Sorry about the merge of On Deck (OD) and Continue Watching (CW) hitting the public for Web users. A hotfix has now gone out to correct the issue. While that was not the intent, it is something we were in the process of exploring internally. There was a mistake on our part around the flag that should have prevented this from being shown to the public. However, this is an opportunity to discuss why you saw this and what we have in store.
Through research and discussion with users, we have found that many people often see only a few items in CW and OD most of the time. This results in the first two rows of content for most peopleâs home screen being bare and often duplicative (an in-progress episode appearing in both CW and OD). We have recently had employees testing a unified Continue Watching where not only are CW hubs merged but in-progress and On Deck items from any movie or TV show library pinned to the sidebar are merged. This allows users who watch from multiple servers or use both their own server and our free, âMovies & Showsâ streaming to have a single point of reference for picking up where they left off. Based on our internal testing so far we have found that even the people who were sceptical ended up preferring it after a week or so. We are also making the following changes and considering a few more:
We would use portrait posters to ensure that we fit as many items on screen as possible. This also is better for the quality of the artwork and allows those with custom posters to see them.
We would add the ability to âRemove From CWâ for those who have partially watched items and do not plan to complete them. This should alleviate the pain of having to mark an item watched and have it increase the view count.
Without going into too much detail since it is in early development, we are also working on some cool features to give server owners more control of the home and recommended library content they see and their shared users see. Some of the small updates we are making, including the split of Recently Added by library (only for pinned sources on home) are to be able to support that type of future functionality. We are working hard to implement some creative solutions to empower server owners to truly curate for both themselves and the users they share with and we feel like this is something we have heard from the community for a long time. We will share more early in 2021 so please stay tuned. As always, thanks everyone for the feedback and we are sorry this slipped through in such an early experimental phase.
I have my movies in libraries like Movies Marvel, Movies DC, Movies Foreign etc etc. Now if I add a new movie I have to scroll through a recently added of every sub-folder. When it use to be as simple as âOh look Itâs right there in Recently Added Movies.â Iâm upset, my users are upset and I donât even have option to unify the sub-folders back to the pleasant experience it use to be. Please fix ASAP
It can be unifyied by switching to Mansged rather that Automatic home on each client.
This leaves multiple Movie Recently Added sections but they are all the same. You can remove all but one.
This is an annoying work around but at least it can be done.
Generally speaking, weâd encourage people to try and use things like Collections for managing a subset of their library, rather than making multiple libraries
I get that, but its good for like DC and Marvel and stuff, but i have like Anime in One library, French in another one and English in the 3rd one. And now i have 3 recently added TV, itâs messy and really not useful. What would be good is the option to merge or not to at least so we are not forced.
It used to be so streamlined. If I tell someone hey I just added the a certain movie, it was right there in recently added movies. Now they have to search. And having everyone needing to change settings on every client is not a viable workaround
If you guys want that, you should really make it nicer with collections so that if a movie is in multiple collections it can be âhiddenâ even if one of the collections is set to show the collection and its items. Example of what I mean. I have all the Jaws movies and the Godfather movies. I have created collections for both of them and have my default settings for collections in my movie library to hide movies in collections and only show the collection. However, I also have a collection for the AFI Top 100 movies, of which the original Jaws and Godfather I & II are both part of. For my AFI Top 100 movies collection, I have that set to show âShow this collection and its itemsâ because there are movies within this collection that will not be in a âstandaloneâ collection so I want those movies to be viewable as an individual movie (for instance King Kong [1933]). However, now the original Jaws and the 2 Godfather movies are showing as separate movies (along with showing in each collection), instead of only seeing Jaws in the Jaws collection and AFI collection and the 2 Godfather movies being in the Godfather collection and AFI collection.
I think the easiest way to implement this is to look per item in a collection and if an item is in more than one collection, as long as one of those collections has the âhide itemsâ setting, then that item shouldnât be shown as an individual item outside the collection. This also means if a movie is in multiple collection but they all are set to show the collection and its items, the movie will show as an individual item. Seems like it should be pretty straight forward to implement I would think (of course I am not familiar with all the behind the scenes, so I could be wrong).
The other advantage of this (which can cause people to make separate libraries potentially) is you can create different collections and have only the movies showing individually that are in a collection that should be. An example would be somebody create holiday libraries (Christmas, Halloween, etc.,) but if this was implemented you can make those collections instead and not have movies (Home Alone for instance) show individually because it is in 2 collections (Christmas and Home Alone) but the Christmas collection is set to show collection and its items because there are movies that are not in collections and you want those visible individually.
Interesting - but 31 clicks to drill for Westerns, for instance, has facilitated that work around long ago by some more adventurous users.
However, now that you are suggesting we do just that, I canât begin to describe the pain and suffering when trying to âBrowseâ 279 Westerns without the most basic of aids - the letter stack.
Am I to read into this situation a possibility that Collections will be enhanced in such a way as to make them a more viable alternative for 31 clicks to Westerns than weâve enjoyed up to now?
How 'bout some filtering options - you know - like a subset of a library or something?
Before we mash CW and OD together based on conversations with users that only have a few items in each (Who are these users? Iâve never met any of them - I recently reduced the number of displayed On Deck items when some of my guests said 150 items - with no way to annex some of them without marking entire shows, half finished, watched/unwatched - was, in fact, a PITA) maybe we could find a few users that have some ideas on what would be more important - at this time.
@DaveBinM while thats good and all the main point I mentioned here and on Reddit where you replied has been completely missed!
I understand this is a still in development thing however its clear from the replyâs thatâs its probably something that needs a bit more discussion with US and baking, Im all for the OD and CW being merged however I am and many others are NOT for each individual library having its own âRecently addedâ bar on the home page, if this is the way its going to go then there MUST be options to customize these either by removing them or merging them to our liking not how Plex thinks it should look.
The entire Idea of the new UNO interface was that we the user had COMPLETE control and this was not making that promise/goal looking very likely at all!
Also when should this hotfix filter down cos its still looking like crap on my Xbox and LG TV
What is it youâre seeing on your Xbox and LG TV? Also, no need to reply to me both on Reddit and here, letâs keep the chat in one place, rather than duplicating it
if you look at my other forum post I posted screenshots of what I see and this is identical on the Xbox and my LG tv.
Its basically the Home page now has a Recently added row for every single library instead of how many users actually prefer which was the merging of all âMovieâ libraryâs in to a single Recently added row and the same goes for TV, Music etc.
While I get thatâs some may like it the ways its been changed to currently its MUST be something that when final is optional and or configurable. It can not be something that is just âHow it is nowâ cos that will not sit well at all with so many people.
As you have seen from the Reddit post and also the forum post I linked above its not gone down to well even for early dev stuff
All of these Recently Added sections donât give any infication as to which library they sre associated with. Is this something thatâs going to be fixed in the future?
The solution for interface design is very easy use the KISS method. Keep it Simple, Stupid merging OD and CW good having multiple recently added bad. Itâs not rocket science donât make a user spend more time looking for content than watching it.
Right, so the splitting of Recently Added is intentional, and is part of the work weâre doing to increase the control server owners have of the home and recommended library content options, which will allow more curation for both yourself, and users you share with. This is an interim step at the moment, so please be patient.
The fix that went out was to address the merging of Continue Watching and On Deck.
Yes, there will be much more control on the kind of hubs that are shown on the Home Screen and in the library Recommended tab, and the content that fills them.
