Plex, a popular media player and streaming service, has started testing its redesigned app on Apple TV, marking a significant expansion of its "reimagined" experience that initially debuted on mobile devices in November. The company announced the preview, which is now available for tvOS users, in a blog post, emphasizing its desire to gather early feedback from the community.

The revamped app puts a spotlight on Plex's live TV and on-demand content, prominently displaying these features in the navigation bar. However, users can opt to disable these features if they only care about accessing their personal library. It's worth noting that the regular Plex app remains available, and users need to opt into the preview to access the new features.

One of the most notable changes in the redesigned app is the introduction of social features, particularly in the realm of user reviews. With user permission, movie and TV show reviews can now be viewed by everyone across the platform, allowing for comments and discussions. This move seems to be inspired by the success of platforms like Letterboxd, which has built a community around user-generated reviews and ratings.

Users can make their profiles publicly accessible on watch.plex.tv, enabling them to share their profiles with others and showcase their watch history, watchlists, and more. This shift towards a more social experience could potentially increase user engagement and foster a sense of community within the Plex ecosystem.

In addition to the redesigned app and social features, Plex is also making HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) hardware encoding available to all Plex Plus customers. This technology offers improved video quality at the same bitrate, resulting in higher-quality video streaming from the Plex Media Server. Furthermore, HDR metadata is fully preserved, ensuring a more immersive viewing experience.

HEVC encoding is supported on macOS, Linux, and Windows devices when using hardware encoding with Apple, Intel, or Nvidia devices. This feature was initially announced in September, and its availability to Plex Plus customers marks a significant enhancement to the service.

The expansion of Plex's redesigned app to Apple TV, along with the introduction of social features and HEVC encoding, demonstrates the company's commitment to improving the user experience and staying competitive in the streaming landscape. As the company continues to gather feedback from the community, it will be interesting to see how these changes shape the future of Plex and its position in the market.