For some odd reason my wife loves the UI of our Samsung smart TV which is somewhat similar to the CPU client. However she hates the UI of the Amazon Firestick I bought her for our LG smart TV in another room. Our LG smart TV has WebOS 3.0 which does not have any plex support and it’s web app has more lag than a windows 3.1 computer trying to play any AAA video game title at 60fps… Does anyone have any screen shots they can provide to compare the Roku or any other 3rd party streaming device that has actual plex support for me to compare or can attst to?
Take a look at OpenPHT to preview it on your PC.
You can get the very same look if you buy a Raspberry Pi3 and put Rasplex onto it.
It’ll also blow the old LG Plex client out of the water. (Although it’ll scroll a bit less fluid than the PC app)
Those will be the only clients with a similar look. All other Plex clients will eventually look similar to the Firestick.
Just to be certain I am understanding Otto, both the Chromestick (or whatever it is called), nvidia shield (still have my tablet, mostly for boom beach ha ha ha), apple TV, along with the different flavors of Roku WILL LOOK or DO LOOK the same as the firestick does currently? Did a two minute research on raspberry pi3, rather pricey for something I essentially have to build myself. Desktop computers, video game emulation, are all no stranger for me to build setup but strangely enough I do not have the current patience to fiddle around with another computer. Is there not a burned out IT guys solution I can simply purchase, plug, and play that resembles the PC UI of plex ha ha ha?
The Plexweb UI of Plex is not an unpleasant experience as you have noted. It gives you what you need. It is not configurable - like all Plex UIs - except RARflix for Roku (no longer in development, but still working… for now).
Unfortunately Plex has developed a nearly unusable app UI and is hell bent on delivering it to every device they can. People keep telling them it is really, really, really bad, but Plex doesn’t seem to care that (arguably) a third of their users hate the app so much that if there were another Media Server Solution that worked half as well as Plex with a UI that was half as painful as the UI Plex developed they’d be using it.
Fortunately for Plex there is no other Media Server Solution that works half as well as Plex so the (arguable) third hate (and suffer) in silence (except those of us who never thought much of silence).
The UI of RARflix for Roku (RARflix only works on Roku - sadly) is the closest you’ll get to the UI of Plexweb. It is also noteworthy that Roku’s ‘New’ Plex app is light years ahead of all other Plex apps and offers the most stable and usable UIs - apart from it’s unconformable layout and awful design (that Plex wishes we’d just get used to and stop complaining about). RARflix for Roku and The New Plex app for Roku can run side by side without issue. I use RARflix 90% of the time, but do use The New Plex app for Roku only for the few things RARflix doesn’t do, or doesn’t do well.
So… if it were me I’d get a nice, cheap Roku 3 - time tested and user approved. If the Roku 4 Disaster is any indication it would be wise to wait on those New Rokus until the ‘early adopters’ (beta testers) find out everything there is to know about them - good and bad. Give the ‘beta testers’ a year… then we’ll know more. For now stick with a Roku 3 and install RARflix on it - link in my signature.
@SSG_K said:
Just to be certain I am understanding Otto, both the Chromestick (or whatever it is called), nvidia shield (still have my tablet, mostly for boom beach ha ha ha), apple TV, along with the different flavors of Roku WILL LOOK or DO LOOK the same as the firestick does currently?
Yes, although this design is up for a revamp in the coming months. So it will change, but then (almost) uniformly across all devices.
The nVidia Shield uses the Android TV design, which I don’t know. There ought to be screenshots here, along with screenshots of all other platforms: https://press.plex.tv/product-shots/android-tv/
Did a two minute research on raspberry pi3, rather pricey for something I essentially have to build myself.
There is not much “building” involved. All you need to do is to take the ready-made board and snap or screw it into the casing (depends on the chosen case, there are several different available). Done. The rest is writing the SD card with a prefabbed image, plug in the cables and off you go.
Provided your TV supports HDMI-CEC, you won’t even need a separate remote.
The same principle is applied to the ODroid C2, btw, but this one also supports “bitstreaming” of all the higher-end surround sound formats, HEVC video decoding and 4K.
