There have been complaints for ~10 years about Plex’s auto-generated video thumbnails spoiling episodes. I’ve also been frustrated by this, but then again Plex doesn’t make any money from people building their own video libraries.
I recently discovered that when recording live TV, which is a paid Plex feature, Plex auto-generates thumbnails which can contain spoilers. (See attached image, where 2 of 3 recorded NFL games contained scores.) And since it’s a recording from live TV, without writing custom scripts, one cannot copy sidecar jpegs to hide the auto-generated thumbnails (which people have done with personal libraries).
These thumbnails can also spoil TV shows (as many people in the forums have pointed out).
Since this is a paid feature, I’d hope that the Plex devs would prioritize fixing this bug. A few suggestions (not comprehensive), listed below in order of ease of implementation:
- Generate the thumbnail from the first 10% of the video OR 1 minute, whichever is earlier.
- For live TV recorded episodes, use the Series thumbnail instead of generating a thumbnail.
- Do #2, and include an option to opt-out and generate the thumbnails anyway.
Server Version#: All (but currently using Version 1.42.2.10156)
Player Version#: All (but currently using Plex Web Version 4.147.1)
Tuner Make/Model: All (using HDFX-4US)
Guide/Lineup name:
Using XMLTV?:
Channel number/Name:
<If providing server logs please do NOT turn on verbose logging, only debug logging should be enabled>
