Brand new Plex user and loving it. I have a feature request to make Plex even cooler - Programming your own schedule of your media. Basically I want to turn my Movies, Shows, and other visual media into a scheduled playlist so that Plex becomes my own private Television. I could arrange movies, shows, music videos, family videos, and other media to play on a schedule and when I turn on Plex, it just goes to that schedule. I wouldn’t expect the server to be playing the content regardless of whether or not there’s a device connected, but in the event that a device connects, it starts playing the appropriate media based on the schedule, and at the correct time location in the movie/show/video based on the schedule. Basically, private TV.
A basic beta implementation:
- Create a standard playlist and order the content as desired.
- In the menu, select something like “Schedule play time” or “Add to airing schedule”.
- Select date and desired time for the playlist to begin playing or end playing.
- Some way to visualize the when the schedule begins/ends on a timeline.
- On the Home page, have an option for watching the schedule play when available, maybe something like “On air now”.
Some ideas on how to make this even better:
- Rather than schedule any specific episode or movie, instead you would select a show and it would play a random or consecutive episode. Rather then select a specific movie, I could define a filter and it would select at random a movie based on that filter.
- To further automate the schedule, I could decide on a buffer time amount between showings during which a random assortment of shorter media could play, or even just music from my library. Maybe I have a playlist of old commercials that I want to play in between media. Or maybe trailers for movies and shows in my library. I could define playlists that Plex would pull from to play in-between features.
- Even better than me having to define it is having Plex the controls up front and create a schedule and maybe I come in a tweak it here and there, but mostly I’m just defining some rules and it takes the reins.
- Plex generated screens announcing the schedule at the beginning and ending of features, like what you might see in standard television programming.
This is my grown-up Christmas wish. This would be a “shut up and take my money” feature for me. Maybe there’s even a way to monetize this for Plex, maybe I could have the option to select commercials to play in between features. Sometimes having commercials is desirable. But I would tread lightly here and not get greedy. I would want the ability to choose whether or not to have commercials play, and the ability to specify the kinds of commercials I want. If I’m forced to watch the same stupid ads over and over again - I might as well be on YouTube.
