EDIT: Since most users seem to misunderstand my feature request, let me rephrase what I’m looking for.
Alongside my locally stored movies in the Plex library, I’ve also bought movies from service like Apple TV (the former iTunes Store) or Vudu over the years. To keep up with where I can watch a particular movie, I’ve resorted to an unattractive Excel sheet.
Users should be able to use the “Discover Source” feature of Plex to add movies and tv series to the library, which they have bough on other on-demand platforms.
I’m obviously not asking to have those movies be played through Plex. But rather have Plex link out to the corresponding app on the same device.
Similar to how Plex shows on which services a particular movie can be rented from.
I’m sorry, but I’n not sure how your reply relates to my feature suggestion. Already checked the available documents but could not find any mention of such a feature.
Will in-app purchases for Plex Pass or Rentals be supported?
Currently, in-app purchases are not available in the Plex Experience Preview. If you’d like to start a Plex Pass subscription or (for US and Canadian users) rent a movie, you can do so in our existing apps and website:
I was thrown off, because what is asked for is essentially a server feature.
It has nothing to do with the new client apps.
And it has been requested in the proper subforum before, and was denied. The new app won’t make a difference.
Personally, I think this is a bad idea anyway. We had that before with TIDAL content in a personal Plex music library. Some users are still dealing with the fallout.
And those TIDAL tracks could actually be played in Plex.
Which won’t be the case for rented movies on 3rd-party streaming services. It doesn’t look like there will ever be a video streaming service which will allow their content be streamed through other apps which they don’t control.
I agree, I don’t like the idea either. Could be an option though, if it was supported by streaming services, which as you said will probably never happen.
Sorry, when I’ve not made myself clear, but I’m actually talking about a different feature.
What I’m not requesting:
I’m not talking about streaming content which is tied to an ongoing subscription like Netflix or Hulu. Nor rented content, that is only available to the user for a set period of time like rented movies from Prime Video.
I’m also not looking to play that content through the Plex player itself. I’m aware, that the streaming services don’t have any incentive to provide an API for that wo work.
What I’m looking for:
I use Plex as a tool to manage my movie collection. Besides the movies stored on my NAS, I also buy (license) a lot of 4k movies from places like Apple iTunes or Vudu.
Let’s say I just bought “American Beauty” from Apple as a Black Friday deal. I’d like to go into my Plex library, look for the “America Beauty” entry and hit an “I own this”-button on the movie’s detail page. In the next step I pick “Apple iTunes” from a list to save from which service I’ve actually bought the movie.
When I then go into my library, the movie “American Beauty” should then show up in the list just like my locally stored content. When I select “American Beauty” from my library, it will show me an Apple iTunes logo to indicate where I bought it - or, in an ideal world, would directly link out to the Apple app for playback
My feature request is similar in nature to the Plex Watchlist feature. It’d allow the user to just browse the Plex library to get an overview over all the content they own.
These are all third party services that essentially are competitors to Plex (as far as getting people’s eyeballs). The Plex Discover feature works not because of any cooperation between Plex and those other services, but an arrangement between Plex and a single third party (justwatch.com) that tracks availability of content on streaming services. The deep linking feature on some platforms should allow you to access the specific page for a film on another service (diverting you to the other app), in which case the other service could recognize that you have already bought the title, and let you pay it, but that’s up to them.
It sounds like you are asking for the ability of Plex to let you p5ay back movies you “buy” on other services. That would require Plex have access to DRM setups on other services. That’s not going to happen because those other services have no reason to allow such a partnership.
That’s not what I’m looking for. For obvious reasons, content bough through f.e. Apple TV won’t be able to be played right in Plex.
I’m suggesting, that you should be able to use the Plex Discover feature to hit a button on a movie entry to indicate to Plex, that the user has bought and access to an on-demand version on a particular service.
That movie could then show up in the Plex library view. On movie nights, the user would be able to just browse the Plex library and also see the movies they’ve bought elsewhere.
From there, the deep linking feature would open up the specific app for playback.
Something like this?
Linking an item of a specific streamer from Plex‘s Discover to your library? So it’ll be listed there but bring up Plex Discover or in supported apps try to open the movie/show on a specific streamer‘s homepage / app?
I suppose this could be done manually from the user’s side (you bring up a record on Plex’s Discover and indicate you have the movie on x-services, and that can be stored on your Plex account record). This wouldn’t even need to be a Plex Media Server feature, like Otto mentioned.
One hiccup with this is Plex would need to have additional records for alternate cuts of movies. I just opened the Apple TV+ app here and looked up “The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring”, because I own the original trilogy in the Extended Edition cuts. Apple TV+ has them and the theatrical cuts both, but they are separate listings. If I go to the page for the original (theatrical) version it of it I’m referred to buy it. It’s only on the Extended Edition listing that I have the Play option. So Plex would need to deep link to the Extended Edition page.
Thanks @tom80H. That’s precisely the use case I’d in mind. Too bad, the request has only gotten 29 votes since 2022. The feature is pretty complicated to explain, as I’ve needed a couple of tries to get the idea across myself.
I’ve noticed that both Channels as well as Infuse have already implemented a version of my feature request.
With Channels DVR Server, you can import movies and TV shows from streaming services right into your library. This is a simple way to aggregate content from other sources into your Channels library.
They do this via so called “Stream Links”.
Stream Links are simple plain text files with URLs pointing to content on other services. They import into your Channels library just like Local Content. (…) Instead of a video that is played back, Channels knows that they are links and will open the appropriate streaming app to play them.
Hey @TOMillr let me explain a little bit about how this linking between apps works. I believe I understand what you are asking for here. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have the data to do what you are asking. The Discover feature does include what we call “deeplinking” (the term might have been mentioned in the thread and if I am over-explaining, apologies) which is simply linking to a title or area beyond the initial homepage of another app.
To link in to a “free to play” movie we generally do have the ids to build the deeplink directly to that title on that app. However, most apps treat a “purchased” versus a “VOD” (video-on-demand) title differently even through they are the same actual movie. Therefore, the deeplink to a purchased title will be a different link than we are currently providing. You could actually see this in action if you could find a title that was offered on one service for rental and another for purchase (rental is a different ID as well)
Now let’s assume that we did have the deeplink info to the purchased title - then we would need to build a feature on Plex Discover to let you mark as purchased (and maybe store that info to make it easier for you next time) or provide a decision point when linking out to the other app. There may be other ways to make this happen, but those are two ideas off the top of my head. And none of the ideas would work unless we had the specific link to the purchased title vs the VOD title, which we don’t currently have.
So the TL;DR; here is that I don’t think it is possible to do this right now without building additional functionality into Plex to help you track this sort of thing (or at a minimum to help make a decision on which link to use assuming that we had the deeplink data).
If we ever did get this data in the future I could see us thinking through something like a “virtual library” that just contained titles and links out to target services.
Post Update:
Apparently I wrote out this reply a while back but forgot to hit send and just now found it in my forum drafts. It is awesome that you found a solution here and I hope that that works well for you going forward! We are unlikely to implement something like this mainly due to being restricted on using deeplinks on some platforms and in our current sourced deeplink data not always containing this information.
If you did want to try something here, you could select our “buy” link on Where to Watch and see if that takes you to that page on that specific app where assuming you are logged in that app might have your purchase info for that title and get you to where you want to be, but YMMV depending on the app and link, so no promises here.
I echo that I want this feature as well. I just tried the “buy” link on Where to Watch for the movie “Seabiscuit” and clicked on Apple TV and it brought me right to my purchased title and I could play it right there. However, it would be nice if on the Plex side, it was populated or marked that you own the title either in Fandango/Amazon/Apple system.
Yes, Channels and Infuse does a great job with the streamlinks that will work in clicking on the movie and taking you to the dedicated title within that external system. My struggles with Channels and Infuse is they do not have a “suitable” system of handling movie/tv show extras that you rip from discs.
Already checked the available documents but could not find any mention of such a feature.
