where the cursor lands?

I’m using Preview on a secondary TV and noticed that what happened and what I expected didn’t match so thought I’d share… I’m really trying not to anymore though but… sheesh it’s hard not to try even with such low expectations.

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Using Plex Preview on Roku and really missing some features.

  1. Current time no longer displayed.
  2. Music libraries missing.
  3. Photo libraries missing.
  4. No control over the order of libraries. Currently only Movies and TV Shows are shown, but no option to control the order.
  5. Recent (live) channels missing from home

Perhaps it is incomplete, but in its current state it seems like a needless shuffle of all the features into new locations that are less convenient to access.

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Select “See All Libraries”, UnFavorite All, Then in the order you want,:

  1. Favorite, Back Button
  2. Favorite, Back Button
  3. etc…

A kludge for sure, but worked for me.
The right way would be for Plex to have a setting for re-order.

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Thanks, Tony_T. That works. However, All Libraries only shows TV Shows and Movies. Music and Photos libraries are missing. Is there a trick for that?

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Plex removed Music and TV from Plex App’s and not coming back (there’s a Plex Photos App and a PlexAmp App for iOS (and Android, I guess), but nothing for Roku (yet? Not sure if Plex will be doing this for Roku)

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8.2.2->8.3 for button style update. No responses from reps for several weeks now on any Roku Preview topic and button style update gets a full point change. Very underwhelming. Glad I’m not actively testing anymore. Yes, making snarky comments anyways. :slight_smile:

Called this out early on and was told it’s coming back in a future build (the thread is pretty long now so totally reasonable not to have read all 250 posts :wink:). Missing that is a primary reason I’m not using Preview as daily driver anymore (otherwise, despite some weird quirks and choices, it’s mostly fine as long as you don’t need Photos\Music).

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Plex released an update to the - 8.3.0

NEW:

  • Update play button style for TV Show screens.

Looks like Plex is at the finish line and the major issues noted in this thread were not major issues at all :roll_eyes:

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I have two trailers set to play before movie files. In the new release, they also play when resuming a fully stopped, in progress movie.

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They added the clock back to the home screen on Apple TV today.., I’m looking forward to this coming back to Roku.

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Yeah, they must have been working night and day to add back the clock to ATV., I hear that its a lot of code :roll_eyes:

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Plex released an update to the Plex preview channel - 8.3.4

NEW:

  • Live TV: Moved favoriting to options menu and return focus to playing channel on back in EPG.
  • Live TV: Only show sources when more than one is available.
  • Live TV: Removed jump bar for OTA and added section headers to all sources.
  • Show “More Ways To Watch” in search context options.
  • Update screen back behavior.

FIXES:

  • Fix art flashing when going from Continue Watching to episode details.
  • Fix details screen “More” options not displaying for shows and seasons.
  • Fix display of Discover services hub empty state and setting item.
  • Fix episodes row disappearing after details screen refresh.
  • Live TV: Start playback direct from Where to Watch, What’s on Now and search.
  • Show season artwork for episodes in Continue Watching.
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@McWanke, I’m really curious about this: Why did Plex decide in Plex Live TV that the season number was no longer needed?
Was it to save a few bits on the screen, or is there a more nefarious reason? :wink:

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What does “Update screen back behavior.” mean?

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In case anybody is still reading these…

This new “be the first of your friends to watchlist list!” is not cool.

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A) It pushes the season information off the screen.
B) I have all social and discover features turned off so what “friends” function is happening here? I don’t wanna have this more prominent than my season display. I don’t want it at all really, that’s why I have the social and discovery features off.

And the lame “Show\Season” card still exists. Guess the rep saying they’re gonna look into that new feature (that isn’t in any other client Experience) got lost with the rest of the reps “working with the community” a month ago. Just put the full Show\Season navigation at the top for all shows with or without a single season and it’s solved without the weird card.

Edit:
That line is now on TV detail too (yellow box) and pushes cast off the screen (yellow arrow). Why you pushing this stuff on my local media screens? Also why is “rate and review” so prominently highlighted? Why is it even there at all if I have discover and friend features off? Just leave it as stars.

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There’s no indicators for more info on these screens to scroll down to access. On Public build this same area has the top of cast showing to indicate “go down to see more”. Same with Home you’ve all cut off the rows so there’s no more below this indicator for flow.

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