Why ruin such a-why change such an amazing thing? It feels like this TVOS update is just change for the sake of change... :(

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… :frowning_face:

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

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I am a long term Infuse user and I also feel like Infuse 8 has quite a lot of bugs and the UI need more adjustments to actually look clean. At the moment it LOOKS (especially the player UI) like a beta… But Infuse is working on fixes so I look forward to newer releases.

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Yeah :frowning_face: I stay away from betas for that very reason

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I trust @james and his team, that they will improve Infuse 8 over the next few weeks.

all the improvements are stated in the upcoming list.

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Do you mean improvements to the problems I have mentioned? Where are you seeing that? I could only find this and that doesn’t seem to mention anything in respect to what I mentioned in my post

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because strwht said that he trusts james and his team and thinks they will improve infuse 8 over the next few weeks
so i replied that all the improvements are listed in the upcoming list.
which is below

8.0.x (in progress)

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Just to help clarify a little, there is a thread that is updated with each release (and sometimes more often) that shows what the targeted changes are for the upcoming release.

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Yeah thank you

I saw that when I did a bit of searching but the linked comment didn’t seem to address any of the player UI changes

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there wont be any UI changes other than the home screen.
if so many people dislike the change to the playback control, it may be worth adding an option of selecting the new playback control and the old playback control, just like we can choose the new detail view and the old detail view

But visionOS looks great… That’s what Infuse 8 really was: Infuse for visionOS. The rest of the OSs were an afterthought. No new features, a new UI player that feels unfinished, lots of bugs…

But the visionOS app looks great.

There are some visual changes for the playback UI In progress on Apple TV. :slight_smile:

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Nice, thank you for the feedback.

Thanks! I’m thankful to hear that. I’ll keep an eye out for it and wait it out. Can you say whether or not we will be able to switch back to the old player UI at all, or will this current/new player UI be the only player UI moving forward?

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I MUCH prefer the new way of bringing up the options on the TVOS version as I rarely use subtitles and it is easier to access the options.

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I totally agree with you, @buoyant_aust. There was a lot of feedback similar to yours in the beta thread. A couple of weeks ago, I posted there asking for the option to bring back the old player as an alternative. I actually reverted to version 7.8.4 just before this update was released on the App Store. After using the new player for over two months, my opinion hasn’t changed.

In August, I posted in the beta thread criticizing the new player design. Although several improvements have been made since then, my feedback focused not on specific bugs but on the overall design, which remains unchanged. I’m not a UI designer, and I’m sure someone could express these points more precisely and eloquently, but I believe the core message still stands. If this thread is becoming a rallying cry for bringing back the “classic” player as an option, I think it’s fair to repost that feedback here:

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And the Scrolling down to the Options could get this Type of Animation (instead of the currently strange Animation!) :wink: :+1:

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Yeah, now the animation looks like a beta release… here I posted a „bug“ report:

You can like it, so the Infuse team make it more … clean. :joy:

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You know it’s a hard „Fight“ to convienve James that things get fixed :sweat_smile:

There are often Design-Decisions which are not comprehensible :wink:

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It sounds like our experiences are different, you said it is easier to access the options, but when I go to change options on the new UI, I have to do almost as many clicks / swipes of the remote to change whatever settings need changing. Does your experience differ from this?