Well, not exactly I think, but maybe. Since Plex started hosting the ad based content, the UX is designed so that people need help getting content from their own collection vs Plex content that nobody, in this case, wants.
It’s gotten to the point that I can’t help family members over the phone. Today a movie was being played from my server on a Roku, as shown in my server dashboard and it had an ad for “Ninja Creami” some kind of a blender. User was playing the movie and I could hear the ad over the phone while looking at the dashboard of the movie playing.
We are about an increment or two from ditching Plex for Emby.
I have a Roku and I’ve never seen this happen. Giving Plex the benefit of doubt, maybe the Roku bugged and allowed two instances of Plex channel to be streaming at once, one streaming from my server in the background and one streaming from Plex’s servers with ads.
Otherwise, Plex literally just put ads over my content.
Okay, more info to add. The movie he was watching is not in Plex’s collection of movies. I could hear the ad on the phone, I could see the movie playing on my server dashboard, then when the ad ended I could hear the movie dialog.
At this point the only explanation is that Plex is injecting ads now. I hope it’s a bug.
Considering you’re not asking for help… just a brief feedback that Plex does not inject ads to your local content.
I’ve seen users claiming that multiple times. Usually it turns out they were actually playing a movie from the ad-supported video on demand service, one of the live-tv streaming channels or watched a recorded movie with ads that had been recorded that way.
I’ve also seen users dumping all kind of weird content into their preroll videos.
There have been rare occurrences (quite some time ago) where users were utilizing clients that somehow ended up injecting ads into video streams (IIRC that were mostly platforms with some rogue apps that did that; not the streaming box OS itself – except for allowing that kind of cross-app interaction).
I agree with Tom, I have not seen a single ad using my own content. I disable Movies & Shows on Plex from my Online Media Sources to make sure I never stumble across any of them.
If you wish to troubleshoot the issue, we can. I’d like to request some pics of various things at various points to try to nail down when this is happening. Let me know if you are interested in getting this fixed. If you just wanted to blame Plex but not seeking help, then… fine too.
My main point was that nearly every single person deals with this confusion and needs help. If you do a Google search you can see threads on here and Reddit where people are confused.
If it weren’t so confusing I don’t think we would have to disable the links though. We could live in harmony with Plex content if weren’t so confusing. Instead I send people the Online Media Sources link and they disable everything.
“We haven’t seen your server in months, it all just ads now.” It’s there, it’s just not pinned anymore. Maybe they are dummies, yes.
I will take a look at the Roku this week and get him to take me through how he did this. The facts were as I stated with this case though. Very strange, I could hear the ad and then the movie and the Dashboard reflected the same. It could definitely be another app on the Roku causing it. What makes it annoying is that I started the diagnosis with the same assumption yall did. Why?
I do agree with you there. I wish the free service stuff would be turned off or shoved aside if you log in onto an account that has access to a server. I’ve been trying to think up a way for the free content to still be accessible to new accounts without them being confused for our own content.
While the content isn’t full of the latest and greatest, there are still some fantastic gems hidden among the rough stones. So I don’t want to see them just give up on the service stuff by shutting it down entirely. But short of having a NEW ACCOUNT ORIENTATION!! tutorial for new accounts (I do not like this idea), I don’t see how we can have it all.
