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Plex Releases Beta Version of Redesigned Apple TV App

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Plex today announced the launch of an updated Apple TV app that's available right now in a beta capacity.

The updated user interface has been designed for the larger screen of a TV with a side bar rather than a top menu bar, which is meant to be a better use of screen space.

plexredesign1-800x450.jpg

The side bar is customizable so you can pin your favorite media sources, put them in the order that you want, and send the rest of the content to the "More" menu that's out of the way.

plexredesign2-800x450.jpg

Plex is aiming to make it easier to get to where you want to go, with more discoverable actions and sources and more intuitive navigation. Customizable navigation is also a key part of the new Plex experience for Apple TV. More features are listed below:
- Customizable & always accessible sidebar navigation.
- Ability to pin your favorite libraries from all your servers to the sidebar.
- Reorder your libraries in the sidebar.
- Quick access to all the rest of your media through the "More" menu item.
- Redesigned tab views that remember your previous view within each library (can be controlled via setting).
- A customizable home screen including pinning content rows from any library to home.
Click to expand...
The updated Plex interface is available for beta testers, and you can sign up to be a beta tester on the Plex website by filling out a registration form. Beta access can take up to one week as requests need to be processed by Plex.

Article Link: Plex Releases Beta Version of Redesigned Apple TV App
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/03/plex-redesigned-apple-tv-app/
Looking forward to trying the new interface. Been using Emby lately because of the nicer UI. Maybe will be using PLEX more if these improvements pan out.
 
Donfor39 said:
Much prefer infuse Pro.
I thought Plex removed their servers from ap tv or something to that effect.
Click to expand...

They used to have cloud servers where you could store your media files. They closed these down (I’m guessing because of piracy issues). You can still stream your media remotely directly from your home server.

I’m trying to figure out why the side bar is necessarily better. In the screenshot it looks like you can’t see much of your media. Most other apps use a bar at the top. I’ll give it a go though.
 
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steve23094 said:
I’m trying to figure out why the side bar is necessarily better. In the screenshot it looks like you can’t see much of your media. Most other apps use a bar at the top. I’ll give it a go though.
Click to expand...

I assume it'll auto-hide like the sidebar on the current AppleTV app.
 
Grogfoot said:
Absolutely love Plex. I know this is mainly a UI update, but I hope it improves playback issues too.
Click to expand...

You must be kidding. Plex is as most neutral.

- they are notorious for breaking things and then fixing them and call it progress
- their UI changes are awful, constant regress, they actually killed amazon fire tv in my household. I could not look at it their UI anymore
- on Samsung TV app, everyday is a lottery what would work what would not
- scrolling through content is pathetic, just compare it to Netflix
- they never got a handle on 4K playback
- iPhone offline sync shows items synced but cant play them back
 
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Grogfoot said:
Absolutely love Plex. I know this is mainly a UI update, but I hope it improves playback issues too.
Click to expand...

I think the new UI update they are working on is in response to the last one they came out with.

At least on the Roku, it was very unintuitive at least until you finally figured it out.

I like PLEX and I am looking forward to the new UI.
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mthomas184 said:
And for those of you that use them, Plugins are removed on this version. So, if you use them, don’t upgrade.
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Most if not all of the plug-ins didn't work so I'm not too upset over it.

Note - I am pretty sure that automatic plugins were eliminated last year but PLEX was (still is ?) allowing manually installed plugins.
 
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T'hain Esh Kelch said:
New UI looks great, but it is waaaay too late. Already jumped on the Infuse wagon.
Click to expand...

I see a few members have switched to Infuse Pro - I'm one of them. Plex has been a hit and miss for some time now, especially 4K HDR playback both on my iPhone X and Apple TV 4K. Infuse Pro just nails it whatever you throw at it and somehow the clarity is far far better (even on older iPads without the latest iPad Pro screen tech).
 
The reason Infuse is better is because it doesn't require a media server. To me it seems like such a waste to have a high powered AppleTV 4K, which easily has the horsepower to handle whatever media I through at it, but then also burden my computer with transcoding.
 
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gk4 said:
The reason Infuse is better is because it doesn't require a media server. To me it seems like such a waste to have a high powered AppleTV 4K, which easily has the horsepower to handle whatever media I through at it, but then also burden my computer with transcoding.
Click to expand...
Infuse still needs a server. That's where it's content comes from. Connected to something on your network. I connect infuse to plex media server.

And just because you use plex doesn't mean your media is transcoded. It transcodes only if your media isn't supported natively. And then it only transcodes what is needed. Often times it plays my video file without transcoding but transcodes the audio as I keep the HD audio track for all my rips. That requires almost no power to do so. I use a mac mini as my server and can play 4k HDR files on plex on the ATV4k no problem.

I use both infuse and plex depending on the content though I much prefer the plex UI.
 
archer75 said:
Infuse still needs a server. That's where it's content comes from. Connected to something on your network. I connect infuse to plex media server.

And just because you use plex doesn't mean your media is transcoded. It transcodes only if your media isn't supported natively. And then it only transcodes what is needed. Often times it plays my video file without transcoding but transcodes the audio as I keep the HD audio track for all my rips. That requires almost no power to do so. I use a mac mini as my server and can play 4k HDR files on plex on the ATV4k no problem.

I use both infuse and plex depending on the content though I much prefer the plex UI.
Click to expand...


Infuse doesn't need a server in the same way plex does. Infuse just needs a file store exposed to it through a supported protocol. So technically it needs a server in that it needs some device to expose a drive to your network through SMB, but that device can even be a NAS enabled router. My main reason moving to Infuse is because I would get a noticeable performance hit on my Mac Mini if someone started playing something through plex. I know that it wont transcode if the source file is supported by ATV's native video player, but that seemed to be the exception rather than the norm for me.
 
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gk4 said:
Infuse doesn't need a server in the same way plex does. Infuse just needs a file store exposed to it through a supported protocol. So technically it needs a server in that it needs some device to expose a drive to your network through SMB, but that device can even be a NAS enabled router. My main reason moving to Infuse is because I would get
Click to expand...
That's a server. Anything that "serves" a file to another device. A server doesn't have to be an all powerful thing. It can simply be an ipad or iphone. It's still serving content.

If your content is natively supported then plex is no different than infuse and doesn't require any more power. In fact the only time you need a decent CPU is when video must be transcoded. But h264 and h265 are both supported on the ATV4k so no transcoding needed.
And I can still use my mac mini at the same time and never notice other people are connected.
Of course infuse connects to and works great with plex media server and maintains your watch/unwatched status across all devices.

The beauty of plex is that it ensures your content, no matter the format, can play everywhere, on everything. I have a ton of different devices in the home and I stream to friends and family so plex is a wonderful thing for that. Infuse is fine if all you ever use are apple devices and only apple devices.

Until infuse 6 infuse was horribly slow with open menus and I would still use plex on my ATV. Now that it's been updated it's as fast as plex so i'm using it more. Though if I want atmos/DTS:X I switch over to another device.
 
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mthomas184 said:
And for those of you that use them, Plugins are removed on this version. So, if you use them, don’t upgrade.
Click to expand...
Do we know if the final release will also remove plugins?

Have they added auto-add to library for external storage?
 
I'd love to try Infuse to see if it solves some of my problems, but I can't try it with Plex without paying for Pro.

Regarding this interface, I'm not a big fan. I actually like the existing interface so I don't know how this one will go over in my house. I'm sure we'll get used to it and just deal. We usually do.
 
I got over having to run a machine with an i5 4570 & 8GB of memory 24/7 to be able to handle the transcoding of two 1080p streams w/ Plex. The ATV is a powerful enough device to handle the encoding/decoding locally w/ infuse, which makes using Plex almost worthless to me these days unless I am watching content that is hosted from the server remotely... and I can already do that with a remote desktop session anyway.
 
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Old UI was confusing and it was easy to mess up during navigation, so this is a welcomed change, hopefully for the better. Can't wait to try it out.
 
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