What Roku guideline caused Plex to remove screensaver?

trashcanman

I understand 100% and feel as you do. It doesn't help my situation. But I was thinking of a possible fix for you, if you're talking about playing your own music files in Plex. Forgive me in advance if you may already know about this.

Before I share, I will say the side effects can be annoying. And no... We're not doing drugs here. lol 

Within the Library settings of your Plex Server, under the Advanced settings of the music library of interest, there is a setting called "[] Store track progress". It's a checkbox. Just check that box and of course [Save Changes].

Now it should go back and play from where you left off. The trouble is that after making this change, if you stop listening to a track in the middle, and then listen to that track again sometime down the road, say a day, a week, or a year later, it will start from wherever that spot is. So this is why I leave that unchecked, and probably why you do too.

I mean, it's not that bad if you just remember to always leave a track playing from the beginning before leaving Plex. Anyway, I know it's all annoying. I do hope this can help you out a bit.

As for me? I'm beyond help. lol

I'm actually thinking about building a dedicated Plex Player box using Linux or maybe Windows. We don't need a Roku now that Plex made it so we can add streaming accounts within Plex itself. That's a BIG project and I haven't decided yet. Then again(fingers crossed), maybe the Roku people will see the error of their ways first. (Not holding my breath though) 

Well, I Am VERY DISAPPOINTED!! 

Before I get to my gripe... I want to say how much I love the Aquarium screensaver. That love makes what has happened recently even harder. 

You see, I had even wished there was a way for the Plex Channel/App to call the Roku screensaver. To see all the lovely fishes on my TV. But not at the expense of the experience, as it turns out. 

So here's the problem... The Plex DVR/Live TV using cable card tunners experience isn't the best to begin with. But now? It is sooo much worse.

I'm not being overly dramatic here. I have issues with watching TV. I have OCD and ADD. I am also a very slow reader. The bottom line is that I use pause A LOT! Was never a problem. I was always very happy that the Plex screensaver came on. I hit any button on the Roku remote and was right back at the paused screen visible on my TV. 

So now my Roku experience is absolutely miserable. I hit pause and when the Roku screensaver comes on, it now means that I come back to a screen with the option to play/resume what I was watching. But now there's a bit of a delay; and of course it is not paused but playing. So I sometimes have to go back and pause it again if I wanted to read something off the screen.

I just don't understand what would make anyone think this is a good idea. Now, I understand that I can change the screensaver timeout. But to me this defeats the purpose of having a screensaver in the first place. I'm tired of typing screensaver now. 

Please figure this out and make it better! I really need it to be the way it was before Plex made these changes to their channel/app due to Roku's new policy demands. 

One thing, though not ideal would be to at least let the app/channel set the timeout within it's own settings. Still I would not be all that happy. I may have to find a different streaming device for Plex. That would be a shame. Because I have always loved Roku. 

Thanks for listening (at least I hope someone at Roku is listening) 

This was such an extremely bad change, poorly implemented. If I pause a playing item for more than 10-15 minutes, it's on the roku screensaver. If I hit play again, it goes back to the main Roku menu and I'm downloading whatever app was being advertised to me at that moment. So I have to hit right button instead. Which takes me back to Plex, but to the series list of episodes, and I have to restart playing the episode from the menu.

If I wait too long (and it seems to vary between 20 minutes and an hour), I am instead way back at the main Roku menu, entirely exited from the Plex app.

Whoever thought this was a good idea is insane and it should be immediately reversed. It has so poorly impacted my viewing experience that I'm considering getting rid of my Roku devices and moving to another device that doesn't make decisions like this without thinking through implications of user experience. Clearly no one at Roku is using Plex, or someone would have been fired already.

I mostly use Plex and I need another device but have held out from getting another Roku because of this nonsense.