For the last month or so a lot of my TV series streaming collection on my Plex Server will show up with a streaming equivalent beside it under “Continue Watching”. There’s a similar question here about it with a “solution” of disable online services.
Are my options really to either have ad-laden crap randomly appear instead of my own content OR disable streaming services completely? Why can’t I just have only my own media show up in Continue Watching when that’s what I started watching?
I know it’s not really “instead of” my own content, since it shows up side-by-side without clearly indicating whether it’s from my server or crackle or popcornflix or something else, but since it’s not labeled (at least on the Roku app) I can’t tell whether I’m going to get the ads or not until I resume watching.
If I must I’ll disable streaming services to get rid of this unwanted “feature.” It seems like a huge step backwards though.
Continue Watching on home screen is populated from sources pinned to the sidebar. Don’t pin “Movies & Tv” to home screen an it won’t populate in CW. but you can still get to it the times you want to by going into MORE.
I have not personally tested that but i thought it would only show up in CW from the streaming source if you watched it there. Not sure if that would have been expected but will ask about it.
I noticed lately that the Home “Continue Watching” hub will show all copies of your media in all pinned sources. For example, I have some movies in my Movies library. I often have copies of these same movies, in a separate folder, in a separate Rifftrax libray. These files contain and auto-play the rifftrax audio track for the movie. Since I don’t usually have multiple audio tracks, and keeping track of which movies have this comedy audio soundtrack is hard, I decided to copy the entire movie and keep it separate.
When I watch a movie in this Rifftrax library and stop partway through, Plex will show TWO copies of the movie on my homescreen “Continue Watching” hub. A few months back, this behavior was different. It used to just show the first copy it found, and offered to “continue” that copy. Since the standard Movie library was listed first, it was THAT copy that Plex resumed, rather than the Rifftrax-library copy I started it on.
The OP is probably seeing similar here where a copy on Plex’s free Movies and TV pin places a copy of the in-progress show in addition to the user’s own copy.
I think Plex should simply remember which library a movie/show was watched on, and have the “Continue Watching” hub link only to that specific library’s copy. This would prevent the OP’s problem of Plex offering their free ad-supported copy, and fix my own problem of Plex resuming the wrong Rifftrax-less copy.
EDIT: As I went to get a screenshot of this issue, I noticed that it is not happening on Plex-for-Windows. In fact, my client is properly selecting the single CORRECT copy from the correct library! Huh.
Edit II: Ah, just saw that the Rifftrax movie I tested is matched against a Rifftrax GUID of the movie. I like this, as it keeps them separate from the default version in another library. But it explains why this one test did NOT show the issue I mentioned originally.
That isn’t new, it has always done that with things that have the same GUID in different libraries. ( assuming both libraries were pinned and neither were set to exclude from home screen) The way to prevent that is to use Editions
I reset my Plex last week and I had the option to select MY PREFERRED SERVER… and if I remember correctly, that is what controls what is available in Continue Watching and related.
In other words, I could select my personal server or my media server. Hope this helps.
On the Roku select your username/avatar at the top of left sidebar and select “Reset Home customization” and it will take you though that wizard. but as mentioned it really is just choosing what to be pinned.
