I sat down a few days ago and threw all my thoughts into a draft to mitigate posting an emotionally charged post. Since then, I have gathered my thoughts and have attempted to make this post as fact based and neutral as I can and will do my best to not make this sound like an emotional rant
With that said, why ruin such a-why change such an amazing thing? It feels like this TVOS update is just change for the sake of change…
Usually, I welcome updates. In my opinion, better stability and a greater amount of customisation is never a bad thing; the more options, the merrier. However, with Infuse 8, the old player UI is completely removed and what we are left with is a more bloated, more in the way, player UI. This doesn’t feel like an update. I’m sorry to say, but this… this feels like a blatant downgrade. Let me explain
On the Infuse of old (Infuse 7), whenever I would summon the media options within the player to change an audio track or subtitle track, the player menu would drop from the top of the screen. Sure, it was jittery every time it slid down, but I didn’t mind that, because it was exactly what it needed to be. Now though? The media options menu will appear from the bottom of the screen, blocking all ability to view subtitles on the currently playing piece of media. How did this pass QA? In no way whatsoever does this UI seem better to me. Compounding the problem is something which I alluded to earlier – From what I can see, Infuse 8 forces this UI change upon its users, and as such, there does not seem to be a way to switch back to the old (subjectively, [dare I say objectively?] better) player UI. This feels like a departure for Infuse because within the settings menu of Infuse itself, we are greeted with option to customise the details screen to our liking. For example, we can choose “New”, “Modern”, or “Classic” for the details screen of media. Why can’t we do this for the player UI?
An additional problem I have with the new player UI can be seen whenever a piece of media is paused. By memory, prior to Infuse 8’s player UI “upgrade”, whenever a piece of media was paused, whatever frame was on screen at the time of pausing would, well, be paused, and at most, the progress bar would be shown at the bottom of the screen. Now though? Now whenever I pause a piece of media, especially in a dark room while watching something visually dark, the damn title/file name of the media playing will appear on screen in searing cool white and burn the retinas of whoever is looking at the screen. Yes, the title/file name disappears after a few seconds, but it’ll take just as long for the retinas belonging to the unlucky viewers to adjust back to the dark room and screen. It is baffling to me how this behaviour slipped through any betas or QA that was done. I believe anybody who would have used this pre-release would have been able to see what I am talking about
I am sure there are users out there who love these changes and are welcoming them with open arms. I am certainly not one of them. I always welcome additional configuration and customisation, however this update seemed to outright substitute the UI which was in place for a UI which is blatantly worse in every way. As such, I would be over the moon, OVER THE MOON, if the Firecore developers implemented options within the settings menu of the Infuse app itself (where you can connect to Trakt, configure shares, etc) to revert or rollback these player UI elements to their previous selves
I hate to say this, but these changes could very possibly be a deal breaker for me. I don’t think I could continue using Infuse if the new player UI remains locked in place. I hope the ability to revert to the old player UI is implemented
Having written all of my frustrations with this update out, I actually feel somewhat better. That said, I am sure the developers know better than anybody that negative discourse for poor app updates or bugs far outweigh any positive praise they receive for positive app updates or implementing requested features, and the toll it must take on the developers when a feature or update they have worked hard on is received poorly. Therefore, I believe it is more important than ever to compliment and congratulate Firecore for the phenomenal product they have made available to us all, as well as all the amazing features they have added over the years. I, for one, will never use anything else to watch my favourite movies and tv shows (providing users are able to revert these player UI changes, please, pretty pretty please). I use Infuse every. single. day. And that is NOT an exaggeration
Thanks Firecore, sincerely. You rock