Don’t give my that crap about I am playing their free content. I have been watching MY copy of this series for months and this morning it has COMMERICALS!
Plex I need an answer!
Pretty sure that it didn’t. Plex doesn’t do this. Never did, never will.
You were playing from the “Continue Watching” hub on the start page, right?
Try to repeat this. Keep the server status page of your own server open in a separate device/browser/tab.
Continue your series. Observe the server status. Observe whether there are ads.
If you have Plex’s on-demand services pinned to your side bar, they will contribute to the start page. Which means that if you are in the process of watching a series, and the next episode is available on plex’s offerings, you will see both Plex’s and your own version in CW.
Now it depends on which you have clicked.
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I verified that the episode was my content. “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp” is not on live TV…Only my server. I restarted my server and restarted my MAC and now guess what…NO COMMERCIALS. Bug or feature this was Plex’s issue.
Verify that the episode number you were playing is actually on your server. Sometimes collections have gaps. Either because the previous episode was a double-episode or because you simply don’t have it.
Plex does not only offer live tv streaming channels. It also has an extensive on-demand catalog.
There were reports like yours before. In all those cases, it could be shown that the user inadvertently clicked on an item which was linked to plex’s on-demand catalog.
Just search this forum.
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That is available on the plex on-demand. https://watch.plex.tv/en-GB/show/the-life-and-legend-of-wyatt-earp
You can disable it I believe, see this post: Why am i getting ads on my own Content? - #2 by shark2k
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This will be yet another of these where after he realizes his mistake, he never comes back to say so…
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ROTF and there it is 
“I have been watching MY copy of this series for months and this morning it has COMMERICALS!”
And then
“Plex chose to go to their episode on a continue playing series”
Translation, big man made a mistake and was 100% wrong LOL
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- Shouting insults
- Boasting about work history
- Weird political attack
Just another glorious morning on the Plex community!
It’s too bad that Plex allows this UX issue to persist, because it is an easy mistake to make and it seems to produce the craziest, angriest posts.
On the bright side, these threads fatten my ignore list.
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While it’s nice to take pleasure in a correct diagnosis, being very smug and condescending about it doesn’t help the mood of the forums.
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Attempted to replicate and cannot.
Point of order? Be careful of https://app.plex.tv as it can take you off in a direction you don’t intend. Also be careful of which server you’re selecting, Plex’s or yours
@ChuckPa it would be super if you could let the right people at the office know about this common issue. There must be an inexpensive way to improve the situation, perhaps more clearly labeling the Plex content.
(IMHO a good way to fix the issue would be to not offer Plex content in Continue Watching when you have the same episodes as personal files. If you run out of your own files, then offer the ad-supported content so the user can continue watching. I am sure there are a lot of possible solutions.)
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As I saw the email in my email box, I was wondering what the issue is.
Correct me if I’m wrong but this seems like “What’s the desired behavior?” problem.
Scenario:
- You start watching Series A on Paul’s server
- You switch to my (Chuck’s) server to watch a movie
- While there, you realize I have the same Series A but in higher quality
- You want to Continue Watching Series A on Chuck’s Server or back where you started on Paul’s server ?
The problem seems to be:
- You started watching “A” on Paul’s server
- You’ve currently selected Chuck’s server.
- Which server should you continue from?
Is this it?
If so, it’s a “Choice / selection” problem.
Whether Continue Watching should pick buddy A or buddy B when both have the content in different qualities IS a question that needs a good answer. In my opinion the BIGGER issue is that Continue will offer ad-supported content in a non-obvious way, which should never happen if any free alternatives are available.
I would love to write a spec to address all of this if I worked with you @ChuckPa … But since Plex isn’t hiring PMs, I will just observe that people freak out if they see ads unexpectedly.
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As I see this problem:
-
It happens from time to time because folks don’t understand how plex works in these scenarios.
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Engineering wrote the behavior one way. Obviously folks don’t know / don’t understand this
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I’m asking: How does the community THINK it should work?
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If there’s sufficient clarity, even if multiple options, I’m willing to present it as a request
– We’ve done this before and gotten things changed. Time to do it again? -
Might this be a documentation problem?
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I think you have brought into the situation a new variable that isn’t present in the original concerns, (multiple servers.)
The concern is start playing a show from your server and when you click continue watching later to start the show it plays from the Plex on-demand content with ads and does not continue playing the local copy.
If I have a local copy of Nash Bridges on my server, and I watch three episodes, when I click continue watching it should pull from local before going to the Plex on-demand option.
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I remember user requests on these forums, which asked exactly for the opposite. Reasons given were
- the own copy is of bad quality
- the own copy doesn’t have the desired audio language
- the own copy was recorded off TV and had been cut down to fit in more advertisements (yes, I get the irony)
What I would find useful here is a popup when you start playback. This item can be played from these locations, which one would you like? And make that selection stick for subsequent plays.
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If it’s in your “Continue Watching” section, then I would think it should continue from whatever server/version/etc you last watched. That’s kinda what the word continue would insinuate to me. If a user goes into your library and starts playing from there then I would expect for it to play your version, and then “Continue Watching” be updated to continue playing your version. In no case would I expect to select something from “Continue Watching” though and have it play from a source other than the last one I used.
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Well I think the whole CW behavior need a serious makeover anyway.
In the example you provide CW will show the movie from Pauls server AND from Chucks server WITHOUT a clear way to distinguish between these.
It gets even “better” when the movie is also present within multiple libraries.
I severely cut down on my library count, because I couldn’t stand 3 or more entries for movies in my CW (without a way to properly distinguish between them).
So yes, we need a proper way to control or at least see where the CW entries originate from.
Just curious – at Plex are the engineers designing the details of the features and changes, or do you have a “product” team that writes specs for the engineers to follow?
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