While I understand the new Discover feature is something lots of folks want, I however don’t. My local media is all I care about, nothing else and I’m sure plenty of other folks have the same opinion as me.
Currently there is no way to fully disable this new Discover and subsequently Streaming Services (More Ways To Watch). The major side effect of this is that when you perform a search external content to our servers is returned in the search results.
We should have an option to disable this on our servers or via our actual plex accounts so its hidden.
My inadequate 5 votes have not changed in a few years now (none of them seem to be on the road to implementation). Today I finally have reason to pull a vote from another request in order to vote for this.
I quit voting years ago. I do not like giving Plex more to ignore. As far as I can tell the voting system is only there to give Plex something to point to and say, “See, we are open to suggestions,”
sure they are open to the ones that make them cash…
I started with this software way before it changed it’s name to Plex… I’ve always wondered how a select few managed to convert this to a personal business enterprise.
When so many had input to the software.
While the writing on the wall is pretty clear about where Plex is headed overall, I’m hopeful that somebody there still has a burning passion for local libraries and will see fit to add a way to completely disable this.
Then you have not been paying attention for the last several years. Plex, some time ago, stopped doing things that enhance using local media in favor of almost everything else.
Nearly every “enhancement” is apparently designed to slow down Plex and make it harder to use local media.
Plex wants to be Netflix or Hulu with the use of local media rapidly becoming an afterthought.
But even with all the evidence to the contrary I keep hoping that Plex will pull themselves out of the cesspool of software that is mainly “click bate” (and other ways to exploit users) and reenter (after taking a long shower) the world of software that actually does the only really important thing software can do: Work correctly and provide a good solid service without being too much in the way.
I did say the writing on the wall is pretty clear about where things are headed. Even with that, though, they have provided toggles for all of the other major invasive outside features (the “Online Media Sources”), so there’s a bit of hope they will do so here, too.
Every Plex developer that really had the quality of the software and the user experience in mind was somehow placed under so much pressure that they stopped rocking the boat and, if there was a developer that truly wanted to develop good software then Plex would hire them and then use that to make them conform to the Plex “vision.”
See Roku development as a good example. They had a piece of software that was vastly superior to what Plex could produce and Plex did not like that so the hired ljunkie and the somehow force him to abandon his software (Roksbox I think it was called) and then use his expertise to remake the Roku Plex software in the way Plex wanted and he also pretty much disappeared from posting much.
That is what or who Plex cannot destroy or convert they absorb and change.
So with that…
I would think that the home media library as we all have it is no longer in Plex’s game plan. Plex is becoming a media streaming company. That’s why we don’t control our own libraries, we have to get authorization from Plex to use our own media. To do otherwise makes us jump through hoops. If Plex shut off the authorization API… most would be in the dark.
I have already discovered that option. Emby is much of what Plex could have become if they had avoided most of Satan’s temptations.
There are even several other solutions that will catalog and play media pretty well but the only one that works well for me is Emby. And they actually listen to their users. They do not always provide what I or others want but they do almost always say why and their developers actually often answer questions and try to help their users with problems.
Yeah, I’ve been resisting the temptation to switch because I’d already invested so much into Plex. I also had (note the use of past tense) a genuine respect for the quality of the product and the work the devs had put into it.
Time to bite the bullet, tho, and stop throwing good time and money after bad. Looks like Emby is getting another user this week.
Would a Plex employee mind clarifying whether it’s intentional that I’m receiving search results for stuff on services that I don’t have accounts connected to?
The search function is now unreliable/illegible, as it returns tons of results I can’t actually watch — I’d rather just save the stress/hassle and search directly from the other platform-native apps.
I’m hoping it’s an oversight, especially since we’ve had granular toggles on every other online feature to date.
EDIT: Nevermind, it appears intentional to receive search results regardless of your connected accounts: http://disq.us/p/2o801fm
Allowing the option to only return search results from account-relevant platforms would be a huge step in making this feature usable.
My server just updated itself and now search no longer functions correctly, giving me hits from “other” services I did not connect and do not own.
I have zero interest in other streaming platforms and just want to search the media I own. I paid for Plex so do not want or expect advertising for other services.
For those who use other streaming platforms, I can see this as being very helpful but if I’m getting incorrect results (with no streaming services linked) how can this even be helpful for those who, say, have just Netflix but get shown hits from Paramount+ too?
Regardless, I need to be able to disable this or somehow “opt out”. The idea that Plex devs can just force new unwanted “features” and ads into this program is rather unsettling. I am all for adding new features if people want them, but any changes to core functionality should be optional. Who’s to say where it ends, otherwise? In a year or two they might change or remove something far more important even.
Regardless, this is the main reason why I hate “software as a service”, as devs can just change things whenever they want and users no longer have what they paid for. I am glad I am not paying an ongoing fee but do regret getting a lifetime pass now last year as I had no idea Plex would pull this kind of bait and switch on their customers and has made me start looking at alternatives, not just because I don’t like this particular change, but knowing that far more could happen in the future.
When I’m paying for an entertainment service, I generally expect that the fee means I no longer need to be served ads to help support for the service, as I’m now paying directly with money rather than with my attention on ads or whatever in order to get it for “free”.
I pay for Plex, I even subscribe monthly (for my sins), but you now are serving me ads with no way to get rid of them. Sure I can unpin “Discover”, but stuff still shows up in my search results (which, I might add, means that every search query must necessarily be hitting an external server or servers, regardless of Plex Inc’s claims of “taking privacy seriously”).
Allow us to actually curate what services we would like results from (I would only be interested in things I have an active subscription to, as I imagine would be many others) and blacklist those we don’t and this might even become a handy feature one day. You also really need to let us opt out entirely if we choose.
As of right now though, this isn’t some magical “feature” that will revolutionise the way I discover and consume media, it’s literally just serving ads (and no doubt harvesting data for sale to creepy profiling firms). As an active paying subscriber, I’m no more happy about seeing ads here than I would be if Spotify or Disney+ suddenly started inserting random ads into everything for their paying subscribers.
I pay and have been paying for some time. Don’t force ads on me. Let me turn them off.
