Probably just a matter of priorities. And I doubt they did it in a week.
Anyone with a large movie collection is likely to see this near the top of their lists of enhancements. It’s the one thing that Plex (and most of the others) fall down on… an easy way to slice and dice large collections into easy to find chunks, defined by the user.
For me, I want an easy way to download lists of movies (best picture winners, NY Times Best 1000 movies ever made, or even curated lists by others) and have an easy way to create collections out of them. A tight linkage to icheckmovies (ability to create a collection from an icheckmovie downloaded list) would be nirvana for me.
I don’t care about NY Times lists, or someone else’s idea of a list or collection. It would make finding a specific movie too hard, IMO.
On the other hand, I want to have a single icon for all of the Bond movies, click it and have all of the Bond movies show up, similar to how you click on a music groups name and then get a list of the albums you have for that group. then click on the album to get the music that you have from that album.
If I did that for all of the “collections” on disk, I would have something a lot more manageable as far as finding content by a user. All of John Wayne’s movies in a collection, all of the Bond movies, all of Harry Potter, all of Star Wars and Star Trek, etc. down to single icons in the scrolling mass of movies, and then remove a lot of the clutter.
Ideally, it would be great to have multiple collections for a single movie, so a movie could also be grouped by genre tags as well.
@beckfield said:
@ravensorb said:
I couldn’t agree more. The sad part is this thread is over 3 years old, 400 likes, and almost 6,000 views and yet no movement on implementation – I’d say that’s a pretty strong indication that the developers have absolutely no interest in listening to the community (or paying members for that matter) with regards to feature requests.I don’t think that’s fair. It’s well known that Plex doesn’t discuss their roadmap or schedules, so you have no way of knowing if there has been any movement on implementation. Secondly, I don’t think this is a trivial feature. I expect it’s going to take some work. There are a lot of very popular features that people are waiting for, and it’s not a huge team, so not everything you want is going to happen on your schedule.
There have been some UI changes recently that, by themselves, I don’t care for. But they’ve said that those changes are in preparation for upcoming new features, which may be big and surprising. So I’m willing to be patient and see what’s coming.
I have the feeling after being a member for a while that Plex doesn’t care about these request threads at all and they’re only here to make people feel better.
I see very little evidence that Plex cares what their community wants based on the feature requests here.
@MikeG6.5 said:
I don’t care about NY Times lists, or someone else’s idea of a list or collection. It would make finding a specific movie too hard, IMO.On the other hand, I want to have a single icon for all of the Bond movies, click it and have all of the Bond movies show up, similar to how you click on a music groups name and then get a list of the albums you have for that group. then click on the album to get the music that you have from that album.
If I did that for all of the “collections” on disk, I would have something a lot more manageable as far as finding content by a user. All of John Wayne’s movies in a collection, all of the Bond movies, all of Harry Potter, all of Star Wars and Star Trek, etc. down to single icons in the scrolling mass of movies, and then remove a lot of the clutter.
Ideally, it would be great to have multiple collections for a single movie, so a movie could also be grouped by genre tags as well.
They can not be mutually exclusive. The reality is with ANY size collection you need to be able to quickly find the movie you want. However, a LARGE collection adds an additional requirement of better access to groups (collections) of movies - whatever those groups (collections) may be - Bond, best of lists, academy award winners, all Marvel movies, or what ever.
I do like the idea of a “series” or “artist” - type of approach to a collection… but, I would see that as an additional feature to add to collections - something like a checkbox in collection creation to create an alias that is a collapsed single item in movies and opens up like a series does under TV Shows.
@mostlydave said:
@beckfield said:
@ravensorb said:
I couldn’t agree more. The sad part is this thread is over 3 years old, 400 likes, and almost 6,000 views and yet no movement on implementation – I’d say that’s a pretty strong indication that the developers have absolutely no interest in listening to the community (or paying members for that matter) with regards to feature requests.I don’t think that’s fair. It’s well known that Plex doesn’t discuss their roadmap or schedules, so you have no way of knowing if there has been any movement on implementation. Secondly, I don’t think this is a trivial feature. I expect it’s going to take some work. There are a lot of very popular features that people are waiting for, and it’s not a huge team, so not everything you want is going to happen on your schedule.
There have been some UI changes recently that, by themselves, I don’t care for. But they’ve said that those changes are in preparation for upcoming new features, which may be big and surprising. So I’m willing to be patient and see what’s coming.
I have the feeling after being a member for a while that Plex doesn’t care about these request threads at all and they’re only here to make people feel better.
I see very little evidence that Plex cares what their community wants based on the feature requests here.
I can see a point to this, but I do know there are features coming that people are actively voting on. And we have gotten some that were voted on, too. Like the PS3/4 (Big whoop to me, I don’t allow them on my PMS.) But it was the number 1 voted request Plex has had. (Betting individual user bitrate limits are close to the number of votes, now, though.)
The problem is, there aren’t a lot of developers, and their time is spread thin. You’re pet feature might very well be something I would hate to see over any of mine. So the voting structure has to be in place to determine what feature has the biggest “bang for the Buck!” so to speak.
In fact, short of the Team making a poll and people voting with that, this method is probably the best they could use. There are some competing requests, though, such as for Collections. There’s this one, and also one that the OP made some really great mock ups of what he envisioned. The two requests aren’t really in competition, but the ideas are similar. You can find that request here: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/152418/popular-collection-overhaul-ideas
Combined these two requests have well over 600 votes, and even if some voted for both, that’s still a lot of people wanting the feature So figure that there are 200 people that voted on both requests, that’s still over 400 votes.
The team has shown that they get something in the works usually about 600-800 votes… We’re in the ball park now with this feature, so it’s coming, and hopefully it’s coming like the mockup request shows and not something half-baked.
As a paying customer the last thing I want to hear is that there’s not enough developers, they’re too busy or overworked. Why would that be the case? No one forced Plex to overreach to all of these platforms as quickly as possible. That’s an excuse that to me at least is getting real old. Hire some people already!
User bitrate limits is a great example here, according to the voting system here it’s one of the top requests and has been for some time. What do we get instead, music features!?!?! Where did that come from? Where are the feature requests for that?
I think Plex’s main problem right now is that there’s not really a good alternative, but as soon as one hits the market you’ll hopefully see Plex clean up they’re act and focus on want customers want instead of money grabs, or you’ll see a mass exodus of paying customers.
This HAS to become a reality in Plex!! Please!
Please add me to the list requesting this key feature. Collections and they way they are used in XMBC/Kodi are not just part of what I’m used to this feature is useful to any of us that have larger libraries and need to maximize and organize what we can see.
When testing Plex vs Emby vs Kody this is one of my biggest cons I have for Plex. I like the way that Collections are handled in Kodi and very similar behavior in Emby. I can also see the long list of other folks asking for this it leads me to believe that this should be more important to deliver to the long list of paying customers already in this list.
My counsel would be to make a choice and implement it and then be prepared to do a bit of tweaking on it as the core users adjust and point out how to improve it.
I currently have all three systems running (they are constantly compared) and used, by me and the others here that are able to access my systems, and the folks that visit and see it in use on the big screen. This was the biggest single thing I’ve been asked about by other folks familiar with Kodi.
A valuable part of that comparison I’m making is customer support. Y’all have done some very good things but for this to languish when its very available on other platforms seems a bit surprising and kinda lame. IMHO
I’ve bit my tongue long enough - technically, we’re not ‘customers’. Plex is not at version 1.0
I liken Plex software to Steam’s (game system) “early access” releases.
I don’t know how many times I see someone ‘purchase’ an early access game on steam to complain later that it broke their hours of progress after an update or a feature changed so much they didn’t like it and want money back.
I’m sorry, but, that’s the way early access works.
We’re not paying for a product out-right, we’re paying to show support, with a bonus of seeing beta/additional features early.
As much as it annoys me the way Plex developers have extreme limited transparency in their road map and keep things behind closed doors, we have little right to expect them to do what we request.
As much as I dislike the fact this feature isn’t yet included, I know that I and a few other people would prefer other features get implemented first.
My impression is that this isn’t an easy thing to do, as I believe every client would have to be capable of this feature. There are now lots of clients. Some of which have larger issues than missing this feature.
@JamminR said:
I’ve bit my tongue long enough - technically, we’re not ‘customers’. Plex is not at version 1.0
I liken Plex software to Steam’s (game system) “early access” releases.
I’m paying for the current stable releases (monthly right now, soon to upgrade to life time plan). Technically, Plex calls me a “supporter”:
“Thanks for supporting Plex, we really appreciate it.
You will next be billed for $4.99 on February 25, 2016.”
Seems like semantics to me.
…we have little right to expect them to do what we request.
I tend to think it more as a relationship where we exchange things, respect and appreciate one another. As long as where all happy, the relationships continue. We want Plex. Plex wants money. Plex keeps us happy (with features). We keep Plex happy (with money). On both are parts, it’s just a choice.
Bottom Line: I’d very much like to see the requested changes made to Collections.
Please make this happen.
This really shouldn’t be too hard to implement. Lots of other media organizing/playing packages already do this. Kodi (where Plex forked from while it was still called XBMC) does this. It’s almost a common sense feature to have at this point.
I kept my movie file folder organization from XBMC from years back, Windows Media Center recognized this format and I kept on with it, and since switching to Plex I’ve missed this feature but since it does a good job recognizing the file structure I have been maintaining it, on the chance that Plex adds this feature one day.
One day we can keep our main movie listing looking smoother… for now, “The Road Warrior” gets manually modified as “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior”… just so I can keep it near my other Mad Max movies.
@nibble4bits said:
This really shouldn’t be too hard to implement. Lots of other media organizing/playing packages already do this. Kodi (where Plex forked from while it was still called XBMC) does this. It’s almost a common sense feature to have at this point.
Not quite true. Plex Home Theater was a fork of the playback portion from XBMC. Plex Media Server is a totally different thing and has no relation to XBMC.
The way I would like to see this implemented is…
When a new collection is defined, a database recorded is created similar to a movie record but with a flag designating it as a “Collection Record”. This will allow the user to attach their own poster an other attributes. The Collection poster would never be displayed anytime the individual movies are displayed. By default the collection poster will be displayed (this could be a server setting). If you want to see the individual movies, you would click on the collection poster and then the only thing being displayed are the individual movies within the collection.
My two cents, thank you.
I think this is as simple as treating collections the same way Plex treats music. The collection would be like an artist and the individual movies would be like albums. The exact same type of mechanism where the collection (Artist) has one entry in the movie list with it’s own art and each movie is underneath (just like albums).
@JamminR said:
I’ve bit my tongue long enough - technically, we’re not ‘customers’. Plex is not at version 1.0
I liken Plex software to Steam’s (game system) “early access” releases.
I don’t know how many times I see someone ‘purchase’ an early access game on steam to complain later that it broke their hours of progress after an update or a feature changed so much they didn’t like it and want money back.
I’m sorry, but, that’s the way early access works.
We’re not paying for a product out-right, we’re paying to show support, with a bonus of seeing beta/additional features early.
As much as it annoys me the way Plex developers have extreme limited transparency in their road map and keep things behind closed doors, we have little right to expect them to do what we request.As much as I dislike the fact this feature isn’t yet included, I know that I and a few other people would prefer other features get implemented first.
My impression is that this isn’t an easy thing to do, as I believe every client would have to be capable of this feature. There are now lots of clients. Some of which have larger issues than missing this feature.
I don’t think this thread is the place to argue this but I think this line of thought about being a customer is totally wrong.
You pay for Plex, which in no way is presented on the homepage or download page as in development or “early access”
I think treating paying for Plex like it’s some kind of donation, and then saying “oh well, we’re not really customers” is taking the accountability off of Plex.
Do you pay for you electricity at home and say, I’m just supporting the power company, and it’s ok if they mess up because I’m not really a customer?
Yes, please!
@mostlydave - took off topic discussion here - https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/209684/expectations-of-plex-pass
Add my vote. Large libraries become too cumbersome without a simple means of categorising the content. Being able to access my collections as easily as I currently access a library would be a very useful feature.
