Hi everyone! This update brings all features from the beta branch into the stable branch. Most of these changes have already been covered in previous changelogs for the beta branch, so this mostly serve as a summary
Note that for the stable branch, the update will be rolled out gradually over the next few days.
What's new for Stable and Beta
First, I'll start with what's new for both branches
App start-up performance improvements
Large performance improvements have been made to how Dispatch starts up. Users can expect the app to start much quicker than before, as well as be much smoother during those first moments after launch.
Movie / TV Browsing performance improvements
Performance improvements have also been made to the movie and TV browsing pages. These are the pages you see when selecting "open x media" from the home page or library tabs. Browsing through movie trailers, cast members, as well as browsing TV shows and episodes is much smoother than in previous beta releases.
Extra Details page is now accessible from the home page
Like in the browsing pages, you can now highlight the plot of a media item and access the "extra" media details page.
Toggle YouTube trailers, teasers and behind the scenes videos
Users can disable / enable extras from YouTube from the Settings -> Experience page.
Generic performance improvements and UI fixes
Overall performance while using the app has also improved, as well as a variety of visual UI bugs that existed previously.
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Everything below is a summary of features added to previous beta releases that are now in the stable branch.
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Video Summary
First, here's a walkthrough video of the features discussed in this post:
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Media Browsing
With this release, the "info" button/action now navigates to a detailed view of the selected media directly in Dispatch, rather than in Plex. In many places, you will now see actions such as "Open Movie" or "Browse TV Show" instead of the previously generic "info" button.
Movie Browsing
When a movie is selected from either the Home tab, Movies tab, or Search page, users will now be presented with a detailed page for that movie.
Users will see trailers, teasers, featurettes, and scenes from both Plex and YouTube, powered by TMDB.
The movie's cast and crew are also browsable from this page. Selecting a cast / crew member will display all Plex media for this person.
Extra Media Detailed Page
From the main buttons on the movie page, users can now navigate upwards to highlight the movie's plot. Clicking on this will display some more details for this item. Users can scroll up and down in this page using the directional buttons on their remote.
TV Show Browsing
Users can also browse TV Shows. In addition to the cast and trailers found in the movie page, a TV show's seasons are also displayed here. When a season is selected, the episode browser is shown.
Episode Browsing & Episode Cast View
Users can browse all episodes in a season and select which one to play, same as in Plex. By pressing down while an episode is highlighted, the user will be presented with that episode's cast and crew. Cast and crew for episodes are loaded once an episode is highlighted. Once the down arrow appears under the episode thumbnail, the cast is available for browsing.
Go to Show / Season
These two buttons are now available from the home page when viewing a TV Episode or Season, giving a convenient way to navigate through your shows. These are also available from the context menu by long clicking an item.
Collection Browsing
Users can now browse their collections as well. If a collection is missing a background image, a composite image is generated using random posters from the collection.
In addition, users can use the "Select Something Random" button to randomly bring up the detailed view for a random item in the collection. This can be a fun way of picking out a movie or show from a large collection.
Movie Reviews
Dispatch will now display reviews on the movie details page.
Connection Alerts
Dispatch will now display a warning when it can't reach your Plex server. Selecting this notification will attempt to automatically resolve the problem if it can, and if not, it will prompt the user with some further diagnostic steps.
One potential scenario where this comes into play is when a user's Plex authentication session expires. Normally, your Plex authentication token
should not expire
, however, under certain circumstances it can occasionally happen.From the user's perspective, while using Dispatch, this would result in Dispatch "no longer syncing". With these changes, Dispatch will now alert the user that the connection is failing, and upon selecting the notification they would be asked to re-sign in to Plex so that syncing can resume.
Plex re-authentication
Users can also manually re-authenticate their Plex account from Settings -> Profiles & Connections -> Manage Connections
What's next
Work on multiple profiles / profile switching continues. It's progressing well and will hopefully be available shortly enough.