Try out our new Vizio SmartCast preview

Plex Players Smart TVs
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We are excited to present the new Vizio SmartCast app preview!

This complete rewrite of the app begins to bring it up to par with the new and improved interface found in our other apps. We’re using WebGL and high performance rendering techniques to provide a faster and smoother experience, and we’ll be bringing this to the rest of our supported TV platforms in the future.

With some exceptions, this preview release should include the same features as the current app, but we want to get it in front of folks early to help catch issues (particularly since it’s such a big rewrite). It also includes some features that aren’t in the current app (like our new UI with reorderable sources, Movies & TV on Plex, Podcasts, etc.). We’ll continue working on the preview and will be updating it periodically with fixes and features (such as live TV). This new UI/rewrite will eventually replace the current official Vizio app.

We’re looking for feedback and reports about functional issues with the preview app. Does anything not play as expected? Does a particular action cause a crash? Does clicking a button not perform the action? Is something not displayed on the screen correctly? While we’re certainly interested in feedback about UI/UX of our apps in general, this new preview app is intended to follow the same basic UI design of our other current (TV layout) apps.

How to access it:

Choose ‘Enable Early Access’ in the user options menu of the current app. If you want to return to the old app, select ‘Leave Early Access’ from the user options menu in the preview version of the app. This is only available on SmartCast TVs.

How to report issues:

You can use forum tag vizio-preview when posting questions or issues about our preview. Please include the TV model model name (on the Vizio remote, click Menu, choose System, then System Information and it should be listed as Model Name), and the chipset if possible (located in the app settings in the About section).

7 Likes
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I’m currently testing this preview build. I see there’s a known issue regarding subtitles… I can’t seem to find a global setting to change “Burn Subtitles” to Automatic, is this intentional?

I have transcoding turned off on my server so with the Plex Client’s current setting of “Always” none of my subtitles will work unless I change the subtitle option individually for each video before playing.

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Yeah, that’s currently hidden until we get the issue fixed, since it’s a pretty terrible experience when it happens. It might make sense to just set burn as the default for now rather than hide the setting if we don’t have a fix right away. I’ll check into it.

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I noticed on the preview that I no longer have the option to delete a show or movie. Is this a feature that will be implemented in the public release, or is this something that is being removed?

Thank You,

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That’s something that just hasn’t been added yet.

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I tried the early release and was pleased at the layout; it’s the same I have used on other players and it’s fantastic! However, I noticed that when I navigate to a TV show and click “Play,” it starts from the very first file rather than picking up where I left off. If I just hit continue from the home screen, that works, but since only the most recent shows exist there, it’s not super helpful.

The most important feature Plex provides me is remembering where I left off; if not for this feature, I would just go back to Kodi. I hope this can get fixed before this update goes mainstream!

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That’s a bug. Filing an issue for it. Thanks for the report!

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Preview update: Version 5.0.1

  • Fix photos displaying in lower right corner
  • Long subtitle lines now wrap
  • Add description/warning to audio codec settings
  • Fix burned subtitles not respecting the font size setting
  • Don’t force transcode based on quality setting height
  • Allow direct play when video bitrate is unknown
  • Add Burn Subtitles setting and default to Automatic
    • If a transcode is needed, subtitles will always burn
    • Direct play of subtitles is now supported for some formats for direct play
  • Long usernames on sidebar and choose user screen now scroll when focused
  • Fix codec detection failure forcing a transcode
2 Likes
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For some reason when I create a TV Shows playlist, PMS play’s 2 titles in a row and then starts playing that seasons next episode instead of the next title in the playlist? Is there a setting that I’ve missed?

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Thanks, I’ll check it out and get back to you.

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Preview update: Version 5.0.2

  • Live TV! (No grid or scheduling yet)
  • Video: Remote channel +/- button can now be used to skip +10 mins/-10 mins
  • Audio: Remote channel +/- button can now be used to skip to next/previous track
  • Fixed stopping playback also closing the preplay
  • Fixed seek position display not updating after a seek
  • Fixed playing a show starting on the first episode instead of the on deck episode
  • Fixed playback failure caused when changing the quality settings
  • Fixed item titles being cropped insted of ellipsed after refresh
  • Fixed error message immediately auto closing
  • Allow direct play when various media properties are unknown
2 Likes
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This should be fixed in 5.0.2.

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@cjhfxgd: The burn subtitles setting is back, defaulting to Automatic now.

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New interface looks great. Only issue I had was not being able to disable the subtitles manually like I could in the previous version (Automatic still showed them - old version can remove them).

Overall great job, and thanks for your hard work!

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Thanks!

To disable a subtitles, you would change Subtitle to None in the Streams section of the player settings. (also if you have the CC button on your remote, you can toggle subtitles with that during playback or on the preplay screen.)

The only setting I can think of with Automatic is the Burn Subtitles option, which determines if the app handles the subtitles or if they are burned into the video with a transcode by the server, but doesn’t affect whether they are displayed.

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Preview update: Version 5.0.3

  • Fix for multi-audio media not playing the selected stream
  • Fix some playback failure issues
  • Fix live TV restarting at the wrong position after settings change
  • Improved crash logging for better troubleshooting
1 Like
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Hey folks - really enjoying the new update. However, experiencing an issue with subtitles. I’ve got a 4K file direct playing just fine, but when subtitles are enabled they seemingly disappear after 2-3 minutes. Not only that, but once they disappear, despite playback continuing the app seems to semi-crash as I can no longer access the playback menu (i.e the scroll bar) or even back out of the file into my library. Forced to soft power cycle the TV.

Have tried different subtitle files, all resulting in the same issue after a few minutes. Burning in subs is not an option for my as my server is not powerful enough to transcode 4K.

Any ideas?

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Thanks for the report. I think this may be related to something we’ve been seeing in crash logs. What chipset does your TV have. It’s listed in User Options->Settings->About. In any case we’re looking into it.

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Chipset is SX7B(2). It’s a Vizio P65-F1. Running 5.0.3.

Cheers