Server Version#: 1.14.1.5488-cc260c476
Player Version#: Plex for Playstation 4 3.84.1
Player Version#: Plex 3.1.0
…What… happened to the Playstation 4’s User Interface? The last time I used the PS4 interface it looked a lot like the PS3’s interface. The home screen presented all of my shows exactly as I had ordered them.
@elan replied in a thread I started a couple weeks ago when I finally got my media server back up and tried a Kindle tablet out first. I wound up using a PS3 instead of an Android device on the trip I went on so I didn’t encounter the terrible UI on the PS4 until I got back.
Supposedly there is supposed to be an update coming in that addresses the UI issues… but I’m strongly reminded of both Microsoft and Gnome whom I both referenced. Both made radical changes to the underlying structures of their User Interfaces with no intention of ever exposing the original behavior.
Years later Gnome only exists because multiple developers are employed at Red Hat and IBM and those developers use that market power to keep a dead-project-going. We just recently witnessed that Gnome-Clique at Red Hat / IBM force KDE off of the Red Hat distro. So now we’ve gone from double-down to triple-down on bad design decisions from a group of developers that don’t understand Human-Interface-Design.
Years later Microsoft’s Win10 launcher is still a weird mash-up of the Metro Tiles and a standard launcher. Microsoft’s Win10 UI overall keeps getting closer and closer to KDE’s functionality; a massive backtrack from the investment in the Metro Interface. Granted Microsoft’s own StartMenu and TabletLauncher are pale shadows of KDE’s Kickoff, Lancelot, and Homerun launchers, but Microsoft did at least appear to learn the lesson that up and replacing UI’s whole-sale is bad business decision.
In some ways I’m not entirely sure I fault Elan or the Plex Staff. I’m sure the “New” 10ft / Touch UI was predicated on the idea that Plex needed to find new markets with new customers and clients.
In other ways I entirely fault Elan and the Plex staff for not having learned the lessons of changing UI’s from KDE, Microsoft, and Gnome. The current layout as exposed in the Web Client (Version 3.83.1) is a workable compromise. My own Libraries take front and center on the Left Column.
A UI update should have focused on Setting the User’s Libraries as the base default. Something like… this:
You might be using Plex in an unusual way, as AgentDrTran has noticed. Assuming you want custom, curated collections, that doesn’t look like the way to do it in Plex; there’s actually a proper Collection tagging option that will give you multiple sorting options in most Plex UIs. I’m not sure if it works with TV shows but I know it does with movies; it doesn’t look like you’re trying to group multiple TV shows anyway.
It looks like you added each library as “Other Videos” or “Personal Videos” without any scraping, which is why there’s no episode title for Hogan’s Heroes in the screenshot. S1 E3 should probably be showing up as “Kommandant of the Year”.
If it helps any I can’t stand Gnome either, I have no idea how it’s persisted over the decade(s) and am disappointed to hear Red Hat and IBM are still pushing it.
… “using” Plex in an unusual way does not excuse, explain, justify, or in any way shape or form have anything to do with the train wreck User Interface experience that Plex implemented in current applications.
While “Using” Plex in an “unusual” way might have something to do with the background media sorting; where the PS4 and Android apps butchered episode and season sorting that works perfectly fine in the PS3 app… that only indicates that the Plex developers changed something they didn’t need to, or should have had to, change.
It also reeks of an excuse. It sounds like: “Oh, you didn’t set it up correctly; so terrible design decisions we made and implemented are perfectly acceptable on our part”
Because the Library was already pre-existing and pre-curated.
Meaning I didn’t just dump all of my content into a single GIANT folder and then used #hashtags to sort them in a separate database.
Each content file is sorted into it’s own hierarchical folder on the basis of: “Series Name” :: “Series Season” :: (episode file number)
This is known as Setting Your Content Up Correctly To Begin With.
There’s a post from me a few years back when I first tried Plex and the Plex server agent butchered the pre-existing pre-curated folder layout and assigned it’s own meta-data… which was a bloody mess to clean up. Plex, for the most part, shipped an update that allowed users to avoid Plex’s media agent and instead accept pre-existing pre-curated folder layouts.
It’s never been… smooth… mind you. Series with numbers in their names tend to screw things up (DS9, SG1… looking at you)
Which again, we come back to a point I either made in this thread or the other thread I started on the Android Specific client. DLNA enabled clients like the PS3 and PS4 system media-players work best with pre-sorted libraries. The PS3, in particular, had one of the best drill-down file integrations in a 10ft UI… but I think Sony might be ticked off if somebody else duplicated that experience 1:1 for a 10ft or Mobile interface.
This is exactly how you’re supposed to organize your files, just put them in the same top folder or library. I have DS9 on my Plex server and using the recommended naming configuration of Season 1/Title - S01E01 it has no problem picking up the files.
I don’t work for Plex. I was trying to help you with your Plex setup so you don’t have to wait on them to change the UI to something that works better for you. I have my own beefs with the Plex UI.*
When I mentioned collection tagging, that’s in the Plex server software, NOT the folders. All of my Marvel movies are in different folders on my server’s file system, but they are listed under a “Marvel” icon in my Movies section. I can easily switch it to list them separately, or even both ways.
Yes, that’s how you’re supposed to set it up. I’m not surprised you had issues with scraping a few years back, it’s a common problem with pretty much everything that does metadata scraping.
Do you want help adjusting your Plex setup to work better (not perfect, just better), or would you rather wait on Plex to change their UI again and hope it works the way you want?
*TV autoplay doesn’t work well if I have to set the subtitle track every episode. I should be able to change language settings once per series.
