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Plex Testing TV App Integration Across iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV

jhollington said:
I'm cautiously hopeful about this, as I'm also a bit skeptical that it will actually tie into our actual personal Plex libraries... Due to the way that the TV app traditionally works — leveraging online catalogues from streaming providers — I have a feeling that this might just be for Plex's own free movie and TV show collections.

Unless Apple has made a significant change to the TV providers API under the hood in iOS 14.5, there's simply nowhere for local Plex library data to be stored for the TV app to use.

I'm on the Plex TestFlight and iOS 14.5 beta as well, but I'm not seeing the integration being offered up yet on any of my devices, so either it's U.S. only right now, or it's only being rolled out to some users via a back-end switch.
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That is a great point. Not to mention it claims to not know what you’re watching or streaming from your personal library. Of course I’m sure analytics are collected on the free (ad supported) movies/tv, so that would be more likely to be included. I’d love to know how it looks when it does get implemented!
 
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This is great news. Up next is one thing but if I can open a movie on TV's App and see "play in Plex" I'll be SOOOO happy.
 
Lemon Olive said:
Now that I think about it, Plex does have their "own" content that they provide besides the user library. This is probably just for that content. :(

It's unlikely anything significant has changed for Apple to start allowing user supplied content to start infiltrating the TV app.
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Ding ding ding. This is exactly what this will be for. Not relating to user-generated content at all. The original author should add this to the article as it’s more than likely the correct answer. But if not I will be shocked.
 
Lemon Olive said:
I haven't looked into it directly, but each app that is integrated has to have some sort of live link to Apple so that when content is updated, there is no lapse in the integration.
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That's basically it in principle. More specifically, each provider makes a catalog available to Apple for inclusion in the TV app. The TV app doesn't query each app, but rather it queries the providers' servers directly. The app is only used to play back the content, which is done by a deep-linked URL, in much the same way you can open videos in the YouTube app directly from Safari.

Lemon Olive said:
So as you said, Plex would need to be doing this on behalf of the user to Apple, or directly from a local Plex server to Apple, neither of which seem likely at all. Apple isn't going to want to deal with that.
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Yup. The biggest problem is that each library would have to be user-specific. Not everything in your Plex library is going to be available in mine, and vice-versa, so even if a generic catalog was used, it would still need to be tracked for each user since it would be really silly for the TV app to show every possible TV show and movie that might be in somebody's Plex library.

Realistically, the only way to do this would be to index an individual's Plex library and then store that in the user's iCloud account. That's not an unreasonable approach at all, but it's still a pretty big architectural change to how the TV app works right now, and it's hard to see Apple having any real motivation to do this.

Lemon Olive said:
And for it to even work would be dependent on user content meta data being extremely high quality. I don't know how Apple deals with differing meta data from different apps that provide content, but its probably required to be a 90% match or better with Apple's source for the same content.
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That would also be a huge can of worms. While the simplest would be for Plex to tie it into the existing metadata services, which should provide a pretty good match — after all, my shows and movies from iTunes that I imported into Plex mostly matched up just fine — there'd be no realistic way for the TV app to handle any custom metadata.

This is the same problem that Plex had with Siri and Universal Search long before the TV app was a thing. In order to call up movies and TV shows by name, there has to be a common database that Siri can work from.

The more I think about it, the more unlikely it seems that this is going to happen in the way that many of us have been hoping for.
 
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jhollington said:
Mostly they might just lose some of the data they collect on browsing and searching habits, which I suppose in today's world of navel-gazing analytics could still be a pretty big downside.
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I think you hit on it here. Netflix's entire interface is driven by AI and user browsing habits. I'm sure they think it's brilliant too (it's not). They manage to keep the interface looking fresh and new and attractive to users every time they visit it, while still serving up the familiar for comfort...but it's just an illusion. All the same content duplicated over and over just shifted around. I'm sure they could sacrifice a little bit of browsing data and still create the same illusion.
 
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This will only include the streaming part of Flex, not personal libraries.

But who cares? I have added my personal videos in the TV app and it’s a horrible user experience. The app doesn’t even save my progress when switching devices. it’s also extremely slow when streaming from mac to iOS, and most annoyingly, when swiping the screen the video disappears. Why? I want to remove a smudge on my iPad screen and the video goes away.

this combined with the horrible navigation experience through and you’re left wondering what Apple was thinking. The TV app is easily one of the most crappy apps Apple has ever produced.
 
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i think we do this already?
i can watch a mp4 movie, tv shows from my MacBook air to the TV and airplay from an iPad.
 
hagar said:
This will only include the streaming part of Flex, not personal libraries.

But who cares? I have added my personal videos in the TV app and it’s a horrible user experience. The app doesn’t even save my progress when switching devices. it’s also extremely slow when streaming from mac to iOS, and most annoyingly, when swiping the screen the video disappears. Why? I want to remove a smudge on my iPad screen and the video goes away.

this combined with the horrible navigation experience through and you’re left wondering what Apple was thinking. The TV app is easily one of the most crappy apps Apple has ever produced.
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I wish Apple would prioritize an singular video playback UI for all Apps, and it be one that doesn't suck. Apple's current video playback UI is very poor and they could learn a few things from various different apps that have good and bad parts themselves.

What I would love to see is Apple develop a playback kit for developers to use that gives users the same video playback UI in every app, but with developers having options of turning things on or off (like if they want 15 sec back/fwd...they can opt to include it, or not included it, but it will be in the same place at the same size for every app).

You could put the top 15 video streaming/playback apps next to each other and compare the playback UI...not one of them is offering anything so earth shattering and unique that they couldn't conform to a standard. A little bit of study can find an optimal UI for playback that is a hybrid of the best parts of all of them (from placement, to responsiveness).
 
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I need this in my life. Will make things so much easier and easier for the family.
 
Apple_Robert said:
I will give this a look when it comes out of beta. I am surprised a third party app was allowed to do this. I wasn't aware Apple had opened it up in that regard.
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They haven’t. It will only include the Plex streaming service, just like other online channels.
 
stridemat said:
Oh. It’s not on personal libraries. Only the Plex steaming stuff?!?
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According to first experiences with the beta, yes.
Would be strange if it integrates with local libraries if Apple’s own offering is subpar.
 
hagar said:
According to first experiences with the beta, yes.
Would be strange if it integrates with local libraries if Apple’s own offering is subpar.
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Correct - confirmed by a Plex Employee:

forums.plex.tv

How does the Apple TV app integration work?

It is new. It only works in the US for now, and only the Movies&Shows streaming titles (There may be some obscure items that the TV app cannot search for as it depends if it has a Gracenote match) . It will likely never be library stuff.
forums.plex.tv forums.plex.tv

:(
 
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Pass. Is it really that troublesome to open the Plex app? The entire TV app is so convoluted that I avoid it whenever possible. I understand it's just another way for Apple to funnel us into paid content.
 
This is absolutely huge... I am a major Plex user and have strayed away from the Apple TVs that we have since NVidia and Roku Plex players generally offer a better experience but would love for a better Apple TV Plex experience and if Siri search would work across multiple Plex libraries that is huge.

EDIT:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/lniiij/_/go16q8r

Nevermind... bummer
 
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aaronhead14 said:
Utterly pointless if it doesn’t support home Plex servers.
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I wouldn’t call it pointless. I guess there are some people that use the TV app. Can’t imagine why but its nice this allows them to bring together online content.

Once this was the exact goal of the Apple TV app but they failed miserably.
 
For years I've been streaming local content from the iTunes (now TV) app on my Mac to my Apple TV via Home Sharing. Thinking about switching to Plex. I don't have any huge issues with Home Sharing, but it feels a bit rudimentary and the switch to those weird horizontal thumbnails was just baffling and looks horrible.

Any big downsides to Plex I should be aware of? I'd just be using the free version to replicate a (hopefully) more polished version of Home Sharing.
 
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hagar said:
I wouldn’t call it pointless. I guess there are some people that use the TV app. Can’t imagine why but its nice this allows them to bring together online content.

Once this was the exact goal of the Apple TV app but they failed miserably.
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How so? With the exception of holdouts like Netflix and YouTube (worst app on my Apple TV by far) I can usually scroll through and find whatever I've been watching, and new episodes of shows I watch on HBO Max, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, tend to pop up when they come out. I do find the Netflix omission pretty irritating, but that just means I watch less stuff on Netflix because it's less visible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
ignatius345 said:
Any big downsides to Plex I should be aware of? I'd just be using the free version to replicate a (hopefully) more polished version of Home Sharing.
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Yes, there are, such as privacy concerns and as far as I know a mandatory Plex account is needed.
Therefore, the better choice is probably Emby.
I use Emby on the AppleTV with Infuse for movies. For photos and music I use the Emby app itself. MrMC could be used as well.
My emby server is currently running in a jail on TrueNAS.
 
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