I just moved from Plex Media Player and can confirm that while PMP properly respected my desktop’s DPI scaling settings, the new “Plex for Windows” does not.
It seems to me that this is a lesson that Plex keeps having to re-learn…the initial Plex Media Player release also didn’t have proper HiDPI support and they had to add it in later on in development. Now we’re back to square one, as though nothing of value was learned from PMP’s development.
All around, this new version is a frustrating step backwards. It’s unclear what, if any, advantage it offers to users who switch to it. Compared to Plex Media Player it removes essential features (namely TV mode) and has reduced compatibility. It’s almost universally worse.
If this was free, open-source software I honestly wouldn’t mind this rollercoaster of compatibility, but I’m a lifetime Plex Pass holder and I invested in this project because I wanted to see it continually improve. This release is not an example of that happening.
The whole config file seems to have changed. https://support.plex.tv/articles/207338798-advanced-configuration/ is outdated.
How do I disable exclusive fullscreen mode? Everytime I switch to my second screen and have a video running on fullscreen the video flickers and also taking screenshots is really hard now.
From an end user perspective this is terrible. I have a Dell 13-inch laptop, with all Windows apps scaling to 300% just fine. Can I do the workaround? Yes. Should I have to? No.
Also, does the app update when there is a new release? Or do I have to keep downloading and reinstalling?
I assume it’ll ask to update with a pop-up like PMP does. But I’ve been working to convince the Plex devs that they should publish it in the Microsoft (and Mac) Store where it will take care of updates automatically.
Fairly straight forward. Looks like whoever coded this tried to encapsulate the web interface but didn’t engage any of the native Windows visualization scaling.
Second did anyone else notice that their machine rebooted during the install. Looks like the installer does not obey the normal MSI standard of REBOOT=REALLYSUPRESS
Came to express my displeasure in finding the new Windows app regressing in handling DPI scale properly. I understand it is a pain (I’ve implemented DPI scale handling in a Window apps that does 100% of our own drawing), but it is something that just has to be done with laptops these days.
Setting an environment variable to a hard-coded value and having to change that any time I plug in an external display is not a great experience, to put it mildly.
Looking forward to future releases that include Per-Monitor V2 scaling!
That’s ridiculous. I guess your old app was not sending back telemetry about usage patterns, if it did… I’m sure it would have showed you that many user Plex on a computer connected to a large screen TV. Sorry, but a 1.0 x scale on a 4K tv… pretty strange that that use case was not tested at all. You have a setting for scaling, but you are saying that setting was never even tested in a real world setting?
I’m not a programmer, but it’s obvious something is broken. I have a desktop machine with a 4k monitor. My previous PLEX app worked perfectly. This new version is too small to be useful. Additionally, moving the poster size slider has no effect. The posters never change size. As a lifetime user for the last 7+ years, this is very disappointing.
UPDATE: I just went to download the Plex app from the Microsoft store and it is not there anymore. WTF?!? Disappointed > Pissed.
The application is 99.99% mouse controllable. Except when you need to enter full screen mode. The previous version had a button that did this (very useful). Please put it back or allow the file launcher to take a command line switch like “–fullscreen” or perhaps a checkbox for the player settings to make this the default. I do not want to press F11.
I agree 100%. As a fellow Lifetime Plex Pass holder I can say that the email I received promoting this new re-release of Plex was misleading as it didn’t at all imply that I would be uninstalling my perfectly stable release of Plex Media Player (Wish I hadn’t) for what feels like an Alpha release that had little to no real world testing performed yet. Now myself and many others are unwilling participants in the break/fix scenario…
I think a lot of the issues pointed out with this ‘new’ release along with the fact that the UWP version is being shutdown is very evident that there is very little investment in the Windows platform from Plex, which is disappointing.
Why is this version using system scaling and not dynamic especially in a world that is now dominated by high DPI laptops not desktops? Why move away from UWP and to legacy Win32? How can you miss simple things like supressing a restart in an installer?
When you think Windows it’s not all people sitting at a desk, it also includes a lot of folks using laptops/tablets that they take travelling with synced content, again another reason to stick to UWP & touch friendly.
Microsoft is converging UWP and Win32, so development efforts for Plex will also converge too, eventually meaning for Plex just servicing one platform, so why not stick with the modern framework of UWP instead?
Adding my voice to the fact that this was not just a swing and a miss but a total strike out… I know the UWP version was getting minimal love but I have already uninstalled the new “premium” player in favor of the UWP version as it works out of the box.
And I will definitely not be recommending this to friends as family - having to use the registry to make an app work on first install is completely unacceptable.
Ditto with the reboot during install as well. And it was such a wack reboot I was convinced the install may have failed. “Plex is preventing your computer from rebooting” even though it was Plex that had apparently initialized the reboot without warning. So I was like, do I click cancel or wait for app? I waited forever and had to click cancel and reboot myself. Thankfully the install was successful but oh wait, the app itself is broken on your 4K monitor & Win10 PC and you can’t go back to Windows Store and re-install the stable version…
With All due respect Mr. Seeley. As a Helpdesk Manager myself, I have to ask why did you solve this thread? I don’t understand why a forum would have “solve” be equal to “set as urgent and at the top of the list.” Where I come from people close a ticket before it’s actually resolved to prevent themselves from breaching an SLA or something which is shady and unacceptable in my line of work.
I don’t feel confident this issue is getting the time/attention it deserves with the thread being labelled “Solved.” Obviously I don’t know how Plex runs it’s operation, but you have to know your community is hoping with the money you get from Plex Pass subscribers that customer service will improve as time goes on. For all I know Mr. Seeley is the only “employee” of Plex. But if that isn’t the case, it would sure make me feel better to see at least one more employee jump in on this issue and also to set it as unresolved. Just my two cents anyways. Thanks for understanding.
Hi @Donovon, good question. The reason it was marked “solved” was to pop the response to the top. It’s easy for it to be lost entirely.
I’m marking this “solved” if only to bubble this post to the top of the thread. I’ll comment again here and in our release notes when the issues is fully addressed.
This issue is addressed correctly now. My decision to default to 100% scale was not the right call. We now instead default to the system scale. I think I heard everyone’s collective “duh” emanate through the Internet. My decision was influenced by testing done on FHD displays, UHD displays were not accounted for. I’m sorry about this folks.
You can delete the PLEX_SCALE_FACTOR environment variable now. Scales of 100%, 200%, 300% will work perfectly. Intermediate scales (ex 125%, 250%, etc) will round to the nearest 100. The rounding is unfortunate but not nearly as unfortunate as minuscule text.
And what about fullscreen? We now have to press F11 every time we want to go fullscreen. Plex Media Player did remember to open in fullscreen, but not this new player.
Still having a problem with touch-control on my HP Elite X2 G3 with a HiDPI touch display. It is almost impossible to use the “Play” button without a mouse or a trackpad. The Plex window is just “flashing” and nothing happens…
