Professional Documents
Culture Documents
002
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Copyright 2015 Plex Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents
1.
2.
Preparations .................................................................................................................. 7
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Subtitle Color............................................................................................................... 40
7.
8.
9.
Jump to ....................................................................................................................... 40
10.
Aspect mode............................................................................................................ 40
13.
Photos ......................................................................................................................... 41
14.
Playlists ....................................................................................................................... 42
15.
Channels ..................................................................................................................... 43
17.
Recommended ............................................................................................................ 49
18.
Search......................................................................................................................... 49
19.
1.
Preferences .................................................................................................................... 52
2.
3.
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Total Buffer.................................................................................................................. 56
Number of Trailers....................................................................................................... 56
4.
5.
Subtitles color.............................................................................................................. 58
6.
7.
8.
20.
21.
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22.
Troubleshooting .......................................................................................................... 68
23.
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1. Release notes
v 2.002
2015.05.08
- Fixed: Deleting an item was not possible if the app was not connected to a Plex account.
- Fixed: Menu positions were not remembered if the app was not connected to a Plex account.
- Fixed: Items without a duration could cause the app to freeze.
- Fixed: Direct play setting did not override transcoding in some cases.
- Fixed: Some of the color buttons were still active when a slideshow was started from the main screen.
- Fixed: Restored playback for some for channels that stopped working after the update.
- Fixed: FF/RW would sometimes break the display of subtitles, and speed indicator would not hide.
- Fixed: "Play All" didn't work for items in the "By Folder" view.
- Fixed: Right-side (B) menu allowed disabled items to be selected.
- Fixed: Starting First unwatched episode would skip episodes with a resume time.
- Fixed: Logging in with a real user account will now allow access to that user's 'Watched Later' and 'Recommended'
sections.
- Fixed: Anamorphic videos could get a wrong aspect ratio when transcoding was used.
- Fixed: External subtitles were not always shown when direct streaming was selected.
- Fixed: Some selecting issues with the right-side (green button) OSD.
- Fixed: When used in combination with a slower PMS, building the play Queue could run into a timeout.
- Fixed: Some of the left side icons were missing support for Smart control.
- Fixed: If a server was no longer reachable, the main screen would not load.
- Fixed: Music player would show "Various Artists" instead of the real artist name.
- Fixed: Right-side OSD was not active on music videos and when an episode-'Autoplay' was started from the On Deck
menu.
- Fixed: Resume time was not always updated at the current position when a video is stopped.
- Fixed: Added Smart Control to more of the helpbar buttons.
- Fixed: Info Button would not react when playback was started from the grid view.
- Fixed: Up/down would get stuck when selecting "Reset all app settings".
- Fixed: Improved readability of episode counters.
- Fixed: User image now shows a default image when user is not logged in.
- Fixed: The top bar text on the grid wasn't always updated when switching sections.
- Fixed: Added the server as a variable for storing different section filters.
- Fixed: When selecting a lower resolution from the popup, the highest resolution would still be played.
- New: Added delete function for Tracks, Episodes and Seasons.
- New: Added 'push up, to go to last' in episode and season view.
- New: Watched status can now also be set for a whole TV show or season.
- New: The "By Folder" view for movies now has better readable labels.
- New: Added "Recently Aired, Last viewed Episodes" and "Last Viewed Shows" selections for TV Shows.
- New: Global search. Searches everything all at once.
- New: Subtitle font is now selectable between: Arial (fixes detached Arabic characters issue), Open Sans-regular or Open
Sans-bold;
- New: More aspect modes are now available from the right-side (B) menu.
- New: Several new selections have been added to the grid filter menu.
- New: Added item search to the grid filter menu.
- New: Added 'Play All' and 'Shuffle All' for artists. All tracks has been removed.
- New: Added support for Vevo music videos on the Artist view.
- New: Added option to auto login the last user. This will skip the user selection and pincode.
- New: Added the much requested listview mode. Use the D button to swap views between list or grid.
- New: The selection, filters, sorting and view mode are now saved per user, per section, when you exit the grid.
- New: Use Channel UP/DOWN in the grid to jump page by page.
- New: Extended filter selections, this includes "moods" for music tracks. (PlexPass only)
- New: Added option to reset the app. This might help with update problems.
- New: Added option to continue watching all remaining episodes of a TV Show from "On Deck".
Use "Play" to immediately start auto-playing, use "Enter" to open the Preplay screen as normal.
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2. Important information
1 Preparations
Important Note:
This app is a client for the freely downloadable Plex Media Server.
Before you can use this app you will need to setup a server first!
This app will not work correctly without a Plex Media Server!
The only exception to this rule is Shared Content, but we will get to that later.
Use a browser to go to: https://www.plex.tv/downloads
Then pick the setup file for the OS type you are planning to use:
Download and install the Plex Media Server software for your platform.
After installing we need to configure the server.
To do so open up a browser and go to http://127.0.0.1:32400/web to configure the server.
You must replace the 127.0.0.1 with the IP address of the server where you installed the PMS
software, if your browser is not on the same machine.
Now follow the wizard and make sure to add at least one new section and some content to the
server.
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Step 5: If all went well you are now logged in and your server has been connected to
Plex
If you get an error you can click Show advanced settings for more options.
Click on the highlighted word here to get additional help on setting this up.
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If your server shows 2 green check marks as shown in the image, then we are ready to
proceed with setting up the app.
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Picture 3.1
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Wait a few seconds longer for the app to download the needed information from your
account. It will continue on its own, after it is done.
Do not press any buttons until the app has successfully connected or you will
have to do it all over again!
After you are connected, the app will automatically detect any servers that are connected to
your account. Initially, it will try to connect to the first owned server it can find, but you can
change that later on.
The next screen you will see depends on your setup.:
If you have setup a Home on your server and added users to it, you will always get
the select user screen first.
If you have no Home setup or are the admin, and only user, it will continue to the
Main screen.
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If you have setup a Home within Plex, you may have several accounts added to it.
In this screen you can pick the account of your choice. Just select it and press enter.
If you have more than three accounts, a scrollbar will appear and you can use the UP/DOWN
buttons to select the ones that are not visible.
The administrator account is marked with a small crown icon.
If the account has a green pinlock symbol, it means this account is protected with a pin code.
If you select a protected account, you will have to enter the pin code in the next screen as
shown below.
If you are using a normal remote control, you can use the numeric buttons to enter the
pin code.
If you are using a Smart Control, first bring up the onscreen display by pressing the
Keypad button and select the numbers from there.
If the code is correct , entering the last number will take you to the Main screen. There is no
need to press enter.
Entering an incorrect code will show a popup and you will not be able to use the app, until the
correct code has been provided, or a different user without a Pin Code has been selected
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4. Home view
This is the main page of the app, from this page you can reach all other parts within the app.
On the left side you can see all your sections you have access to. This section menu can
scroll up and down, and the current selection is always marked with an orange color.
On the right side you get one or two rows depending on the content you are viewing.
These bars are marked with orange titles on the right, to indicate what they are representing.
In the screenshot we can see two rows. One shows the Recently Added items. This row will
give you quick access to newly added content. The other row is called On Deck.
On Deck items are items that are still in progress. This means that you have started to watch
this item earlier, but did not finish watching until the very end.
For TV Shows, the On Deck bar will show you the episode where you last stopped watching.
If the last episode was not completely watched, that will be the one to start with. If you finished
that episode, the On Deck feature will automatically select the next in line for you.
Tip: If you want to continue watching a TV Show and also want to watch more than one
episode, press the Play button instead of Enter.
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Select section:
Push UP or DOWN on your remote to select the desired section.
If you have a SmartControl you can also use the pointer to activate the menu.
Point to the upper or lower part of the menu, and a chevron will appear.
When the chevron's color is white, you can push enter to advance one section in that
direction. If you move the pointer to the upper or lower edge, it will turn orange.
Wiggle the pointer slightly to start moving through the sections automatically.
After you have marked the desired section, press ENTER to open that section.
Using the Smart Control you must point to the orange item and press ENTER.
This will give you access to all your content in that section.
Open Preferences
If you want to make changes to the settings of the app, you can get there in two ways:
- Push the LEFT button while on the main menu.
- Push the RED button on your remote.
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Switch User
If you push the GREEN button while on the main menu, it will take you to the User
Selection screen where you can pick a different user.
Switch Server
If you have more than one server, or other users have shared content with you, you
can push the YELLOW button to get a list of servers, that you have access to.
The list shows a green checkmark for your own servers and a blue one for shared or
remote servers. Initially the icon may show a looking glass symbol to indicate that the
app is still busy trying to contact the server. If the server is not reachable it will show a
red X.
Please wait with selecting a server until the icon is either green or blue.
You will be unable to connect to the server until the connection has been confirmed.
If you have more than 4 servers, use UP/DOWN to select the non-visible ones.
Exit App
If you want to close the app, press RETURN with the section menu selected.
A popup will show with the option to quit the app.
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Continue watching
This button will only become available when you select an episode from a TV Show.
Clicking the button or pressing Play on your remote, will start the show immediately
without showing the Preplay screen. When the episode finishes and there are more
episodes available, the next episode will be played without any user action
Gridview
After selecting a main section from the menu, press ENTER to get to the grid view.
The grid will show all items you have is this section. Depending on the section it may show
eight columns (movies, tv shows and music), or six columns (photos, channels and online
content)
Lets have a closer look at this screen. In the center area you will see small images of your
media. The top bar shows the title of the items we are looking at, in this case All movies.
The top right corner will show you how many items there are in your current selection.
At the bottom of the grid you can see the so called:
Alphabet menu
This menu will allow you to jump to the first item starting with that character. As you can see
the menu is smart as it will only show you characters for items you actually have in your
library.
The alphabet is only available in the All items mode and when sorted from A to Z, it will not
work when a filter has been applied. It will also only work for Movies, TV shows and Music.
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You can switch between the grid and the alphabet by pressing the YELLOW button.
Pressing up or down will highlight your current character with an orange border. Press ENTER
to make the jump.
With a Smart control you can simply point and click the desired character to perform a jump.
On the menu bar to the left side of the screen, there are 3 icons visible which represent these
actions:
Filter Menu
After clicking the funnel icon, or if you keep pressing LEFT, the screen will move to the right
revealing the filter and sorting menu on the left side of the screen.
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Play All
If the PLAY icon is available, you may select it and press ENTER to start playing all the items
in your selection in sequence. The items will be placed in a queue. When an item has finished
playing, the next item will start playing without the need for user interaction.
Shuffle All
This works the same way as Play All, with the difference that the items will not be played in a
sequential order but they will be shuffled first. The items will then be played in a random order.
Gridview navigation
The gridview will show you the current selection you made. You can navigate through it by
using the arrow keys. If your library is large, it may not fit on screen. When that is the case,
you will see a scrollbar to the right of the gridview to indicate that there are more items
available.
Either keep pressing UP/DOWN to scroll through to the next page, or use the CHANNEL
UP/DOWN (or |<< and >>|) to skip through pages quickly.
You can select an individual item by pressing ENTER while it is highlighted.
This action has different results based on the media you have currently selected:
Library items will use paging, because these collections, could become very large.
Other sections like channels and online content, use scrolling because these items currently
do not support paging on the server.
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Listview mode
For some tasks it might be easier to see the items in a list instead of in a grid.
You might also want to select listview mode when viewing content By Folder.
To switch to listview mode, press the BLUE button on your remote.
Note that the view mode will be saved to the current section, so you can have sections in
gridview mode and others in listview mode.
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5. Preplay view
The Preplay screen will show you detailed information about your media and will allow you to
make changes for the selected item.
All actions are controlled by the left side menu bar. Use the UP/DOWN buttons to select one
of the icons and press ENTER to perform the action.
Play
If you do not want to make any changes, you would only need to press ENTER to start playing
your media, since the PLAY icon is the default on this page.
After pressing the play icon a swirling indicator will show while the action is being prepared.
Your media should start playing when it is ready.
There are situations where you might get a popup first:
You started playback of a movie that was stopped before it was finished.
As you can see in the example, this movie was watched for 44 minutes before.
In this case you will have the option to restart the movie from the beginning, or to
continue where you left off.
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You are playing a new (unwatched) movie and enabled the Trailer feature in the
Preferences screen. Many trailers are available in several qualities. If there are, you
could be presented with a choice to select the quality. By default this feature is turned
off, but if you enabled it in the Preferences screen, it will ask you to select a quality
first.
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Subtitle selection
The third icon from the top, represented by a speech balloon, will give you access to the
subtitle selection. If your media contains subtitles, you may change it here to the one of your
choice. If you setup your server to select the subtitle based on your language, that language
will be selected by default. Changing the subtitle here will also set it as preferred subtitle on
the server. Scroll with UP/DOWN and select with ENTER. Use RETURN to cancel.
This app has three ways to show you subtitles. We will try to explain how these different ways
work and what options you have.
Subtitles come in a lot of different formats. Plex supports many of them but some are easier to
use than others. The preferred format to use with this app is .srt also known as Subrip.
It will give you the most options and will allow you to set font size, position, offset and color
during playback. Srt files can be played using the built-in subtitle player which will display them
on top of the movie. This is also known as overlayed subtitles.
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Internal subtitles
Some movie formats like MKV will allow you to add the subtitles inside the movie file.
These subtitles cannot be accessed directly by the app. It needs help from the
Samsung API to get these from the movie stream. If the subtitles are added to the
movie in a standard way, it is possible to retrieve the subtitle and show them as
overlayed subtitles.
Unfortunately this only works for text based subtitle formats. If your movie has
VOBSUB or PGS subtitles, which are based on images instead of text, this option will
not work.
These types of subtitles are marked with an asterix (*). If you select these subtitles the
app will have to switch to the last option it has for showing subtitles, which is burning
them into the movie. To accomplish this it will switch the playback mode to Direct
Streaming (Transcoding also works), and instructs the server to create a new movie
stream in which the subtitles are already visible inside the movie. This is also known as
Burned-in subtitles.
Using Burned-in subtitles is no problem if you have a powerful server. It may become a
problem if your server is less potent, like a NAS device. Playback modes other than
Direct Play are putting a strain on the server, which some devices may not be able to
handle. In this case your only option is to extract the subtitle from the movie and use it
as an external subtitle file. There are several programs available on the internet that
can do this.
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Note, that setting the playback mode here will not change your default playback mode.
When you exit this screen your default setting will be restored.
If you want a particular mode to be the default, it can be set in the Preferences screen.
It is currently not possible to set a playback mode per item.
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Auto: This is the default setting. Your media will be played using Direct Play, if
possible. That means it will stream the file directly from your server to the TV without
influencing it. If the app encounters a format that we know it cannot play, it will fall back
to transcoding the media automatically. This will make it possible to play formats that
are not normally supported by your device.
Note: We cannot detect badly encoded movies, we only check if the codecs and
containers are supported by Samsung.
Direct Play: This forces the app to always use Direct Play without any fallback.
Direct Stream: This forces the app to use Direct Streaming to play your file. That
means the server will build a new stream using your media, but it will just use the data
without any conversions. Direct Streaming may help you to play files that are badly
encoded or suffer from issues with timing.
Transcoding: All Media will be transcoded on the server. This means the app will
instruct the server to fully rebuild the media stream before it is send to the device.
This is a good option if you have problems with some files that wont play. Most
common problems are fixed when the media is re-encoded. Transcoding can also be
used to to limit the bandwidth of a movie in case you have a bad connection.
Note that your server will need a potent CPU to be able to use transcoding
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Select the icon and press ENTER to show the Extras. Use UP/DOWN to select an item.
Press ENTER to start playback. You may get a popup to select the desired quality first.
Press RETURN to close the Extras view and return focus to the Preplay screen
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Browse content
Even after you made a selection first, you may still want to review the items before you decide
what content to watch. In order from preventing you to go back and forth between the Gridview
and the Preplay screen, we added a browse function. This is comparable with the previous
carrousel mode if you used the old version of this app.
In the right top corner you can see at which position you are in your selection.
Just press the LEFT or RIGHT arrow to move to the next item. Note that this will stop when
you reach the end, its not an endless loop as it was in the old version.
Navigation
To leave this screen you can either press RETURN to return to the previous screen or select
the A button on your remote to return to the main screen instead.
You will have two choices here. If you have episodes from more than one season, you will
have the options to either, view All Episodes, or select a specific season. If you only have
one season, the All Episodes option will not be available.
A marker may appear in the right top corner of the season with a number in it.
This number indicates how many unwatched episodes there are left inside the season. If all
episodes in that season have been watched, no marker will be visible.
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On the right hand side of the screen you will see a grid with all the available episodes.
Each episode contains a small image, the episode number, name of the episode and the
original air date. If an episode has not been viewed it will also show an orange star as seen in
episode 9.
If not all items fit on the page, a scrollbar will appear to the right. You can push UP/DOWN to
make the off-screen items visible.
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Like with the season view, there is one option to open All Tracks, or you can select a specific
album. If there are more than 9 items, a scrollbar will appear on the right side.
Select an item by using the arrow keys. Press ENTER to open it.
Press RETURN to return to the previous screen, or A for the main screen.
You can use the Play All and Shuffle All icons in the left side bar to start playing all
available tracks for the selected artist.
I the current Music library was created as a Vevo (premium) library and there are Music videos
available for this artist, then you will also see a Plus icon in the left side menu bar.
Highlight the Plus icon by means of the arrow keys and press ENTER.
A submenu will appear where you can select and play any of the available Music videos.
Use the arrow keys to select a video and press ENTER to start playback.
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Note that even if you selected on single song, you can still use the CHANNEL UP/DOWN
buttons to skip to the next or previous song. The only difference with the Play icon is that you
can start from any song instead of the first.
Select an item by using the arrow keys. Press ENTER to open it.
Press RETURN to return to the previous screen, or A for the main screen.
To delete a track, highlight it and press the BLUE button.
You will need to be an administrator and the server setting to allow deletion must be enabled.
If you want to skip a song, press the CHANNEL UP. Use CHANNEL DOWN to replay a title.
(|<< and >>| on none TV devices)
You can return to app by pressing RETURN. Music will still keep playing in the background.
You can toggle between the music player and the app as long as it is playing, by pressing the
PLAY button on your remote.
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If you want to make adjustments press the UP arrow or INFO to show the progress bar OSD.
Press DOWN or INFO to hide it again.
Note that next upcoming song title is displayed at the top right of the progress bar, and the
current playback mode is shown at the bottom.
The progress bar now comes equipped with player controls. Use the LEFT and RIGHT arrows
to select the control, then press ENTER to perform the action.
The selected control will have an orange border.
The current active play status is indicated by a grey filled square.
If you have a Smart control you can operate the controls by pointing and clicking.
The Smart control also works on the progress bar. During playback you can click on the
progress bar to jump to the desired position.
Loop playback
With the YELLOW button you can control what should happen when you have reached the
end of the queue. In normal mode it will stop and return to the last screen. Press the YELLOW
button to toggle between normal and loop mode. Now the queue will restart from the beginning
after the last item has played.
Normal mode
Loop mode
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Screen Brightness
This option will allow you to darken the TV screen while the music plays, or even turn it
completely black. Press the GREEN button to bring up the brightness control. Select any value
between 0 (off) and 10 (brightest) and press ENTER. This setting only applies to the music
player screen. If you press RETURN, the app will show in normal brightness. The brightness
screen and the progress bar OSD are still visible even when the screen is set to black.
Note, that this setting will be applied until you change it again, so dont be alarmed if the
screen turns black when playing music the next time. Jus press GREEN again to change it
back.
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When playing a movie the OSD will show you the movie title and year it was released.
On episodes it will display the TV show name and the title of the episode. On the bottom left
side it will also show the current playtime, total playtime and the end time of the video.
The progress bar now comes equipped with player controls. Use the LEFT and RIGHT arrows
to select the control, then press ENTER to perform the action.
The selected control will have an orange border.
The current active play status is indicated by a grey filled square.
If you have a Smart control you can operate the controls by pointing and clicking.
The Smart control also works on the progress bar. During playback you can click on the
progress bar to jump to the desired position.
To jump forward use the RIGHT arrow button on your remote.
To jump backwards use the LEFT arrow button on your remote.
Note: Press and hold the < > buttons to do several jumps in a row. During this time only the
indicator will move until you stop pressing. After releasing the button the movie will jump to the
assigned position. In some cases when a movie has timing issues its possible that the player
will cancel the jump to avoid further problems.
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The right side OSD allows you to make adjustments but only if the current playback mode
supports it. For example: Except for the subtitle size, none of these settings have any effect
when you are using burned-in subtitles in combination with Direct Streaming or Transcoding.
In this case the options will be greyed out, and you will have to stop the movie to make
adjustments from the Preplay screen. The reason is, that the server will need to build a new
stream based on your choices.
The right side OSD has the following features:
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2. Select subtitle
If you have several subtitles for your video, you may change them on-the-fly if you are using
the overlayed subtitles. Press LEFT or RIGHT to change the subtitle. Note that it may take a
few seconds for the subtitle to be parsed before it will be visible on screen.
4. Subtitle offset
This enables you to show the subtitles earlier or later when they do not run in sync with the
movie. Note: this might not always work correctly in combination with the Samsung API.
5. Subtitle Size
Controls the font size of the subtitle. (Also for Burned-in subtitles)
This can also be set under Preferences > Subtitles.
6. Subtitle Color
Pick the color you would like to use for the subtitles.
7. Subtitle position
This adjusts the position where the subtitles are shown onscreen.
9. Jump to
Enter numbers with the number pad to set a specific time where you would like to jump inside
a movie. When a time is set beyond the duration of the movie, it will turn red.
Press ENTER to jump to the selected time.
10.
Aspect mode
If your movie is shown with borders, you can use this to stretch the movie to full screen.
Sometimes it can also be used to fix videos which are displayed with a wrong aspect ratio.
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12. Photos
Photos can be browsed in the grid view or shown full screen by selecting them and pressing
the ENTER button. Just like the other sections, Photos have their own filter menu. Only now
with specific photo attributes. The filter menu is however only available when used on All
photos.
If you are in a subsection, like entering from the fan-out on the main screen, no filters will be
available.
Only photo section can have nested folders. If a folder is among the content, it will be
marked with a grey label at the bottom and it will show 4 random images from that folder.
Select it and press ENTER to go down one level. Press RETURN to return to the previous
level.
If a photo is shown full screen, and there are more pictures available in the current selection,
you can press the play button to start a slideshow. For a brief moment an indication will be
shown on screen about the current display time. You can increase or decrease the time with
the UP and DOWN button while the slideshow is playing.
If the slideshow is paused, or hasnt started yet, you can press the UP and DOWN arrow to
change the desired transition effect between photos. Play around with what you like best.
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If the slideshow is not playing, you can step through the photos either with the LEFT and
RIGHT arrows, or the CHANNEL UP/DOWN buttons. Press RETURN to stop displaying
photos and return to the previous screen.
13. Playlists
This version of the app does not allow you to create playlists, but it does offer you to use
playlists you have created on a different Plex client, like the Plex web app that comes included
with the Plex media server software. Playlists are personal, so any user has their own
playlists. For now, only movies, episodes and music can be part of a playlist. A Playlist can be
selected from the Main page or you can enter the section to show all playlist in the gridview.
Select a playlist by using the arrow keys, and open it by pressing ENTER, or point and click
when using a Smart Control. Playlists are always opened in a listview.
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If the list contains more than 12 items, you can use the CHANNEL UP/DOWN to flip through
the pages. Playback can be started by selecting a specific item and pressing ENTER, or by
using the Play or Shuffle icon to the left. When playing a video playlist, unlike with normal
video items, there is no Preplay screen shown first, all items will start instantly.
14. Channels
What are Channels?
Plex offers a development model for third party developers to add online content in the form of
a channel. You could look at it as a kind of app store inside Plex.
A special note on Channels: Channels are not part of the app, they are created by other
developers and we are not responsible for the working or content of these channels
We do have a moderating team that will make sure that only approved channels will be made
available, but we cannot guarantee that all channels will work on your device all the time.
Some channels are region/geo bound and may not be available, or do not function, outside
that specific region. Also, many of the channels require transcoding; this will require a PMS
server with enough CPU and memory to do so. Some channels use Flash, Silverlight or other
external products to work. At this point the App does not support every available type of
channel.
Channels are mostly using websites to grab their content. Sometimes a website may change
and the channel may break. We have a team that works hard to keep these issues to a
minimum, but in short:
If it works, thats nice. If it does not, we will try to fix it, but may not always be able to do so.
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There are 3 kinds of channels: Video, Music and Photo channels. Browse until you find
something interesting. Press enter, select Install and press enter again to install the channel
on the server. It may take a little while so please be patient.
After the installation has completed you will get a popup with the result.
Note: Every server has his own set of channels. Make sure you select the correct server to
add channels if you have more than one server. For the best result, It is recommended to use
the server with the most processing power available, so transcoding will not be a problem.
With the installation complete lets now look what has happened. Keep pressing return to
close the Channel Directory and the Settings menu, until you you reach the main screen.
Your new Channel should now be available under the Channels section..
At first, the image for the channel may appear blank as the content is updating.
This can take up to a minute to complete, but it will only happen once.
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You can now use the channel just like you would use a movie section. Depending on the
channel you can browse and watch the content that the developer has made available.
Channel Preferences
Some channels require you to enter details before you can use them. Items like that will be
marked as Preferences. This app does not allow you to enter details since a TV remote isnt
very practical for that. Instead, you can use the Plex web app that is built into the Plex Media
Server to enter these details. (Screen shot is taken from the Plex Web client)
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Channel Search
Some channels offer you to search for content. (like youtube).
Selecting items marked as Search will bring up the onscreen keyboard, to allow you to enter
a search text. Press OK to start the search.
Picture 38a
Picture 38b
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Picture 38c
Note: Not every moviesite is supported and not all movies can be played or added this way.
Picture 39
Refresh the Watch Later section in the app by briefly selecting another section.
The video you just added should now show up as a new item in the app.
You can now play back the video clip by selecting it and pushing ENTER
If you select an online movie you often have a choice of several formats, just like you would
when playing the movie directly in a browser.
If you disabled the Always show highest resolution option under Preferences/ Advanced, a
choice menu will be shown. Use the arrow buttons to select the desired format and press
enter.
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After you watched a clip to the end, it will disappear from the main page, because that will only
show the newly added items. Your clips will however still be available from inside the section.
Select the section Watch Later in the main Menu and press ENTER to go to the Gridview.
You can remove a Watch Later item from the server from the Preplay screen, by using the
Trashcan icon. (only for Administrators)
16. Recommended
The Recommended section is very similar to Watch Later. The only difference is that you
do not pick the content yourself, but any friend you have on your Plex account can
recommend clips to you. Playing these items is exactly the same as on Watch Later.
Note: Only some Plex clients offer the feature to make recommendations.
You can remove a Recommended item from the server from the Preplay screen, by using the
Trashcan icon. (Only for Administrators)
17. Search
There are several ways to find the item you are looking for.
-The fan-out menu on the grid view offers searching depending on the content you are viewing
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Browsing and playing the content works just the same as with the local content on your own
server. Note that if the content is on a remote server, it needs to travel over the internet, so
everything can be a bit slower than normal.
If you watch a video from a remote server and your internet connection is a bit slow, you may
experience that the video will start to buffer often because the content cannot be delivered fast
enough. To reduce the used bitrate (read: size) of the movie in order to have a smoother
playback (with the cost of reduced quality), you can switch the playback mode to Transcoding.
Keep in mind that this may put a significant load on the remote server. If the server is not
powerful enough it may not be able to handle that load.
The default quality setting for transcoding from a remote server is 7 on a range from 1 to 12.
If needed you can in- or decrease this value to get either a better image or an even lower
bandwidth. To change the value, go to the Preferences > Advanced tab.
And adjust the Remote Quality setting.
1. Preferences
Lets have a look at the apps Preferences.
If you want to make changes to the settings of the app, you can get there in two ways:
- Push the LEFT button while on the main menu.
- Or push the RED button on your remote while its labeled Settings
Next select Preferences from the main menu and press ENTER.
The Preferences top menu will now be shown.
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2. Preferences: General
After selecting General and pressing enter, you will see the list will general settings.
2 Clock Adjustment
With this option you can adjust the clock from -12 hours up to +12 hours. On some devices the
clock didnt work correctly so we added this option.
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3. Preferences: Player
After selecting Player and pressing enter, you will see the list will player settings.
3 Rewind in seconds
When you watch content you can push (and hold) the LEFT arrow on your remote and it will
jump backward in steps of 60 seconds (default). If you want bigger or smaller steps you can
change the value here.
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4 Initial Buffer
Indicates the buffer size that needs to be filled before content will start playing.
5 Pending Buffer
If the buffer drops beneath this value during playback, playback will stop and buffering will take
place. This buffer needs to be filled before playback will continue after a buffering stop.
6 Total Buffer
This buffer specifies the total buffer size for video + audio playback.
7 Playback Mode
You can set a preferred playback mode if you always want to use something else than Auto
Playback modes can also be changed before playing a movie, but those changes will revert to
the setting you made here afterwards.
8 Number of Trailers
If you have enabled trailer support on your server, you may set the number of trailers you
would like to see before the selected movie is played, to give you the feeling like you are in a
real theater. The kind of trailers you will get is dependent if you have a PlexPass or not.
Note: If a trailer is playing that you dont like, you can press CHANNEL UP to skip it.
Note: Trailers have some rules before they will be start before a movie:
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4 Subtitles color
You can change the color from your subtitles here. You can choose between white, black, red,
green, yellow, orange and silver. Default color is white. These values can also be changed
during playback with the OSD ([GREEN] key). Note: Only works for Overlayed Subtitles
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If you have connected your device your screen will show your username and email to indicate
the account that you are logged in with. In the left bottom corner the logged-in user's avatar is
now visible. If you have a PlexPass subscription, the PlexPass logo will also be shown.
7. Preferences: Advanced
This section contains advance settings, that are not very commonly changed.
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1 Local Quality
This setting handles the quality setting that is used while using transcoding on a local media
files.
For local files high values (9-12) may work fine. See the chapter about transcoding for more
details.
This data will help us greatly in making your Plex experience even better.
Of course this is totally optional, if you do not want to participate, you can disable this option.
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7 Menu Sorting
Some user prefer to see the main menu sections to be grouped by type. So all movies, all TV
shows etc. together. Others might prefer it rather to be in alphabetical order.
Press enter to toggle between both options.
This page presents you some information about the app and about your device.
This may come in handy if you want to ask a question on our forums.
App Information:
Tells you what the app can do and where you can get support.
System Information:
Gives you information about your device such as:
model
name
type
from which series it is
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You activated the option: Require authentication on local networks on your server.
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Both options involve security and will not allow you to connect to the server without being
logged in with a valid account.
Note: If you do not want your manual settings to get overwritten when you connect to your
Plex account, then make sure to turn the option:
Preferences > Advanced > Use Plex account to update server list to: OFF.
By default the app will use the servers it finds on your account and you should not have to
touch this option. Use this only if you only want to connect to a local server, and do not need
any other features that require a Plex account connection.
To add a server you have to push the RED button on your remote. It is also shown in the
navigation help bar. After you pushed the RED button a popup will appear
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3 Local Transcoding
Under normal conditions transcoding for local content should not be needed, unless you want
to use embedded subtitles. Transcoding will add delays in start and jumping within any media
file, so only use it when it cannot be avoided. Direct Streaming will also allow you to use
embedded subtitles, and it has less overhead than transcoding, but you can only use it if the
movie format is already compatible.
To enabled Direct Streaming of Transcoding, select a video file and press [Enter]
This has 4 options check the Playback modes to see what these options do
The Auto mode will use a profile to determine if your content should be transcoded or not.
In this case the app will check the containers and codecs that have been used in the media
you are trying to play. If these containers and codecs comply with any of the items in the
Direct Play list, they will be played with Direct Play. If one or more parts to not comply, the
file will be transcoded and the offending parts will be converted and replaced by playable ones
by the server.
Container
mp4
asf
Video Codec
h264, mpeg4
wmv3, wmv3, vc1
Video
Video
avi
mkv
Video
Video
Video
Video
Music
mpeg
mpegts
flv
3gpp
mp4
h264, mpeg4,mjpeg
h264, mpeg4, mjpeg, mpeg2video,
vc1
h264, mpeg1video, mpeg2video
h264, mpeg2video, vc1
h264
h264, mpeg4
-
Audio Codec
aac, ac3, mp3, pcm
wmav2, wmav2, wmapro,
wmavoice, pcm
mp3, ac3, dca, pcm
mp3, ac3, dca, aac, pcm,
vorbis
mp2, mp3, ac3, aac, pcm
mp2, mp3, ac3, dca, pcm
aac, ac3, mp3, pcm
aac, he-aac
aac
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mp3
mp3
4
320
720
5
480
1.5k
6
768
2k
7
720
3k
8
720
4k
9
1080
8k
10
1080
10k
11
1080
12k
12
1080
20k
5 Remote transcoding
This setting will only affect streaming content from remote servers.
Remote transcoding works the same as Local transcoding. The setting for remote transcoding
can be found under Preferences > Advanced > Remote Quality
21. Troubleshooting
1 I got an update and now nothing works anymore.
In some cases parts of the app remain stuck in the browsers cache when doing an upgrade of
an existing version. If you experience strange behavior, like when the app is not starting, or it
is working but is extremely slow, you should follow these steps:
1. Uninstall the app from your device.
2. Turn the device off for 30 seconds.
3. Turn the device on and reinstall the app.
In most cases this will resolve the upgrade problem.
2 Connection issues.
We recommend to use a wired connection between the server and the device running the app.
a wireless connection will work, but it may have problems with high bitrate movies.
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