We have a collections feature for movies but not for TV Shows and I wanted to put a request in to enable that feature in TV also. I know you may be asking what value that would bring as TV shows are so many episodes over so many seasons…
I can provide a great example of where a collection may be useful in this area. The Crossover episode, You know the type I am speaking of. For example the “The Flash–Supergirl–Legends of Tomorrow–Arrow 4-way crossover”. This is one that had part of the story line in the following episodes.
The Flash, Season 3, Episode 8: Invasion!
Supergirl, Season 2, Episode 8: Medusa
Arrow, Season 5, Episode 8: Invasion!
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 7: Invasion!
Having themes in a single collection would be a great way to link them together. Currently the only way to do this is creating a playlist.
You do have inline collections for tv shows, same as for movies – when editing a show, you can go to the Tags section and assign a collection to the show.
However this does not reflect cross-series episodes… just showing they’re related.
I’m personally using this not only for collections of the same media type but e.g. cross-media collections (such as Star Wars with the 3 canon trilogies and the animated series such as Clone Wars or Rebels) – when looking at such a collection, the respective other media will show up as “related media”).
Thanks, yes, after posting this I had done some additional digging ad found the collections at the series level for TV Shows. However, while that is great it still does not address how to handle Crossover shows. In addition, on the Plex for Ruku, accessing a collection was a few to many steps. Enough so that it really defeated the purpose of the collections. At least for how i would use them.
The pro for a collection, even how it is step up currently, is that anyone connected to your server will be able to see the collections (related material) if they take the additional steps to locate them. This brings up the con. First go to TV Shows, then browse then change filter to collections. at least 3 steps to get there.
The pro for a playlist (basically a collection also) is that there is a button right there on the nav menu to access them. A single click vs 3 clicks for a collection. However the con is that you cannot share a playlist so that others can have access also if desired.
Do not get me wrong, I love the Plex and all of the features, i just think there could be some way to add or modify a feature so that TV Series crossovers (and they are getting more and more it seems) is possible.
You can change the advanced settings of your library/libraries to display collections in line with the library content. You can define if they showin addition to the regular items or if you want to hide the items that are part of a collection.
In the meantime you can even overwrite this configuration for individual collections (example: bundle all Star Wars movies but show the collection plus its items for all your Pixar movies).
Actually this is a huge difference compared to playlists (also playlists won’t allow you to set a custom poster/background)
Thanks Tom, while being able to set a custom poster / background can be appealing it is minor compared to what my expectations of how the collection should be presented. My default on the libraries was already set to show them in line but that does not do what I am after.
In the case of plex on the roku, for example. I created a Star Wars collections in my movies. I go to plex on the roku, I see on the main menu (besides all of the clip are regarding recently added, played, etc). nav buttons on the left. Frist one is of course Play list. Right there in plain site and easy to access. I also see other buttons representing the different libraries I have configured. No “Collections” button here. I then go into my movies library.
From here I see 3 nav buttons. Browse All, Unplayed, and folders. Hey, this would be a great place for a collections button given that we have room still. Nope, no collections. I then go deeper by selecting “Browse All”. Here is see a ply button and a randomize button for the left nav area. Now, if nothing has been changed yet you will see your full library that you can scroll through. But if you want to get to collections you now have to navigate to the top menu and select the “Movies” item to change between Movies or their Collections. A lot of extra and not needed steps that could have been easily addressed 2 steps back and easier to access.
I think the idea of collections is great, however, it provides little value for me at least in its current state. Easy enough to set up but not easy enough to truly take advantage of it.
Adding a “collections” button to the library menu of the Roku would go a long way to making it easy to use and thus increase the usable of this feature.
On the subject of TV libraries it would also be great, along with the Collections that there was also a “Crossover” feature for tv shows that criss cross other TV shows. This is becoming more and more a comment theme in shows like all of the Law & Orders / Chicago shows and then there is the DC Universe with Flash, Arrow, DC Legends, Supergirl and their cross overs.
Thanks for the tip. I had actually read that one before posting and have something similar for the time being. But, still not as good as having a crossover section. I was looking at my different devices (Browser, Ruku and Plex for Android) and of the 3 the Plex for Android has EXACTLY what i was talking about for the ease of accessing a created collection. In both the web browser and the Ruku for Plex there are 2-3 steps needed to even get to where the collections have been created. However, on the Plex app on my Android phone there is a single click. In that version of the app I click on the “Shows” or “Movies” and then see the following options. “All Shows”, “Collections” (right there on top ), “Playlist” and “On Deck”. No need to dig deeper for another step or two to locate the collections.
Now if the Browser and Ruku versions can take note and add similar features then we are making it easier to locate the collections.
Crossover episodes are a good example, but an even better one, already discussed a couple of times elsewhere in the forum, is episodes that deviate into some other genre than most of the episodes in a series. Often drama series will do a comedy episode, for example. The best example, however, might be Christmas or other holiday episodes. Most series do a Christmas show just about every year. I would very much like to have a collection containing all the Christmas episodes of all the TV shows in my library. The same could go for New Years, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.
I would not think this feature would be a difficult one to add. I’m not sure why it wasn’t included in the first place. It seems rather obvious, to me.
), “Playlist” and “On Deck”. No need to dig deeper for another step or two to locate the collections.