Ad-Supported Movies

General Discussions Plex Features
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An article came out today (1/9/2019) that is being shared and creating a lot of commotion among the Plex communities on Facebook. I don’t know if the “powers that be” at Plex will see what I type here, but maybe if this community has a lot to say in response to this, then maybe it will get seen or make a difference.

First, here is the link to the article by PC Magazine:

Next, a quote from the article for those that don’t want to click the above link:
“That means premium or ad-supported content will show up next to a users’ own media files, although whether or not that will drive consumers to purchase or watch it remains to be seen.”

Here are my thoughts…
I don’t think it should show up along side my own media, it should be separate like how Tidal is separate from my music collection. For example, Tidal is currently in the “Online Content” section of Plex when viewing in Chrome. So I think in that same section it should say “Premium Video”. By having the link says “Premium Video”, that gives Plex the possibility to have in that section ad-based, rent based, or subscription based Movies and TV shows.

Another thought, my six year old son has his own managed user where I give him access only to certain libraries and rating based content. This is great! I love this current Plex feature because I know that my six year old son won’t accidentally (or purposely) start watching The Belko Experiment; but if premium (paid) content will show up along side my current media… What stops whatever algorithm Plex will use to show premium content along my media from showing my son premium content that I do not want him watching? What if I don’t want my son to click on any premium content?

Again, this all goes back to having Premium Video in it’s own section, separate from my own media collection.

On top of this, there should be a new restriction added for user management (at least for managed/home users) to allow or not allow Premium Video. Unless this new Premium Video would fall under the current “Allow Plugins” checkbox. I noticed that for my sons account (a managed/home user) that since I do not allow him plugins, that Tidal does not show up. At least I know he won’t go on Tidal and listen to music that I don’t want him to hear yet.

So, this concludes my rant/suggestion. Maybe I read the article different from everyone else or maybe PC Mag quoted Scott Olechowski incorrectly.

Thoughts?

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Response from Plex CTO/Co-Founder here: Alternative to Plex

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I agree with you that it would be like TIDAL, but just to clarify, with TIDAL (if you subscribe and have it enabled), we do use it to complete/augment your collection. For example, if you’re in your library artist page for Pink Floyd, we:

  • Have an area which shows Pink Floyd albums on TIDAL which you don’t have in your library.
  • Have an area which shows artists similar to Pink Floyd which aren’t in your library.

We’re respectful about how we present this data in separate areas, and we find it incredibly cool to be able to allow people to expand their music universes, while still maintaining the strong delineation between your own content and TIDAL content. It’s much nicer to have an integrated experience than only a separate one (otherwise, you might just use the TIDAL app).

For managed users (e.g. children), we always want to make sure you have control over the content they see, which is why we allow you to turn off these new media sources for them.

If and when we had a premium movie library, you might imagine a similar treatment, but I’m purely conjecturing at the moment. I would summarize it as: respectful, user-enabled augmentation of your personal media libraries.

Make sense?

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Thank you Elan!

This makes perfect sense for me for both audio and video. Also, I was unaware of how Tidal augmented my own library and the way you explained it, makes me much more interested in the service.

I opened the Plex app on my Android to see what it said and why I was not interested the first few times I saw the Tidal ad. I see that it says that it does “…seamless integration with [my] own collection.”, but that was a bit vague for me. Now that I know how it helps to augment my collection, I’ll go ahead and give the free 30 day trial a try.

Yes, I feel much more at ease with the ad-based/premium movie (hopefully TV in the future) service. For example, it would be awesome if I I own the DVD/Blu-Ray for the first four seasons of Eureka and ripped it to my Plex library, that the new service would see that I’m missing season 5 and it would augment that collection by providing the chance to watch season 5 for free with ad-support.

I imagine the movie service would work the same. That if I owned and ripped The Matrix to my library that it would offer the other movies (including The Animatrix) to watch with either ad-support or other premium means.

I’m actually excited now!
…and in my opinion, the articles in the press did not do a very good job of reporting the future feature.

Thank you again Elan for the response!

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But this needs to go further than TIDAL integration. It needs to take Ratings into effect.
So if you have a teenager and have given access to everything up to PG-17 but not past that you don’t want “R” or “NR” or empty rated movies showing up in any shape or form for that person.

Many admins will have users that are NOT managed but will have restrictions on ratings. Any augmentations of media or showing of new media need to have a way of setting this as well for all users.

TIDAL needs this same treatment. There is so much foul mouth and immoral language in today’s songs it’s ridiculous. There needs to be a way to at least tone this down to “radio safe” songs for kids and teens (and not controlled by the teens account which is pointless).

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Is this just an example or does Plex really do this? I don’t get how this can be done without plex collecting our information of what we have or TIDAL is collecting by way of process of limitation.

But I guess I need to know PLEX INC definition of collect information.
I’m sure I can find it somewhere on the EULA page… but I’m not going to…

Sounds like a kick in the face. You can/will do this but not a way to show what episodes are missing from a series. For shame…

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Plex really does this. The server e.g. asks the cloud “hey, what Jethro Tull albums does TIDAL have” and then locally de-dupes before sending to client.

I don’t understand what you’re saying here, and I must admit, I don’t really appreciate your tone.

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Elan.
I think what New Plaza is asking is if the server can ask the cloud “hey, what Jethro Tull albums does TIDAL have” and then locally de-dupes…

…Would it also be possible for the server to ask the cloud (TVDB in this case) what episodes are we missing of (insert show name here)… then maybe a placeholder with a red cross or something like that for those episodes.

If that’s the case the conversation would have been in my case…

Wow that’s pretty cool. It got me thinking it would be great if the server could also poll the TVDB for missing episodes of all the shows in my library. If i could filter missing episodes maybe.
Do you think its feasible/achievable? If so i’m gonna add a feature request. (after checking one doesn’t already exist of course.)

That said, if that feature request does exist with a decent amount of votes (I have no idea, btw ) I can kind of see what New Plaza is saying, despite the hyperbolic way of saying it.

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Yeah, what @Xhaka said.

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Thanks for the explanation and friendly tone :sweat_smile:

I can see how the two things sound rather similar, but there is totally different tech involved (at the moment, at least), and the fact that any TIDAL content is playable vs TVDB wouldn’t be. So a fair number of things to think about…

…but, we have definitely talked about things like this before.

So I appreciate the suggestion!

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To be honest I personally didn’t think they were.
Comparing what David Bowie or The Clash albums I have have to the missing ones that Tidal has is way different to comparing to those artists entire catalogue.
What New Plaza is saying is in effect more the latter.

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My tone was fine. I made no rude remarks, heck I said far worst to @Xhaka. I may have suggested that money talks and non-money doesn’t but that’s it. If that offends you then my apologies.

I understand they are totally different tech somewhat. But they both can be done at the programming level. We won’t need to create new tech or hardware to make this a reality.

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Have you?
Well if so, its all water under the bridge. :grinning:
Oh and I probably deserved it.

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Ha, I got confused. It was @dane22 but we made up, lol

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I’ve seen a few questions and concerns in here about how Tidal can augment your collection. As I mentioned to Elan earlier in this thread, I am currently trying the free 30 day trial for Tidal with Plex. From what I can tell, Tidal doesn’t actually look at what albums you have, it really just checks to see what artists you have. Then if Tidal has a participating artist that matches an artist you have, it shows you all available albums in Tidal for that artist, regardless of the albums you have. If I remember how to add a screen shot to this post, I’ll show an example of what Plex with Tidal looks like.

You may or may have not caught on to what I said about participating artists. This is something that I noticed while using Tidal with Plex. Not all artists authorize their music or even if they are only featured in a song on Tidal. For example, I was listening to a Tidal album on Plex, but noticed it had two of the songs dimed (greyed) out. It was because those two songs featured an artist that does not participate in Tidal. Keep in mind that Tidal is artist owned and not all (current) artists get along with the current owners of Tidal. This is no big issue for me, because so far those artists that don’t want their music on Tidal, I don’t want to hear their music either.

Anyway, that is how Tidal works with augmenting your music if you go your your music media in Plex. Also, instead of leaving Plex and going to the Tidal web page or app, there is a Tidal link inside Plex that shows you the same info in Plex as if you were to login to Tidal directly. This mainly shows you what is new to Tidal, Top X songs on Tidal, and Top X songs in the genre and so forth.

So to sum it up very short, Plex and Tidal only look at what artists you have and then it shows you albums on Tidal for that artist along with any music videos. It doesn’t really care what albums or tracks you have.

So for the screen shots below, you see that the only album I have for Ariana Grande is Dangerous Woman. The section “Tidal Albums” are all of the albums for her on Tidal, and as you can see, Dangerous Woman is listed again in the Tidal section. Then there is a section for recommendations for other artists on Tidal, and then the music videos for the artist. The music video qualities range from cell phone quality to HD at 1080. I haven’t sen any videos higher than 1080 yet.

Lastly, only because Pink Floyd was the main artist in this thread, I’m showing a screen shot of how Pink Floyd looks. The first 3 albums are in my collection that I ripped from CD, then it shows similar artists from my collection, then it shows artists that I might like from my friends Plex server (I never saw this before and also cut out his Plex username from the screen shot), and then it shows the albums for Pink Floyd on Tidal.

I hope this clears up any questions, concerns, or confusion of using Plex with Tidal.
If not, I recommend you try the free 30 day trial yourself while you still have the option.

Plex-Tidal
Plex-Tidal813×615 144 KB

Plex-Tidal-2
Plex-Tidal-21005×498 162 KB

Plex-Tidal-3
Plex-Tidal-3942×531 157 KB

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If I understand Elan’s reply to me with my concern about restrictions, that if and when they have the new ad-based/premium feature for video, it will abide by the restrictions set in place by the admins. Since restrictions are set the same way for home users and shared users, then it won’t matter if the user on your server is managed or not, the restrictions will still be enforced.

What I discovered with Tidal, is that my son’s home user account (or managed user as it used to be called), does not see any Tidal content at all, not even the Tidal link. It could be that my sons account does not see Tidal content because of the restrictions I have on his account. I haven’t played around with changing his restrictions to see if he can see Tidal content or not. From what I can tell, Tidal is strictly a per user subscription, not a per server subscription. So any other user on your server, managed or not, will have to get their own Tidal subscription for Tidal content.

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I agree wholeheartedly with this. For other media though, it must be VERY CLEAR if playing a media would trigger payment in case in the future plex allow us to buy/rent movies from VUDU / AMAZON / ITUNES etc.
Even if it’s only ad supported it must be made clear.

For example, plex can add overlay icon on the corner of movie poster to indicate that movies are ads supported or premium to rent or buy.
Or better yet, let the customers to choose just like current ui flow for handling copies of the same movie. So for example upon choosing Interstellar customers can choose which version he wants to play: his own collection, rent from iTunes etc, ads supported version, or free ones from OTA or cable TV providers.

Having plex as one app to access all online media in addition to our own collection is great for seamless integration but needs to complete / augment our collection instead of dirty tricks like amazon video that’s optimised to make people rent / buy more than using the free ones.

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As long you @elan promise me, that I always can deactivate this stuff (which I honestly don’t need) - I’m fine.

But really,… this online stuff and ads on movies,… really? Hopefully you stick to your if-only-the-minority-of-users-use-it-we-will-drop-it policy as you did on plugins. Because this feature(s) will be dropped quite fast then.

But must of us know what happens if the gates of hell are slightly opened…

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Only he can.

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I promise (as we allow today with all online content providers, you can disable them in your account settings).

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