Roku TVs Can Now Try Out Plex’s Controversal Redesign

Plex’s controversial redesigned app is now rolling out to Roku TVs and streaming gamers. It’s nonetheless within the separate preview channel for now, however as soon as (a few of) the bugs are labored out, it ought to roll out to all Roku units.

The brand new Plex app is a full rewrite, meant to unify the assorted cell and TV Plex apps into one codebase and supply a extra fashionable interface. After a number of months of testing, it started rolling out to Android, iPhone, and iPad in March. The replace was not well-liked with many Plex customers, partially as a result of that always happens with redesigns, and in addition as a result of the replace launched many new bugs. Plex has rolled out a number of bug repair updates for the brand new cell apps, whereas pushing forward on the identical replace for different platforms.

Roku TVs are subsequent in line for the redesigned app. It’s now dwell within the Plex Preview channel for Roku units, which is separate from the usual Plex channel. If you wish to strive it out, you may enroll in the beta testing. The common Plex channel and preview channel will keep separate in your TVs, so you may swap forwards and backwards as wanted.

The brand new Roku channel appears to be like an identical to the new Apple TV app. The primary navigation is now on the high of the display screen, like many streaming service apps, with extra pages on the left facet of the display screen. The primary tabs are Search, House, Libraries, Stay TV, On Demand, and Uncover.

I don’t use Plex usually on a TV, however probably the most jarring change for me is the up to date Libraries conduct. After I put in the preview channel and logged in with my account, the Libraries web page was clean aside from a ‘See All Libraries’ button. After you click on that button and mark the libraries you wish to see as favorites, going again to the Libraries tab will present them as tabs subsequent to the ‘See All Libraries’ button. I hope Plex provides that choice course of to the preliminary setup earlier than rolling out the redesign to everybody.

The remainder of the app works about as anticipated. The House web page has your watch historical past and suggestions throughout totally different libraries and sources, the Stay TV web page has a TV information along with your dwell TV sources (you probably have them) and Plex’s personal dwell channels, and the On Demand web page has Plex’s free streaming library and film leases.

There are already a number of complaints on the replace’s Reddit thread, such because the elimination of music library entry and no usernames on libraries. Plex moved music playback out of the primary app in favor of Plexamp, which is okay on cell units, however there’s nonetheless no Plexamp app for any TV platforms. The username subject is a bug that Plex is already investigating. There’s additionally not less than one report of crashing, however I didn’t discover that with a couple of minutes of use on my Roku Specific 4K+ stick, so your mileage could fluctuate.

Hopefully, Plex will get all of the bugs sorted out and releases Plexamp for TVs earlier than rolling out the up to date Roku channel. For now, the common Plex channel on Roku nonetheless has the previous design and codebase.

Supply: Plex (Reddit)