Can you PLEASE let us disable all this new garbage server side? I don’t care if Tidal, News, Podcasts, Movies and TV, whatever whatever exist, just let me turn them off server side.
The fact that there is ad-supported stuff now doesn’t bother me, but so many of my users aren’t knowledgeable enough about plex to know how to turn this crap off. I have pretty much every movie that you have in your ad-supported section, except now my users get to choose the wrong one and then blame me for ads. I don’t care what online media sources you add, I don’t use any of them, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET US DISABLE THEM FROM SERVER-SIDE AND NOT PER ACCOUNT!
Listen, I have the lifetime pass, that’s a bad business model. I would HAPPILY pay a monthly fee to be able to use plex to, you know, serve my media. I am 100% down for a $10/month fee if I can actually gain control over my media server again. The fact that I can’t disable any of this 3rd party trash is infuriating.
I hate the direction Plex is going. Every update you release pushes me closer to Jellyfin.
Sincerely,
An increasingly disappointed customer
Edit on 10/30/2021: I’m leaving the original message above because I still generally agree with my past self, but I think I came off a bit too harsh. Since this post Plex has added a bunch of amazing updates and it is easily the best software out there for serving media. If Plex feels that adding these services will increase the longevity of their company, then I guess it isn’t the worst thing in the world (a whole lot better than advertisements on their webUI or something). Since the thread is closed now it probably gets a lot less traction, but I just wanted to provide an update to my previous line of thought.
It doesn’t make sense to control it server side since the servics don’t require a server.
Anyone who wants access to the online media services can do so with just a Plex account. They don’t even need to install the server or have access to anyone else’s server. And I don’t think that Plex is likely to change that.
What about people that don’t know enough about Plex to know how to disable these kinds of things? It doesn’t bother me because I know how to turn it off.
Several of my users are people who don’t know enough to be able to disable these things, and I can very easily see them accidentally watching the movie with advertisements. The whole point of me starting a Plex server was to watch media without advertisements.
I get that it doesn’t run off of my server, but how about a feature that is turned off by default instead of on? The mere fact that it gets forced on everyone is the part I dislike about it.
Completely agree with this post. Plex is getting less and less popular in our household because it is constantly in a state of flux with things changing and new things being added.
I’m not interested in free content that is ad funded, its not new, we have the whole of YouTube for that and many other services. I suspect most Plex customers are the same, as Plex was designed to host and serve our own content, that was the unique selling point of Plex, but it is struggling to do that well now without constant bugs and issues.
The last thing most of us want is access to free content full of ads, and it is exactly the opposite of why a lot of people have Plex, which is so they are in control of their own bought music and videos and can stream them ad free without restrictions. Why on earth pollute Plex with such stuff, seems to go against the grain somewhat. Make it an optional plug in, not part of the core software please.
This is exactly the issue. The server owner is Plex’s customer, or was. We’re the ones who should have the say in what our shares sees, but they’ve become the main focus of plex marketing outreach. They Only signed up to see my movies.
Lot of our users don’t understand Tidal, web shows is not us.
And to the OP’s point- instead of all this aimed at the people we share with, why not look at ways to further monetize the server owner? I haven’t been asked to spend more money once the lifetime purchase was made years ago. I mean it’s crazy, we should be low hanging fruit. We’re all in, attention undivided and no one has a single idea to further embed it’s existing customer base?
If I didn’t know better id think the server solution itself was becoming an afterthought.
Edit- I just thought of a good way to monetize the server owner. We pay to get back total control in what our shares see. Like a lifetime or monthly fee to give us back control. Its a bit like paying a ransom but I’d do it.
Or even split the apps up. 1 app dedicated to Plex Media Server, Nothing more. (We already pay for this as Plex Pass owners) , 1 app for FREE online media content, Which is driven by AD supported content & pays for itself.
The devil himself will carry them away after watching the ad-supported media… Seriously, they either won’t care about whether ads are shown to them or not and if they do the will come to you and you can explain to them. In the end, it is your people and not some strangers, right? And if they don’t come, they won’t die from watching some ads and either haven’t discovered the new library or they just don’t care.
i too have an allergic reaction to ads, and while i also think it’s cool that you’re trying new revenue streams… forcing this down our collective throats is not the way
My parents use a SmartTV and don’t use a computer. What do they do? This is immensely frustrating to have yet another forced change pushed to everyone.
If they have their own plex.tv account, then they must have created it somehow. Most likely using a computer.
Or you created it for them. Which means you may still have their login credentials for their account. So you can do this for them as well (I urgently recommend to use an ‘incognito’ web browser window).
If you have added their account to your Plex Home, you can access their account even faster by doing ‘Switch User’.
To be clear, I’ve already done one round of this removing podcasts, news, web clips, etc. from everyones accounts.
I’m annoyed that I have to do it again. And no doubt soon, again.
The only thing I want in Plex is my own media, so I can share it with my family. Plex used to do this really well. Now it throws all sorts of garbage that is default-opted-in. Is there a price we can pay to go back to getting what we originally paid for, instead of all this other crap?
I agree with @darcilicious, it makes absolute no sense to control other Plex.tv user account actions from the server. These are Online Media Sources, not Server Media Sources. Many people share with multiple Plex servers, what if those server owners don’t want to disable it? I do not want my friends server settings to have an effect what happens on my server.
If your users only access your server, and you want FULL control over what they can/cannot see, then make your users Managed users. Then you can have your “server” controls.
I understand the distinction between online media sources and server media sources but the reality is that most normal people using Plex are doing so because people like us, paying customers of Plex, got them to sign up to Plex in order to use it as a frontend for content that our server provides to them. That is the only reason they are there, not because they somehow heard about Plex and thought it would be cool to use it for Tidal or whatever.
That we have to keep asking our users to jump through hoops to disable all this crap, or have to hold onto their login details so that we can manually disable it for them, one-by-one, is ridiculous. It seems that hardly any time has passed since I had to disable Tidal, podcasts, News etc for all my users, and I have to waste time disabling them for every new user too.
My heart falls, not only that I now have to do it all again, but also at the sheer garbage quality of what Plex is trying to foist on our users. Seriously, how desperate are you? And how much money could such bottom-of-the-barrel content ever actually generate for you?
The OP asks a very valid question: Can we just pay you more to avoid wasting our time disabling this stuff? What do you reckon the dollar value is to you of each of our users?
I am actually embarrassed for everyone who works on Plex. How did it ever come to this?
Also, how far do you estimate your can push these aggressive attempts at monetization before your customers start jumping to user-focused alternatives such as Jellyfin? How much better is Plex, really?
Not heard of Jellyfin before, going to check that out.
I agree with other comments, Plex seems to be getting worse not better. The DVR solution is poor, and I’ve programmed my own, which works great and was an enjoyable project. I drop the recordings into a Plex library and play back via Plex, but have noticed some oddities lately, where sometimes files in completely different folders called completely different names end up tied together in the Plex library, and the wrong file plays on selecting a title. So even the fundamentals of Plex seem broken these days.
I wish they would concentrate on squashing bugs before adding anything new. This isn’t the Plex I signed up for, and I would happily pay again as another posted wrote, for a basic Plex Server that is feature fixed and bug free and guaranteed to stay that way.
I am not disagreeing with all the additional online content Plex has been pushing out. I would prefer a greater focus on local media, and leave online content out of it.
But a solution to your complaint is to set up your users as Managed Users on your server. Then you, as the administrator, can have full control over what your users can/cannot see (Online Media, Live TV/DVR, Libraries, etc.) without any action from your users.
No, it’s not the specific solution being requested, but it resolves the stated problem you are having with Online Media Sources.
@Scott-M Look this would be great, but I don’t want everyone that has access to my media server to be on the same home (for hopefully obvious reasons). I do have managed users, but once people outside your household get access to the server they should no longer be in a home, and there should be an alternative to managed users outside of plex home.
If there was something like a “managed group” where people could join that group, and basically surrender their control without having to be in a home where you can see everyone else’s user accounts that would be ideal.
I agree with this. But I also think that if a user is not in your home, why should you be able to affect their settings for anything that you do not host?
Obviously stated, a Managed user is managed by the administrator. I can get on board with managing some settings for users in your Plex Home (because a user can only be part of a single Plex Home at a time.) However, why should you have the ability to manage a users settings who is not part of your Plex Home? For example: We might share Spotify playlists together, but I don’t want you to be able to block my ability to see certain areas of Spotify.
If you want to fully manage a users access, then they need to be a managed user. If your obvious reasons are for account security, then don’t give out your PIN code. They cannot get to your account settings without it.
Full disclosure, I made all of my Managed users create their own Plex accounts because I did not want to give out my password. My point is they have their own account with their own settings of which I am not responsible for. If they need help figuring out how to disable online content I will gladly help them. However, for me personally, my Plex server is for me not them. Access is a privilege not a right. If they are going to get mad at me for a change/addition I had no control over, they can either work past it, or stop using my server.
While this may be true now… change it appears is in the air, and this may soon not be the case.
I’m none too worried about my user base stumbling on the brand new library which is listed at the absolute bottom of the list along with anything else they may or may not use. Someone said it earlier… a quick conversation clears up any confusion.
I’m a bit amazed about any complaints of having new stuff to watch. Isn’t that why we’re all here in the first place?
Unfortunately, I totally agree with the original post.
And I would add that, without mentionning that the Reddit is on fire right now, I don’t understand the expected result here. This is the fifth Online Media Sources added and none of them are really wanted or asked for.
Most of us disable them. So much work is invested into this but why ? This is not what people who choose Plex over another Media Server alternative expect from you neither the people that bought a Plex Pass. Like others now, I will struggle to explain to my friends and family (which are not familiar with technologies at all) why there is ads in my Plex, why there 2 versions of the same movies or tv shows now and I will also have to explain them how to disable it for their account… Which honestly sucks, I just want Plex to serve my media with a nice and unified UX design and with less issues possibles. Which is not the case now.
And overall, there are some pretty solid ideas. Recommendations in this category is cool, movies are filtered in some playlists/category, that’s perfect ! But again, why is it only in this category ? Why ad-supported features are getting cools improvements but my own library doesn’t get it ? This is just messier and frustating as the time goes by.
