Well, that is a HUGE showstopper....what is the point of it if it doesn't let you sync your progress?
I will come back to this in 1 years time and see how revolutionary this new feature is....
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Plex Launches 'Discover' and 'Universal Watchlist' Features to Help Users Find and Watch Content Across Streaming Services
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I will come back to this in 1 years time and see how revolutionary this new feature is....
Just tried it!! All it does is, gives you search capabilities. I tried playing a Netflix show from within Plex, and it immediately throws me out of Plex and into a browser where the Netflix show opens (also if you're not previously logged into Netflix on your browser, an extra step needed to login). I logged in and played the show for a few mins. Came back to Netflix and no update anywhere that I've started watching this show.
This is not true integration, but just a curated list feature. I'd wait until Plex achieves true integration, to meaningfully use this feature.
This is not true integration, but just a curated list feature. I'd wait until Plex achieves true integration, to meaningfully use this feature.
You'll never be able to play directly inside of plex. It, and services like it, will always send you direct to that streaming services app. Services aren't going to let another app pull their stream in. Certainly not without money changing hands.
Which is fine. Having everything appear in one place is amazing. I don't really care where it plays at if I have one place for search and launching.
Not free. You're paying for these services one way or another. When your phone plan or Amazon deliveries are free, you can tell me that the above services are free.
Waste is subjective.
Define "healthy bank balance" in your case.
If you make enough money, these various streaming services are a non starter, it doesn't even register as consequential.
If a few streaming services is affecting your bank balance that bad that you post about it on the internet, your bank balance ain't so healthy.
Some peoples defintions of "healthy bank balance" if you notice it missing, you probably can't afford it.
my phone plan costs the same whether I use those services or not. I'm going to pay for prime for shipping regardless if they give me prime video or not. Paramount+ wasn't even a tmobile promo when I signed up. Years later they gave it to me and my bill didn't change. Slice it up however you wish.
Either way, I have plenty of money and i'm happy to pay for the things I(and my family) find value in.
If you read the thread, you would of already known this. It works the same way in AppleTV.
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I stream 4k no problem, no buffering. Try getting a better router or wifi.
This article should’ve been clearer about a few things:
1. As others have noted, non-Plex content is not played from within the Plex app; you’re taken to the non-Plex app.
2. You’ll need to manually configure streaming sources you want included in searches.
3. “Upgraded personal media management features” are available for Plex Pass owners (one-time fee) and not just Plex Premium monthly subscribers.
4. This is considered beta by Plex.
1. As others have noted, non-Plex content is not played from within the Plex app; you’re taken to the non-Plex app.
2. You’ll need to manually configure streaming sources you want included in searches.
3. “Upgraded personal media management features” are available for Plex Pass owners (one-time fee) and not just Plex Premium monthly subscribers.
4. This is considered beta by Plex.
I already watch everything through the Apple TV app’s ‘up next’. I wish Plex would integrate your movie collection into the Apple TV app, not the other way round, but I guess this is great for non-Apple devices. I know plex already integrates their on demand content so hopefully not too far away
Unfortunately that’s not likely to ever happen unless Apple makes a pretty big change to how its TV app indexing works.
Basically, the TV app relies on a cloud-based catalog of content — it doesn’t index what’s available in the actual apps on your Apple TV. Further, that catalog is stored on a per-country basis, not a per-user basis. The TV app shows the same content to everyone in the same country.
As things work now, for the TV app to be able to index your own Plex Media Library, Apple would have to support user-specific catalog databases, and Plex would have to upload an index of everything in your library to Apple’s servers.
Apple will likely never support individual user catalogs on their servers, as that would make things an order of magnitude more complicated, and Plex is understandably reluctant to upload user library information anywhere for privacy reasons. It’s even made it very clear that this latest feature doesn’t expose your personal media library beyond your own server.
The only other way this could be made to work is if Apple’s TV app could read your Plex library directly through the Plex app. I think it’s even less likely that this will ever happen, as it’s entirely on Apple’s end, and Apple has no incentive to actually do this.
Apple wants Netflix to provide information to them, from their app, to populate the list in the Apple TV app. It would presumably require Netflix writing some code to talk to one of Apple's APIs. Some streaming services have agreed to do this, Netflix has not.
With Plex, I'm going to guess the Plex folks are either scraping the data from a Netflix website, or using some API that Netflix has made available. Other reports here have said, if you click on a Netflix move or show (or, presumably shows from other streaming services), it launches the corresponding app to actually show the movie. A number of other apps have been doing similar for a long time. WatchAid, JustWatch, and ReelGood come to mind. It remains to be seen if Plex can perform this feat well enough for it to be worth a subscription (if you don't already have their subscription service).
I suspect it actually is Justwatch on the back end.
Open your Plex account in your browser and search for something and you’ll see all the buttons to other services are actually links to JustWatch.
I'd venture a guess that Apple would rather not have this information - aside from having to do all the data storage and indexing, keeping track of everyone's lists, I suspect the movie studios would want to go on fishing expeditions looking for Plex users who might have movies that they didn't pay for (or that the studio thinks they didn't pay for).
Yup, agreed. It’s a huge can of worms, which is exactly why it hasn’t happened and likely never will. There’s zero upside for Apple, or even Plex, and plenty of downsides.
I could see Apple maybe creating an API someday that would allow local content to be available for the purposes of Siri, but even that’s a long shot. For one, we’ll probably have to wait until the Apple TV comes standard with an A14/M1 or better chip, as it would likely require at least that to handle the on-device Siri intelligence.