Precisely as mentioned by many others, this shouldn’t even be something we should be frustrated about as it shouldn’t have happened, add the option, don’t remove stuff without asking at mass whether it’s something people want changed.
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What the hell even is this? I cannot fathom for the life of me who on earth at Plex thought it was a good idea to do this. I want to (as I always have done) sit down, open Plex and scroll along through the next available TV episodes for ALL of the shows I watch and then decide what I want to watch first. How am I supposed to do that now with the merged/unified On Deck/Continue Watching being limited to just 10 items? This really is the most stupid thing in all of the unecessary changes Plex keep making. I mean SERIOUSLY this is hands down the one single most idiotic change I could ever imagine and in my opinion should be at the very top of the priority list for being reverted back ASAP. Total madness!!!
10 Likes
Until Plex sort this mess out, I’m using the official Plex Add On in Kodi on my Android/Google TV devices. This Add On hasn’t been changed (i.e. messed up) for a long time and still work fine for my basic needs. On Deck and Continue Watching are lovely and separate with many items shown, as nature intended.
BTW, This indicates that the “problems” are in the new Plex client device apps, not the server.
1 Like
@azcom I know plex have said they will provide a fix in the hopefully near future which will remove hard-coded limited number of items currently on cw and use the server side library settings.
Until then I’ll share what we have been doing. The local embedded web client which comes with your plex server does not have this code yet so it still has the original cw and od views. What we do is open up via a phone a web browser (not plex app, a browser) and go to http://<local ip of your plex server>:32400/web/index.html and then view the list of items on deck. We then have our trusty full list, decide what we want to watch and then manually on our TV go to that item and watch.
Not ideal but works as a workaround for now in the intern.
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Thanks @dokuro for sharing your workaround but I think I’ll be using the one posted by @Moondiver1 above. It’s the closest option to the desired experience until Plex sort their s**t out!
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I really don’t understand what Plex is up to.
If you want to make big software changes you don’t push it out in unfinished broken pieces.
Are they testing the software at all? What advantage is there in having so many things not working right with promises of fixing it in the future? Has Plex got some type of deadline to meet?
It’s a very unprofessional way to do things.
I like the new combined layout and hope it stays. Much cleaner.
I never had 10+ shows in continue watching so haven’t come acoss that issue but agree probably shouldn’t have been shipped without that resolved.
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Nothing to really add except for that limiting it to 6, or 20, or whatever the heck else it’s been limited to, is absolute garbage. We used to love going through old shows we started and never finished and watching a random episode from a random show every week, now we can’t do that at all.
I guess I just don’t really understand who this is trying to appease and what it was trying to accomplish in the first place, except for totally breaking the perfectly good “On Deck” feature.
2 Likes
This is universally awful. I manually manage my homescreen, and I think Plex would be better suited if they applied efforts to make UIs more unified across platforms.
I have an On Deck for podcasts, which is awesome. In Chrome. Fire Stick? I have podcasts, but I can’t add an On Deck, if I go to Podcasts → Manage hubs on the Fire Stick, there’s nothing there. Okayyyyyy…
Overall, everything about this is awful. Change for the sake of change is bad, period.
Is this change solving a problem? Did enough users complain to warrant all this? Or have countless manhours gone in to massive code changes totally on a whim?
What TheYGC said above is 100% valid. Small limits are senseless, especially if there’s family viewing going on; one person’s afternoon could wipe out what someone else was viewing a few days before. Or, as mentioned, sometimes you have an old show you want to dip back to occasionally. So, yeah, make us play Go Fish! and search around trying to find things.
As I said in another thread, some of us like to compartmentalize things, keep local content separate from shared remote servers. Is there a need here that precludes that now? Are these changes solving a severe issue that apparently everyone on the forums has not experienced?
This is easily a death knell for Plex. New users might put up with it and muddle through since they know no different but as an existing user? This is an insane step backwards! Literally! This new format is where Plex should’ve been years ago, and what you’re moving away from is what would represent progress from that previous point.
I can’t believe someone came up with this, and enough other someones got on board and backed it to the point of acceptance. Boggles the mind that this is considered “progress” by anyone.
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These are the exactly the same things I wonder when looking at this…
- Who on earth thought this was a good idea?
- How is it possible that more additional people at Plex agreed that this was a good idea?
- Who at the top also agreed it was a good idea and and said “make it so…”
I really do wish that Plex would stop messing with the UI… Always another change, and another, and another!
7 Likes
I am actually struggling to find a reason to continue using Plex now. The removal of On Deck, which was a major time saver, has rendered the software fairly pointless now. It certainly doesn’t work for me now and I have had complaints from everyone using my server.
I Mean, it takes a very special person to take a valuable feature that is well liked and suddenly just turn it off and remove it from the software. Good reason to stop paying for plex right there.
5 Likes
Bring back the on deck feature for Petes sake
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Not only is this one of the dumbest ideas ever this side of screendoors on submarines… it’s broke AF.
I have “continue watching” on homescreen, with one partially viewed movie. That’s it.
I go to TV, and I have a CW there, with a paltry 6 shows, because Plex PMs decided that a pathetically low number is a good idea. This CW indicates it is on the home screen. The content from TV CW is not on homescreen. Click ‘x’ next to it to remove it, then re-add.
Go to homescreen. CW is now back, at the bottom, where a newly-added category would land. It still has the one movie, zero from TV.
This is broke as hell, and doesn’t work.
Web. Android, Firestick. All are broken garbage at this point.
Even if it did work, it would then be non-broken garbage.
I am utterly amazed at how insistent employees are that they actually like this, in the face of many users pointing out functional problems, and general dislike. It makes me wonder about how bad things are inside Plex to have orders that would degrade their software so much and act like this is progress.
3 Likes
Bring back On Deck.
You already have my money for the Lifetime Plex Pass, but it’s decisions like removing On Deck that make me question my decision to give you my hard-earned money.
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I don’t mind having On Deck and Continue Watching merged, that’s fine so long as the amount of items allowed in the row is sufficient enough/configurable in the settings(I know they are working on a fix now as stated above). Also lets bring back the background images for shows that are in progress they looked cool.
What I do mind however is not being able to combine recently added from multiple libraries. I want ONE recently added tv shows row. I want ONE recently added movies row. I don’t mind the option of having it broken out into recently added per library being there, but I don’t need it.
–EDIT-- (DaveBinM on reddit confirmed that combined hubs are coming back.)
The biggest problem here is not actually beta testing these changes correctly. This outrage could have been avoided if a proper amount of time was given to beta test and correct the problems instead of just rolling it out to the public and crossing fingers. I tested the changes only moments ago on my Apple TV. Switched to automatic management and could immediately tell it was a bad user experience. I really love Plex, but why is it every few months I have to come to the forums and look at hundreds of posts like this one. This isn’t the way.
–EDIT-- (I do still stand by this last paragraph though.)
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Me too. Kinda feels like bait and switch doesn’t it? This is not what I paid for.
3 Likes
Just adding the chorus here about these changes. I do not like the decision one bit.
We used the scroll through to the oldest unwatched On Deck item and pick a series we’d not watched in a while (Ideally I’d like the oldest first in the list, so the latest watched is at the end, but that’s by the by).
Now, the oldest unwatched programs don’t even appear, which is terrible.
This, exactly !!! I thought my plex was broken. Why do you change fundamental things like this without a major notification, or make it an option first? Why do I have to visit the forums when I finally have to do discover the reason
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I wanted to like the change. I like being able to manage the home screen but good god why did yall remove on deck. Everything is merged and horrid. I cannot tell what content is from what library if i have multiple versions of a show!! not to mention everything else.
please god at least add On deck back.
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I use and my family out side of home use ON DECK. Why oh why would you remove a simple feature with a complex and less user friendly one. Makes no sense!!
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I hope Plex decision makes are paying attention in this thread. The most basic facts that I can boil it down to are these:
- Continue Watching and On Deck are not the same. They have different functions and use cases.
- Different people have different preferences in how those two separate things are used or combined.
I would think that the conclusion from that would be: Give users the option in how those are displayed.
That’s it. Why is this always such a chore with Plex? I get devs having to make decisions for how things should default for maximum new-user accessibility, but why are we always, always restricted from having any choice in the matter via settings?
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