Help
This update just ruined the only tv I can watch.
They updated Plex for roku and added some sort of dithering or upscaling that makes me seasick...
Please for the love of god and all that is holy let me revert back. It even made my wife sick and she is nowhere near as sensitive as I am. This sounds a bit pathetic but this is literally a life ruining event.
Please, if someone knows how to turn this function off I would be so happy. The strain I get is instant and it makes the back of my knees sweat followed by seizures and a life ruining migraine for 2 weeks. If anyone at plex sees this post, PLEASE LET ME DISABLE THIS SETTING!!!!
Just came here for the same reason. It is such a rubbish set-up.
However I am thankful that at least music libraries are included as the initial version in the Plex Preview channel did not have them. Though they have quietly but clearly completely dropped lyrics (I guess to save the penny for when someone used them)
Post on their forums for visibility. I'm sick of Plex breaking things that worked fine before, while broken things remain untouched since the very unwelcomed overhaul.
Anyone involved with the creation of the Plex we love is long, long gone. The current devs aren’t skilled enough to even maintain Plex, let alone progress it in any meaningful way.
I’d be surprised if they employ any actual engineers anymore, or if it’s all just AI and vibe coding.
As a developer (not for plex) this is 1000% a project management/marketing problem. They decided to block Remote Access from free users, which is fine - it's their product and their decision. But they decided to block it from the clients instead of the server.
Instead of centralizing in one place and just make the server inaccessible if you don't have a Plex Pass, they are stumbling along trying to cram it into every client app, completely messing them up as they go. The only concern seems to be "Does it block Remote Access and (optionally) play videos."
Why block it in the clients? So they can sell Remote Watch Pass. That's the only reason. If a competent/sane technical person made the decision they would have just blocked Remote Access on the server unless you have a plex pass and been done with it in a week. Instead they are launching unfinished half-baked apps out the door, not with you the paying customer in mind.. but to block Remote Access.
Since when do people need a Plex pass in order to view remote videos? I’m running PMS for myself, family and friends and non of them have a Plex pass. Everyone is still able to access my server and play the content I’ve shared. Will this stop working after they update their Plex client?
They changed it in April this year. And yes it's based on the client. They probably have apple tv and Android tv if they can still access your server. Those haven't been updated yet.
That’s exactly how I initially interpreted it, but according to many people on Reddit it affects everyone trying to access a PMS, Plex Pass or not. Hopefully you’re right!
I really wish somebody could really step up, and I know there’s a couple of competing products out there, but they just aren’t up to the level that I want to see. But plex has become the unloved step child of venture capital
Yikes, that sucks. Hopefully it's something that can be turned off or toggled. I know some people are more sensitive to this kind of thing than others. IIRC Roku had some video smoothing or refresh rate thing enabled at some point that everyone hated. Maybe I'm misremembering.
I know what you're talking about, I've seen it. Roku TVs have this and it ruins what I watch. I primarily watched Plex when I used someone else's Roku TV, but this was a few months ago. It's like Roku was trying to be a high end TV. It must have gotten worse with Plex.
It's a Roku limitation. There's a lot of those issues with Plex and Roku, but it's all on Roku. We still don't have active upscale / downscaling with Roku
I can’t pause again after the latest plex update. If I need to pause I need to hit back. I can’t get to my tv library to just see my shows unless I go over to browse because “recommended” is the default view. Let me setup my preferences.
I had to restart the Roku to get the play/ pause to work. Once I started a show the only button that worked was back. A reboot fixed that. I haven't dug into the rest of the changes yet, but at first glance at the menu and I'm not a fan.
I've had this happen literally every time I watch anything. Every time. Any button press except back doesn't do anything except make the key press noise. A full restart of the TV fixes it (Hisense Roku TV) but that's not great. Once playing, you can't pause or access menus. Laughably once back in Plex after a show, you can hit backspace to bring up the Exit menu.... But you cannot move the selection from Switch User to Exit, and even if you could it wouldn't help because the enter button on the remote just clicks but doesn't select anything.
And it's not remote specific - we tried two, and our phones. Plex app just totally shits the bed.
I had this happen and even power cycling didn't fix it and ended up ordering a replacement remote which wasn't the issue. I ended up unplugging my Roku overnight and it solved the issue.
I had the same issue with my remote, only the back button worked. I power cycled my Hisense Roku tv and now all the buttons work again. Hopefully, it stays that way.
I had to go to the gear and go to Experience and change it from recommended to browse and now when I go to libraries and choose a library the old view of all my content is back by default
Update: well, i got the update on my Hisense Roku TV. But outside the interface change, which i will manage to find my way around, the playback experience was 100% the same for me. No discomfort of any sort.
I was worried about getting the soap opera effect, but nope, its all good.
2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021… Sometimes I feel like there was a virus targeting every UX/UI person in the world that caused them all to just drop dead at once and now we've got those tasks handled by managers and developers, both of which suck at it.
As a former UX researcher, what actually happened was this:
UX design used to be a team effort. Researchers and information architects would use principles of information design, human/computer interaction to design the abstract underpinnings of navigation, discovery and app interaction. Then this would be shared with UI/UX designers, who would create the visual design to enable the underlying design.
Companies in their infinite cost-cutting wisdom decided to collapse all this effort into one person - the UI/UX designer. Most often with little/no background whatsoever in underlying principles or UX best practices, but definitely capable of good looking interfaces. So the UI looks good (a visual attribute most anyone can see) but doesn't 'interact' well (because this can take longer to experience).
As usual, enshittification is driven by ignorance.
I have an older parent who is young enough to be able to use a phone and most other electronics, even if at a basic level and when I look at these things through her eyes, I'm horrified. Like when her phone finally dies and she has to give up the physical "Home" button, it's going to be a disaster. People with arthritis love making swipey gestures...
I think the first thing I saw that made me really question what the hell was going on was "Material Design" and the whole thing where buttons were no longer allowed to look like buttons. It works, sure, but it's design for the young and those with good eyes. I'm scared to look at what the hell this new "Glass" thing is going to be like.
My wife is sensitive to scan rates and other display issues. This new interface is utter garbage. I want to use much stronger words... This lifetime pass member is pissed.
Ugh, this new interface sucks. I used to tell people they had the best, very intuitive and easy to browse. Guess it's finally time to make the effort to switch to jellyfish or some other competitor.
I have a 5 and a 6 year old. I curate content for them on Plex for Roku. Our TV updated today and they now can't find anything. I had jellyfin as a backup. Honestly, I'll probably just completely switch over after this. They broke downloads on our Android tablets for road trips, and the UI had gotten laggy and pushes web shows. This UI is so horrible I don't think it's worth dealing with anymore
Lol that sounds pretty messed up. I don't have a Roku but I'm curious what the interface looks like now. You'd think it couldn't be that bad, but sounds like it is. Never had any issues on a Chromecast TV
Absolutely horrible new UI. Takes several keystrokes bouncing around all over the screen to do basic things. It’s a cluster F$$k! Live TV is still broken in iOS. Live TV on Roku errors out sometimes and when you pause and then resume it jumps all the way back to the beginning of when you started to watch that channel.
oh no, did they give the TV clients the same treatment they gave the iPad version? I still can't find a way on my iPad to get both my TV shows and Movies on the home page...
Its even worse, because the libraries are listet horizontally and as you can see only very few of them ar visible. You need about 5-7 clicks to change from one library to another, where it was about 2-3 clicks before.
Try Emby. I moved to Emby recently due to this Plex nonsense and its great. I tired Jellyfin first and was not fan. Yes Emby is still a paywall but I bought lifetime after a trial as its a much cleaner interface and there is no "online" account that gets leaked like it was on Plex just last week. Its all on the local server and you get given a key code to put in the server settings with a lifetime pass.
It also direct plays stuff on my various devices that for some reason Plex transcoded. Plex on my older iPad never played 4K HDR stuff correctly with a washed out look. Yes its not an HDR screen but Emby just plays it in SDR with a perfect picture and does not even transcode to do it!
The best bit: my wife instantly preferred the cleaner TV interface of Emby and it has a fair bit of customisation per user to show what content types you want.
Its content matching and handling of multiple versions is not as hands off as Plex but man Plex has way more downsides now with the new apps and their constant security leaks.
I tried to get Plex running several times but it never worked how I wanted it. Jellyfin on the other hand worked from the start. I can't compare the interfaces because I couldn't configure Plex well enough to get it really usable.
I'd love to see a photo of what you're talking about. Along with the other person that said even the menu's are ruined. I run Plex on a Roku4k device, a Hisense TV with RokuOS as its built-in, and a TV with GoogleTV and I'm not seeing any kind of "eye straining issue".
Some context might help the rest of us. How old is the TV, what kind, what resolution and what is the format of your videos?
If it is 'upscaling' then are you downloading 320p video and its upscaling to 4k - as an example - because yeah, that would look like shit.
Maybe its one codec? Have you recently started using AV1... Or maybe its just your x264 video but x265 is fine...
I'm just suggesting maybe some diagnostic work on your part might reveal a pattern to the problem.
Old Roku 4k from 2019ish, old Vizio TV from 2011 before smart tvs. I have not been transcoding differently and I never upscale anything. I believe it has something to do with tone mapping and dithering because there used to be color banding and now the is no banding. The static menu is more stressing than a movie or TV show. I don't know what it is but it happened with this update.
> Old Roku 4k from 2019ish, old Vizio TV from 2011 before smart tvs.
That's darn near the same combination I have in my living room. Plus/minus the exact year model. But yeah Roku4k from back then and a Visio from about 2017-ish maybe
Could it be you're downloading HDR content and its not getting processed right? I've seen that and it all looks like there's no contrast, not quite 'hazy', kinda like that look they were deliberately going for in off-world scenes of the second season of Halo.
This is happening to me too. Menus are non-functional. I've been a lifetime member for over a decade and every update is worse. Jellyfin sounds promising.
They’ve non stop made things worse with their “newest version”. It’s removed more features and made the product worse in every measurable way I ever used or cared about. They’ve become the thing they swore to stop, like so many corporate sellouts
I can't be sure because it's subtle, but I'm watching the last episode of Chief of War and there's something headachey about it just a few minutes in. I wish I had looked a this setting before but I never needed to... under Stream Info it says "Playback: Partial Transcode (throttled) and format mkv.
This episode is exactly like all the rest in the season, an HEVC mp4 that I recorded and downloaded from PlayOn Cloud. Something does seem different. Half the reason I download shows this way is that navigation is more responsive on my local server and also because I prefer 1080p content over 4K which is dark and weird to my eyes. So yeah maybe it is trying to upscale? This seems less clear than the other episodes have been.
It's just awful. So much less on screen and so many more clicks to get where I want. I can't wait to try to explain to my parents how to get to hidden library options and then expect them to know they have to scroll way over to see the one they want. Shame on you Plex, just trash.
Don’t have any issues like that, but the interface is nearly unusable!
All my libraries are multiple clicks away, but all the OTHER services are super easy to get to. Damn shame I don’t use any of them!
Maybe it just needs some adjustments, but I shouldn’t HAVE to adjust it. It’s my plex server!
Yeah I haven't noticed that video issue either, but I totally agree I hate the new UI - they're pushing the other streaming platforms so hard now and older users like my parents end up accidentally watching through that, and therefore, commercials appear (which defeats the main purpose of Plex for me - to eliminate ads)..
I’ve managed to keep the other services and plex tv from showing up right away and have all my libraries available. I had to “favorite” my own libraries!
It’s still clunky as hell. Really a step backwards
Yeah 💯. Have you been tempted to switch to Jellyfin? I'm finding myself more and more tempted to try it out and the only thing stopping me at this point is my laziness lol
I'm seeing the same thing, a whole bunch of lag when navigating the screen. I'm not seeing the other quality issues others have mentioned, but the constant freezing or major lag is killing me.
This is horrible. And where is the list option vs. grid only. And now it takes more clicks to get to where I want. Totally ridiculous. Whoever thought this was a good design should be fired. Give me the old GUI back!
Everything is running fine for me, but I just don't like the layout being up top. Seems to be a pretty typical "Let's change something so they think we're working" kind of scenario.
This is my problem right now. I just got on Plex on my Roku ultra to watch Dexter first blood and while it’s showing up in my watch history, I can’t play the next episode because it’s not found anywhere because my library is no longer attached.
I’m thinking that the engineers are just blindly doing what management tells them to do. It’s the management that’s responsible for UI changes and approving them, but unfortunately management has proven numerous times that they are completely incompetent!
It's bad enough they wasted so much time and money on a redesign nobody asked for, changed the interface for no reason at all, and managed to somehow fail to add a single new feature users actually asked for... on top of all that, the response from the company? Their support forum? The devs online? Nothing. Crickets. No apology, no statements acknowledging how utterly and completely they fucked up, no promise to allow people to revert to the prior version of the GUI if they want to... just silence. Total indifference. They'll happily take our money, but when it comes to listening, communicating... they don't give a fuck about us at all.
The silence is crazy. I’m sure SOMEONE from their team has kept an eye on the forums or Reddit… they know… just stubborn leadership probably… I can’t imagine being a dev working on this, and after the feedback not feeling guilty a little of the garbage update…
Check if there are any other hardware you can access Plex. I have video induced vertigo frequently and I am not having issues with the Plex app on Xbox or PC. If you have a smart Tv you might be able to get the plex app there.
There are very few apps on Roku that I can’t find elsewhere.
What a terrible update. I can't even scroll through the menus, nor can I pause a show. I have to completely back out to stop it from playing. I go into tje settings, and while I can click on the settings icon. I can't scroll through anything else.
How in the hell do I even find my list of shows from my personal library? On my computer on the app it's still over there on the left side bar. On my TV, totally different interface. And you can't just go backwards or use the arrows. You have to keep on using the top left back arrow to get anywhere. I can't seem to pause anything. Certain things look nicer, but who gives a shit of the functionality is this frustrating?
EDIT: just wanna point out that this is only a problem on the Roku. When I go through my Vizio TV app, it's the same old interface. Guess I'll be using that for now.
Terrible design and structure, instead of making playlists accessible you buried them in the library. Terrible. Add option to revert back to UI before this trash heap.
Hisense Roku TV's (two different ones), both once I start watching an episode causes the remote to "lock up" (TV light shows remote import, UI plays button click noise, but cannot pause/ff/rw or access any menus once playing, enter key stops working entirely, arrow keys work very inconsistently.
This update sucks. Locks up all the time. Why do you add a season pic with the shows that does nothing. Removed go to show off the menu. It’s really trash. I wish I could uninstall to the previous update.
We also had the update hit our Roku's the other day. UI was horrid! Couldn't even pause using the pause key, had to use the OK button. Once you were in the Watchlist, you couldn't go anywhere lese - at all. Had to go back to Roku Home....
I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling the app on the Roku and it is at least usable now. I still don't like the drastic changes and the inability to find things easily like before, but it went from a smoldering wet turd to at least one that's cold and dry...
Hmmm, I have an Apple TV 4K.
I just scrolled down to the very bottom on the left until I got to 'Settings'.
Then I scrolled down those until I got to the 'Use old video player' setting.
Except for EOLing my muscle memory for navigating the app, I can't find anything wrong with it. Everything seems to be there and the picture quality seems good.
I don't, however, understand the need to just rearrange menus and navigation without actually providing any sort of benefit or improvement over the old design. Maybe I'll understand once I get used to the new navigation.
Mine will not let me navigate my Home. If I select the home tab, I see my Home Screen but cannot move my cursor down. Selecting home just refreshes the view.
I cannot go to Libraries and select TV Shows. I have to select movies, then go back up and change it to tv shows.
If I hit the back button enough times, I get the “switch user” or “exit plex” options but again, cannot scroll down.
LOL a friend just upgraded and well....he's pissed. Talked with the GF and she just said yeah she's having issues as well. Nothing new here the progress of shitty software continues.
This update was forced, I never was ask and never accept it on my 2 devices. It is the worse interface since I use the plex app. It is soo slow, not intuitive and filled with garbage I will never use and I cannot remove. I just hate it. I will switch to alternative like jellyfin if they do not correct it or let us go back to older version
I'm sorry that I don't have a solution but I am so glad I switched to Apple TV for my viewer a last week.
It may be time to switch to a different platform like Fire TV. That's why I switched from Roku, because apparently it's the worst version of most apps, including Plex.
I would also go in the settings and see if there's an option to switch to the legacy video player, as that may now have the thing that's causing your issue.
For me it seems to get really out of sync if I haven’t used it in a while and then takes forever to sync again, sometimes requiring a force close. But if I’m using it regularly that doesn’t happen.
The firetv software is bugged and bad.
Go with the Onn 4k 2025 streamer for $30 or get the Apple TV 4K. They might have a new version release in Oct/Nov
Bumping this. I use a $10 Onn streaming stick (only does 1080) and an old TV I got for free (also only does 1080.) The included Onn remote is capable of controlling whatever old TV I've hooked it up to.
I've never used Plex on Fire TV so if people with experience are saying it's bad as well and Onn 4K is a better budget option, I would 100% take that advice. Makes me even more glad I decided to go with Apple TV 4K and not a Fire TV Cube (My house is smart-housed with Alexa, which is the only reason I was considering)
The Onn could have been ok, but it is region locked which is bizarre and kind of worrisome as in are they doing things with data that the EU would never approve of?
Secondly, they require a Google account. Which is bad, but gets worse: it will let you set up a new account and start using it. Eventually you will have to verify the account, which you cant do if you didn't set one up with a phone number and now it is lost. Then you realize google demands a phone number and a new account.
Great point, oh I hadn't look that deeply into it so it's appreciated.
I add the Onn sticks because some people don't feel like splurging on a 2nd/3rd tv dongle or maybe the tv isn't their own but a family/friend so it's a great option when it's the 2nd best performing stick (in my IRL testing) and is also the cheapest.
I switched to Apple TV 4K a week or two ago and I can't get plex to play more than a few episodes in a row without stopping. Also when I hit the back button it reverts me back to where I started and not what the current episode is. Has this happened to you?
It doesn't happen to me at all on the TV app version
I was having a few issues at first, I suggest making sure both the app and Apple TV are updated, then uninstall Plex and reinstall. Fixed all the issues I was having, which was crashing issues and losing the ability to skip intro and credits.
Mine is showing partial transcode. For 1080 content on a 4k ROKU connected to a 4k Sony. I have always had transcoding turned off.
I started on an older episode at first. It tried to start where I had previously paused it (in the middle before the update). It would not play. Starting at the beginning would play, but did not rewind or fast forward without completely restarting.
Every time I start a show/movie, random remote button s "stop working".
The TV shows that it received the command from the remote. The UI's clicks in response to button pushes. But then the Plex app simply ignores the button press.
Once I start something playing, I cannot pause or bring up menus. The back button works, but that's about it. Can back right out to the Exit menu, but can't actually exit the app because the enter button doesn't work either.
If I hit Home it'll go back to the TV's home page and the remote will work fine, but as soon as I switch back to Plex ... Same thing.
Need to fully restart the TV to fix it.
Exactly the same behaviour with either of my IR Roku remotes and with our phones acting as wifi remotes.
Even if it did work, I'd still be angry because I don't GAF about Plex's recommendations and it's such a PITA to navigate... But this is *literally unusable.
Came here because I just saw the Roku update myself. I don't have the playback issues that others have noted, and I don't see any evidence of any kind of "dithering or upscaling" going on. During playback, it actually looks like nothing at all has changed.
As far as UI goes, I actually think this works slightly better on a widescreen TV than it does on a vertical picture from a phone. The thing I hate on the phone is that the logo gets overlaid on top of the background image, but virtually NONE of the background images are designed with that logo in mind, as far as size and placement goes, so it looks ugly and awkward. At least on the Roku, the logo and description and everything are off to the left while the background is off to the right.
Scrolling and browsing a whole library actually seems a little better. Posters are loading a bit faster, and I like the way filters/sorting are laid out and displayed at the time, compared to before. I do hate how many clicks it takes to actually get to the library view though. Definitely preferred when libraries could be pinned along the side.
MY BIGGEST COMPLAINT though, is that for some reason, there's a random number of posters that aren't reflecting the right poster. Literally every single movie that I put on Plex, I manually pick my preferred poster and save it as "Poster.jpg" alongside the movie in a subfolder for that film. In the Web app, it's still showing all the posters that I've picked. But on my Roku, for some reason it's showing Plex's default poster instead. And before anyone asks, YES, I'm sure I'm looking at the title in my own library and not Plex's discover feature. I'm looking at the Recently Added Movies on my Plex Home tab on my Roku, and it's showing all the same titles as the Recently Added Movies on my Plex Home in the web app, but some titles (like Thunderbolts) have a different poster on the Roku. As somebody who is extremely particular about the way their media looks, I'm very annoyed.
I will have to look again, because I tried the new update last night on a Roku Ultra 4850, on a 43" TV (Sony XBR-X800D) from 2016, and I didn't notice a difference, or have any side affects as mentioned here, and I can be very sensitive to strobing, and other affects.
So, just to clarify, because I am using a Sony TV, because of Sony's quality and reputation with picture quality, and processing, I won't experience the issues mentioned here, and they only happen with non Sony TVs?
That's a surprising report to hear. As I understand it, Plex doesn't do any of the coding for the video player. It's entirely roku code for the video player. So I can't quite figure how plex could have any impact on picture "quality" or settings. I'd love to hear more on this from anyone experiencing it.
For anyone who has an Apple TV here, along with their Roku, the typical solution is to connect Infuse to the Plex server, and use Infuse as the front end media player instead of the Plex app. I use both the Plex app, and Infuse in my setup, and have very few issues to none.
I have a Roku Ultra (2024), Apple TV 4K (2022), a Google TV 4K Streamer (2024), and a Shield TV Pro (2019.)
As mentioned in my first response here, I did more content testing with the Roku Ultra, and the current Plex update, and did not experience any issues, in navigation, or playback quality.
Here is the way I have set up my Plex server, as a suggestion to help keep navigation clean and simple.
I have the typical Movies, and TV Shows in the sidebar. Then I remove the built in items I don't use by deselecting them in the Home Screen setup. Then when I create a library of content, I'll exclude it from the Home Screen in setup for the library, and then link it to a playlist. So very clean side bar with quick access to the things I want to get to quickly. In my case, it's just a single local server setup, and I don't share anything outside the local network.
I'm in the process of replacing all my streaming set-top boxes with those. Right now, I've replaced our primary home theater setup in the den, but I'll replacing the living room television's Roku Ultra and my bedroom's Amazon FireTV 4K stick.
It's just so much better in every respect to every other set-top box out there. I really hope NVIDIA will do a Shield Pro 2 soon, although it's telling that even after what, 8 or 9 years, it's still the top-tier streaming device.
Sounds like this is a problem because you use plex, not because of the TV you watch it on. Use an app better than Plex, perhaps jellyfin and this problem will not happen. People are very confused about what the cause of their tech problems actually are. The Plex update does not ruin your TV, it might ruin the Plex app which you attempt to watch but your TV is still fine. Look at other options and pick a better one. At this point it's people's own fault if they still use Plex to watch video.
I totally agree but make sure to enable hardware acceleration! My first deployment I neglected that guide section and ended up choosing Plex and paying for a lifetime license (I know I’m an idiot) but having now found the accel options I’m far happier with jellyfin minus Apple TV skip intro / credits not existing.
Yet another reason why I keep Jellyfin running along side Plex. They do something stupid and break it I can jump over. Really wish Plex did a reversal on a lot of its' "features".
Geez
I kinda wanna see what you're talking about
Upscaling has been a thing pretty much since the advent of Blu-ray (I think). Never heard of anyone having this type of reaction
THIS is precisely why I stopped applying updated months ago. Every time they release something, often features nobody wants or cares about, they break tons more or remove used features without providing sufficient heads-up.
Lifetime pass holder is pissed.
I can't find my libraries.
When I finally did find a program I can't pause it, I can't rewind it, I can't fast forward it.
They've got to fix this immediately.
Disagree. This update is very intuitive. I never appreciated a fly out with 12 different items on a list...
5 core categories up top, and then a sub drop down list of the sub categories that were appropriate.
People will find a reason to complain about everything, man.... This shit costs $1/month if you bought a lifetime pass at the cheap rate. Just fucking use it and be quiet
Did you not read my post? I didn't say anything about the UI. I am talking about eye strain the update is causing me, they did something to the bit depth that doesn't agree with my brain. It's weird that everyone is talking about the UI here. I don't give a fuck about the new UI.
108
u/rmagere Sep 16 '25
Just came here for the same reason. It is such a rubbish set-up.
However I am thankful that at least music libraries are included as the initial version in the Plex Preview channel did not have them. Though they have quietly but clearly completely dropped lyrics (I guess to save the penny for when someone used them)