If I select a movie in “discover” and mark it as played then select to watch it from a location, the page giving me the option to play the content shows it as unplayed. Likewise, if I choose a movie directly from my library and mark it as played, it will still show as unplayed on the discover page. I have tried this on both the web and Fire TV apps. Played status doesn’t seem to carry across to all instances or mentions of a particular title. Is there something obvious that I’m missing?
This is because of how Plex made the Discovery feature. In reality, it is a mostly separate service that they run themselves, which lists all movies and shows, similar to TVDB/TMDB/IMDB. When you visit those sites and mark a show as watched, it cannot (more on this in a sec) then call up your private server and tell your server to mark it as played there. Similarly, your server won’t call up the Plex metadata Discovery site and mark a show as played there too. There is a level of intentional disconnect, so that no information is leaked from YOUR server to Plex on what content your server might contain.
However, Plex does offer a way to “synchronize” the two states:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/sync-watch-state-and-ratings/
Plex won’t keep track of HOW an item in their metadata site is marked as played, so there is deniability on why you marked an entire season of Game of Thrones as “watched”.
Thanks for the reply. I have the synchronise option enabled so not sure why it’s not behaving as expected. I’m watching content from a friend’s server and the page you linked to says this is supported.
I’ve even gone in to the library and “unplayed” everything, but the items I tested still show “played” in the discovery list.
So confused
That doesn’t work in real time. Expect several hours delay, particuarly after initial activation. Sometimes it might even take longer when the server is not powered up 24/7.
Ok cool. I’ll be a bit more patient. Thanks for you help!
