Yeap and I can see why folks might like and want it. It’s however not for me and it needs to be disabled for those of us who don’t want it.
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I mean, the new Discover feature is actually great! (Or will be once it could be ironed out a bit more.)
I’m sure many will use it, I don’t see anything wrong with these articles.
What’s more of a problem is how it was imposed on everybody in ways that can be perceived as intrusive to many users (like the “More Ways To Watch” items, for example.)
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You cannot remove the “More ways to watch” at the bottom of search
And here I thought we were going to be lifelong friends, but I was mistaken. Dang.
Can you at least answer this for us… are you going to allow us to disable this or is it never going to be something we can turn off?
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I posted this in the feature request thread so I’ll post it here too.
If I have everything in the Online Media Sources disabled I should not be seeing anything in the search results but my own locally stored content. I only use Plex for stuff I own and have on my server, I don’t need or want to be seeing ads for streaming services or online content I don’t care about.
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Let me see if I have this straight. You run Plex on your Ubuntu desktop and use it to admin your plex (probably from via loopback) and when you happen to have plex scanning new media you also cannot click a simple button on a web page at the same time.
I’m in no way defending Plex’s discission to make this a full-page pop-up with no close button other than “Get Started”, or no way to disable showing other providers for media other than un-pinning the discover page. At this point I’m laughing at your inability to use a web browser while at the same time plex is scanning media. And then subsequently blaming someone else for your own problem.
took me less than 5 minutes to switch trough all my users that I know the pin to, or don’t have a pin to click through that pop-up. And one of them, as I mentioned earlier, had already done it. and She is as computer illiterate as a person can be.
@rossinior I think you touched the most important fact of them all: Many plex uses like you or me use plex precisely BECAUSE they do not wish to subscribe to streaming services, but rather buy their own movies and store them digitally. I don’t even understand why anyone would bother use use plex as well as multiple streaming services, except for watching unknown movies which are not known to many people (and thus can be streamed from Amazon, Netflix, etc…).
So keeping this in mind, this feature is probably a “nice to have” for some users, but a “does not concern me” for many other plex users. Especially for the power users who have many movies or series on their plex server.
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I use plex SPECIFICALLY because I DO NOT want to deal with or use corporate streaming services. Please add a toggle before I seriously consider moving to Jellyfin.
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i see we’re once again in one of those “if we put enough distractions in front of people perhaps they’ll watch our ads instead of the media we’re supposed to be playing, and forget that we forgot to build an actual revenue stream” phases. This is, what, the ninth time or something?
Plex continues to reinvent roku/fire stick/whatever in an even less convenient way; at least Roku never made any claims about being ad-free, it was always ad-supported.
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It all depends on how one obtains the content of their library, doesn’t it?
Not passing judgement on those with thousands of movies and hundreds of TV shows in their library. You labeled them as power users… which is probably pretty accurate. I certainly agree that they likely have no need for additional streaming services.
My guess, though, is that the average user is more likely to only have a few hundred movies and a handful of TV shows that they have purchased over the years and they want to have an easier way to access them than to physically load DVD/Blu Rays into a player, and then supplement that with a streaming service or two to watch more current content. So I understand the point of Discover, and can see it being extremely useful…eventually.
I’m also not immediately concerned about privacy when searching. In the giant thread for Discover, it was mentioned by one of the Plex employees that the search results actually come from Justwatch. If that is true, that means our search queries aren’t being seeing by Netflix/Amazon/Hulu or whoever. I’m assuming that Plex did something similar with Justwatch that they did with the Plex Movie scraper; they are aggregating the data on a regular basis, and we are searching that database, not Justwatch directly.
Perhaps @BigWheel can clarify that a bit to ease the concerns of some of the folks here. I mean, if you already place significant trust in Plex to not be doing something nefarious with your data by using the Plex Movie scraper for metadata… if Discover searches essentially work the same way, there’s no reason at this point to be freaked out by it.
None of that changes my opinion that we should be able to remove Discover from providing search results, though.
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While this feature gets disabled, can the opt-out also include removing the new giant bar across the bottom of the Android client with “Home” and “Watchlist” on it.
Home is already available on the top left, so why have it again on the bottom?
It also just takes up way too much screen real estate and imo looks a little dated design-wise.
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Lets make it very simple: @dane22 @BigWheel and whoever else is involved in this.
We do NOT want to see results from streaming services we are not “subscribed” to (aka. “selected in the setup screen”) in the search or on the item detail page or anywhere else!
I understand that this will greatly affect your partnership deals but I never asked Plex to have a full-fletched board of directors and what not. If you really have to overpay your CEO then you can make this a Plex Pass feature (non-paying users get to see all streaming services, paying users get to see ONLY the ones they’ve chosen).
If you want a very good reason: Many of us use Plex because it offers a very easy to use interface that doesn’t confuse with “unavailable” content. This new feature however; the inclusion of unselected services in particular is adding a lot of confusion and that is a real problem, especially for older or mentally challenged people.
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What is the use of search results for a service that you are not a customer of?
Or (starting a speculation) - if you are a customer of Netfl|x and you get search results from Amaz*n? You may find that an interesting bit of info. But somebody else could feel differently or even be mislead?
Please make it configurable and auto-disabled for any non-subscribers. Easy thing.
I don’t want to find anything I did not use - same with Webcasts and other services I opted-out.
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Its advertisement based on your search that the content is available on their platform.
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I am not your “partner” in that part of the discussion - and I agree that use cases may be different and that one user may see a gain in that feature.
My use case sees it as a bug (especially the search part).
BTW, if I were a subscriber of such services, I’d probably give it a go. I like new ideas like that. BUT … as you said, use cases are different and what you see as “good” or “no big deal”, I see as “cluttered”, “more data/artwork/traffic” and “forced upon streaming experience for a pair of people not being part of that world”.
I don’t ask that your search experience becomes different from what you think is best for you. Plex ask that mine becomes different from what I think is best for me.
So, why not acting on that simple rule… “ON/OFF switch makes everybody happy”?
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While I understand what Plex is going for, being an aggregator, and doing it like Roku, and the rest of the other platforms, they seem to, by their own terms, decided that only content identified by the Plex Scanner and Agent, can only be added to Watchlist.
Then there is this Roku deep linking problem, which isn’t our issue, but the issue between Roku and Plex, which I would have thought they’d talk that out prior to launching this.
None of this makes sense and just feels so 
Plus, there’s no way to disable it, or make granular changes to the experience so to me, this is DOA.
While I don’t even use the Roku aggregator, it wasn’t a huge deal to have had Plex have control over this at all because ALL I wanted was a Watchlist for the media I already have within Plex, and that alone would have sufficed. But Nooooooooooooo. They happened to go beyond what we all ask for, make it several times more complicated, then tell us whatever else we asked for was far more complicated and gave us this instead, so now deal with it.
Thank you for explaining.
Example Use case #1:
Non-subscriber to any streaming service. Please explain why these guys should see any results from online services?
Example use case #2:
Plex Media Server used in educational environment with strict rules about advertisement and harsh COI rules. Please explain how such a PMS use case can avoid stopping to use PMS.
Example use case #3:
My mom searching for movies I do not own. Please explain how I can avoid either confusion about search results that cannot be viewed or costs put upon myself for offering paid services.
Example use case #4:
hardcore - my media is my media - user. Please explain how such a user can avoid a feeling of advertisements being pushed upon him/her (and search results for streaming services are advertisements for users who are not subscribers of a service) every time they use search function?
Wouldn’t it make sense to not force advertisements through search function?
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Just to share this fun “discovery” - managed users adding to watchlist get Discover content.
As Plex has said, they don’t have content restrictions in place, which is why it wasn’t included for Managed Users in the first place. So… yeah.
You know what I don’t like?
My restricted kids profile getting access to Discover through watchlist and seeing RATED R CONTENT INCLUDING THE PREVIEWS.
The tone so far for everyone here should be considered LIGHT AND PLAYFUL. I am beyond pissed.
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The youth protection agency rubs its hands.
@BigWheel @dane22 … guys, seriously, if you make something beta, release it as beta. Don’t force stable users to test your stuff, especially if it violates laws around the globe.
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And this is why I sent an email to legal at Plex, after repeatedly tagging Plex employees with now a single response of “we’re working on it”.
And forwarded some links to the authors of recent articles about Discover.
You can guess what might be coming up soon on my list of people to contact.
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