New Roku App - Fix number of movies/shows we can see at one time

[Toddwrtr]

Everything plays fine, but the user interface is just plain horrible. It took me awhile to understand what all of the icons on the left side meant.

[larryad@aol.com]

Tried both of my Roku Ultra’s (current gen) with several 4K movies and they all played in 4K fine.

Not sure what’s causing your issue.

Today it seems to be working. Yesterday the top option available to me was HDX. Hopefully that takes care of the problem.

I don't know if it's my imagination but audio seems to be better on this version.

[ag-87]

Thank you for posting this, I absolutely agree; I'd like to add my vote to please fix the number of movies/shows we can see at one time.

Also, I should add that in general the old UI was better: why fix something that is working well? I really liked the old UI. There was nothing wrong with it. There are problems with subtitles being out of synch with dialog that I have reported more than once (not my device, since there are other services that work perfectly). Fixing that would be a vastly better use of resources than fixing something that isn't broken.

Thank you

[JayJB]

I have a Roku TV I don't use much, and had to see what the fuss was all about. I had to update the software.

Someone made the comment that is looks like all the other streaming service apps...It does. Having over half the screen taken up by the movie preview might make sense, if you don't know what's on, and are browsing for something.

I don't know what the 'average' Vudu user does, or how they use the service, but browsing that way is not how I use Vudu.

I am a collector, with over 1600 titles and 67 TV series, and Vudu is the main way I manage, and add to, my collection. As such, the new interface does NOT work for me, at all.

Vudu needs to figure out it's target audience, and develop the interface accordingly. It's not a subscription service, and there's no original programming. Do you really need a Netflix-like (or Disney+ like, or HBOMax-like) interface? Vudu is pay-as-you go, and most (certainly not all, but most) shoppers know what they want before they get to the store.

The old UI worked better for collectors. We're also probably your best customers.

[jeremymc7]

I would like to see an option in the settings to choose from one of say three view options where you could scale the "posters" to show more or less at once. It's not much code; but then many of the things we've asked for over the years aren't much coding either.

[jeremymc7]

Figured I should post at least one positive of the new interface.

Voice search (on Roku) now works properly within the app. You are no longer taken back to Roku home, then select Vudu as provider, then back to movie. Now you can search with your voice within the app like you do with the keyboard.

[GodblessTX]

Thanks for posting this. I agree with everyone's statements above.

The past few years, I've spent thousands of dollars purchasing hundreds of movies and tv shows on Vudu. This new interface is absolutely horrible and I'm very unhappy as a loyal customer!

The look is terrible, videos take longer to load sometimes. Now, you have the display that pops up when you resume, pause, rewind, fast forward you have to wait for it to go away on its own where as before you could just hit the back button to make it disappear. This is really annoying. I understand that it only stays on the screen for 5 seconds, but you should give us the option yo turn this feature on or off.

On Vudu before this change, you could see more movies on the screen at one time. Now that you've changed the layout, when I go to my list I can only see a single horizontal row of 5 movies when before I could see 10 to 15 movies. What used to be a click or two looking for one of my purchased movies has now turned into a series of click, click, click and takes longer to navigate. Everything about this new layout is 10 steps back in time. Another thing, why do most of the movies now have the black bar or letterbox? I could swear that before this change many of the movies I've purchased and watched didn't have that format.

The browsing experience now is awful. Before this new layout, I actually liked browsing for movies on sale to purchase, but now not so much. Some things are just perfect the way they are and don't need a change. I'm accepting to change, but one of the reasons why I chose to make all of my purchases with Vudu is because I loved the layout the way they had it. You've changed it to mimic the others like Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu which I really dislike. Why?

Also, if you're making all these changes, maybe you should think about fixing the subtitles that are always bouncing around in front of the screen. Why can't you make the subtitles stay at the bottom inside the black bar so they don't block the picture? It's very annoying. There are many other things that you've changed that I don't like and I could go on and on about them, but I think so far I've mentioned enough that I hope more people with agree with me and perhaps Vudu will hear our voices and do something about it.

I realize that I'm complaining about a free app service, but considering that I've invested thousands of dollars and now all of a sudden you change the entire interface without warning us or giving us an option. I'm extremely upset! Thanks for ruining what use to be an enjoyable experience for my family. Change it back! PLEASE! Listen to what your loyal customers are saying and please fix these issues.

[Emissary35]

Now, you have the display that pops up when you resume, pause, rewind, fast forward you have to wait for it to go away on its own where as before you could just hit the back button to make it disappear. This is really annoying. I understand that it only stays on the screen for 5 seconds, but you should give us the option yo turn this feature on or off.

You've changed it to mimic the others like Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu which I really dislike. Why?

Also, if you're making all these changes, maybe you should think about fixing the subtitles that are always bouncing around in front of the screen. Why can't you make the subtitles stay at the bottom inside the black bar so they don't block the picture? It's very annoying.

I realize that I'm complaining about a free app service, but considering that I've invested thousands of dollars and now all of a sudden you change the entire interface without warning us or giving us an option. I'm extremely upset!

My thoughts exactly! The controls staying on the screen blocking the video after starting or resuming is absolutely infuriating. Five seconds is a really long time to block the start of each and every video especially for TV episodes that begin immediately. Before we could hit the "Back" button on the remote to dismiss the overlay but now doing that simply backs us out of the video. At least you could make them disappear faster on the old app but even on the old app it was not necessary for this. The controls do not need to pop up automatically, not ever, only when the users wants to see them should they appear on the screen by pressing the "Up" or "Down" arrows on the remote.

It certainly seems Vudu is just copying Netflix and all the other streaming sites, in the same way all of those other streaming sites can't wait to copy all of the bad things that Netflix does. It's getting to the point where I'm fed up with the look and poor functionality of nearly all of these major apps. A lot of them are bloated with large images, videos playing in the background and pop up annoyances that appear during video playback that you can't shut off which they all call 'features' but it's really just spam with no option to disable.

You have every right to complain, you say Vudu is a free service but people have spent thousands of dollars as you say you have purchasing content. All of your complaints are valid, keep yelling until Vudu listens and fixes this, all of us need to let them know how terrible and unnecessary this update was and how it needs to be reverted back. I'm really tired of software developers making major changes to things that people like and don't need to be changed, it's like they need to justify their existence by making the look of things completely different every once in a while to make it look like they are actually doing something all day, these are the terrible results.

[StuartR]

Agree with GodblessTX and Emissary35 completely 110%. If VUDU... I'm sorry.. Fandago ... or whoever is in charge now...feels compelled to push these awful change on us, users should at least have the option to use the "old" format to suit their needs. VUDU was my most favorite streaming platform, but overnight has become one of my least favorite.

[flyfree432]

Well, FelipeF? Any chance they are going to fix this disaster?

[jeremymc7]

The only hope here is that they decided to recode from scratch and this is just the first pass. But given the lack of functionality and slow speed this pass should have had it’s released passed on.

[ploog]

I can only see 5 movies or shows at a time?

The new app remains a hassle as regards scrolling content and a number of other ways, but it appears that a new version was rolled-out at some point that tweaked the UI to allow display of 12 title thumbnails at a time --- so now an improvement over the 10 from the previous version.

Roku VUDU app "UI version": 1.0.80

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As part of the change, they relocated the 'Filter' button ... which remains a clunky, opaque mechanism in this new release.

Another change appears to be the My Movies/TV pages not trying to display artwork for whatever it perceives as the title in focus. This bodes well for future performance improvements ... which will hopefully include elimination of the 50-title scrolling speed bump, and eventually hyper-scrolling.