So this one’s annoyed me for quite some time. I looked around and am surprised no one’s complained about this before.
To explain, I sometimes get these episodes that are 2 in 1, for example:
The Expanse S02E01-E02 Safe & Doors & Corners (720p HDTV)
It shows up in Plex(web/app/etc) as 2 distinct episodes - Seasons 2 episodes 1 and 2… great
the downside, you now have to watch the same episode twice because plex isn’t smart enough to understand that these are actually the same file, and watching episode 1 means you’ve really just watched both of them.
My proposal:
Either, option 1 - mark the second episode as watched as soon as you watch the first.
or, option 2 - Build into the UI stating that its a 2 fer 1 episode and combine the synopsis of each episode into ‘tabs’ or something like that.
Yeah, I had the same issue with the same show/episodes. I had to watch episode “1” (actually 1&2), and when episode “2” (actually 1&2 again) started , I had to stop it, mark it as watched, and then start episode 3. A real pain in my lazy life.
The problem is even worse for Roku users.
The issue there is, since the Roku will play the next episode in a series automatically, after the first entry plays with both episodes the Roku goes to play the second episode it starts the file again starting at the beginning, playing both episodes again.
Therefore you see both parts twice.
One would think that it could be coded to know if the second episode is the same file as the previous one, it could skip that play and go on to the next file. (Not sure how it could be fixed for shuffle play however)
I have been told by the Roku developer that is not possible.
It is not possible for the Roku app to track this and adjust, lack of resources to track and maintain state. This is something that would have to be dealt with at the server level.
It’s the same issue across all platforms. And yeah it needs to be dealt with server side as that is what tracks episode watching for users. It can’t be too hard to code, since the code is already there to differentiate a file actually being 2 episodes in one.
