Is Anyone at Plex looking at doing something like MoviesAnywhere.com?
Seems like a great feature for Plex - plus solves a real problem for all customers - even the ones that don’t care for hosting or collecting their own media file.
Would be great if Plex would do this + shows and music.
you still are the product… movies anywhere has you create an account only to collect data about you. Better off staying with PLEX for now.
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I agree with the OP. Now that Movies Anywhere allows you to have a single library across the major digital distribution services - it would be awesome if I could access that library from Plex too so I had access to all my movie content in one place.
Pro-tip: it looks like if you link your ultraviolet account with vudu (for the free digital copies that come with many dvds and blurays) and then link your vudu account with Movies Anywhere, you get access to all your ultraviolet movies even in services that previously didn’t support it (like Google Play and iTunes)
Yep. That’s exactly how Movies Anywhere works with UV and Vudu.
I’ve linked my account to everything it’ll let me.
I’d love to be able to access those through Plex though - keep everything all in one place.
Even if to play, Plex passed you off to the movie in the Movies Anywhere app, it’d be great to have them all cataloged in Plex.
I’ve been hoping to see something along these lines for a while.
Here’s an older thread requesting Ultraviolet support. Unfortunately, there weren’t any official responses there either.
Perhaps we nee more attention to this thread. I for one would like some kind of integration to MoviesAnywhere so they show up in my Plex Library. Let’s see if we can find more people to push for this feature. +1 and liked (I wear a belt and suspenders)
I would like to see something like this too. I started a similar thread over a year ago.
MoviesAnywhere would be a good first attempt, but there are some studios like Paramount that still don’t support the MoviesAnywhere program, and virtually no TV shows are supported as far as I can tell.
I imagine this will be a complicated thing to implement. On a PC it might work pretty well, but on Roku and other platforms you’d have to decide if you want to build in a browser to stream the movie or launch an app, and what happens if the platform doesn’t have the app available. For example Google Play Movies and Vudu aren’t available on Amazon Fire TV. Then there is the encryption thing to keep people from “ripping” the stream.
It would be totally awesome if it was implemented though. Having a single database of all movies owned across platforms would be ideal.
Worst case scenario, I would settle for just the movie poster that acted as a reminder and a message saying it’s available on “whatever service”. I wonder if there is a way to manually trick Plex with a fake database entry?
Yes, this is what I do. I created a short 30 second video in my movie making software that is basically just a pointer to Google Play. I then add the movie or TV shows to Plex using the proper naming scheme, but the content is the 30 second video. That means Plex indexes the TV shows and Movies I have somewhere else, but when I see the duration is only 30 seconds or if I try to watch it, I can see that it’s on a different service. I add to this by adding the items to the “Google Play” collection so I can see at a glance what other stuff I might want to watch is also hosted on Google Play.
Good ideas.
I guess the same file could be used everywhere by just renaming it and the resolution and file size could be tiny. TV shows might be slightly more complicated I guess requiring multiple copies if you want the ability to search by episode.
Hopefully Plex doesn’t think this workaround means they can just ignore the idea. A plugin API offering tighter integration from official apps would be much better.
Yup I use the same file, the benefit of Linux is the file exists physically once and I just symlink it everywhere it needs to be.
I created a couple clips and collection posters for Google Play and Vudu if anyone wants them.
Google Play
Vudu
After making copies (instead of symlinks) for 20 or so movies and 5 seasons of Chuck the space on disk still comes in under 10 MB so that’s not bad.
And then I found the Bulk Rename Utility and FileBot to be helpful for getting Chuck named out. I created a bunch of Chuck - S##E##.mkv copies and used Bulk Rename to fix the numbering, then ran them through FileBot which added the episode titles to each. Saved a lot of typing.
Maybe plex could use guide box:
In order for GuideBox to help we’d still need a way to tell Plex the movie was owned without having a physical file present.
Theoretically you could just import a list of your video library into the database.
Then click on the movie which launches the appropriate app or player. Granted this would require some update within plex, but theoretically it can be done. Heck if you run plex on a computer connected to your TV you could create a small video file and name it the same as your movie. Then monitor the library using webhooks. Then using eventGhost for PC or HammerSpoon for Mac, you can launch a web browser directly to the movie.
If I had a computer connected to my TV I would do the thing I list above, but sadly I have all Apple TVs.
+1 also. I would love to link to MoviesAnywhere from plex. Have the titles show up, and then stream from MA. I will try the workaround here with the short clip that says “look elsewhere”. But interface would be great.
+1 for this. I think its essential if Plex wants to stay valid given the industry’s paradigm shift toward streaming over rippable physical media.
+1 for this essential feature. I think this feature would be the single most impactful enhancement to Plex today.
Even if there’s no way (either due to technical or legal obstacles) to play the movies in Plex, just the ability to link accounts and include cloud library content in the Plex library would be a game changer.
Currently, when I want to look for a given movie, I have to check… Plex, Movies Anywhere (which will aggregate most but not all content from linked accounts), Google Play, Vudu, Amazon, Netflix, and HBO. Obviously, Hulu and iTunes (and surely others I’m forgetting) would be popular additions to this list.
Plex could be a slam dunk solution here. Allow us to link to our various accounts so we can include content in our Plex library (with a little cloud icon in the corner of each thumbnail to indicate that it’s non-local storage or whatever). I don’t even care if there’s a link to the external service. I just want to look in one place to find out what content I have access to and where it is. PLEASE.
The other day my Internet went out again (stupid Comcast…) but I was still able to play everything from Plex on my smart TV! It just made me a little upset that I can’t sync the movies on a Movies Everywhere enabled platform to my Plex Server. I don’t care if there is proprietary code and DRM for playback limited to the local network or any of that… I just want to be able to download the content I purchased to my home media server for offline playback.
I also think about it every time my child watches a movie on repeat, and I keep thinking about that Comcast data limit.
I agree. Being able to download movies that I paid for, to a local encrypted archive space, would be an excellent feature for all these digital distributors to provide as a plugin or dedicated app that Plex could interface with or whatever.
It would make watching 4K movies easier too since those often require 25 Mbps bandwidth to stream. If your connection is only rated at 25 Mbps then the slightest hiccup or slow day can ruin the 4K streaming experience.
I know some here don’t like the idea of Plex being a content provider, but if they joined the Movies Anywhere group as a distributor without a storefront and designed a fully encrypted playback system to locally sync and playback these movies, that would be worth the trade off to me. That all is assuming they didn’t kill offline playback for normal locally stored movies in the process.
