Include streaming from other services

Feature Suggestions
1

Going to state a use case first to describe the issue. I have roku, plex and various other streaming services, my wife wants to find a specific show to watch. At the moment she has to go to each individual app for each streaming service until she finds the show. In some cases it’s instant streaming and in others it’s live tv.

What I would like, and I realize this isn’t a small ask, is for Plex to be able to integrate with other streaming services such as peacock, netflix, hulu, disney+ etc… The primary ability would be to search for a show and stream it through the plex interface regardless of source.

The nice to have list of abilities would include the following:
DVR live tv streams (obviously requires contracts to be legal)
Rate shows
Rate episodes
Receive notification of new episodes
Receive notification of losing a show (when a platform decides to no longer stream it)

I would also expect that if other streaming services did agree to contribute to this they would have their own expectations of what they would want from such integration.

2

That’s probably never going to happen. Those services would need to give Plex access and there is no way they would allow it.

Did you know you can do a search from the main Roku home page and it will tell you which streaming platforms have what you searched for. This even works with Plex’s free ad-support VOD catalog. It does not include LiveTV or content from your PMS.

3

Yeah, I fully understand it would require those other services to be in on developing or working with an API team and it would require a buy in from each of them.

As for the Roku search page, Plex is better at it for what it does search. My wife is not a technical person so when she finds one interface she likes she tends to never use any other.

4

You might want to check out the new features released today.
The Plex apps should now be able to search pretty much anything and show you where to watch it. Plex cannot stream the content of other providers through its own clients though (as per MovieFan.Plex’ feedback – that’s rather unlikely to happen).

5

2022 clean-up:

  • integration → implemented (Discover, Universal Watchlist, Search)
  • watch external content in Plex → won’t happen (not allowed by those providers)
  • new episode notification → duplicate
  • recording content from other providers → that’s in the domain of those providers; unlikely to happen; though there’s a dedicated suggestion for that too).