I’m less concerned with clutter on the home page than I am with ensuring my family members can find things. Continue Watching and On Deck aren’t the same. Content you’re in the middle of is different than content that’s “On Deck”. Plex looks worse with this feature on because the home screen is just another screen with rows of posters… nothing at all draws visual attention to it as a hub anymore.
If there is an effort to de-clutter the home screen it should first start with going back to the unified Recently Added rows.
So getting a bit used to this but I find the number of items in Continue Watching is very limiting. For example I watched something today that I haven’t seen in months and after I watched it it queued up the next episode in the continue watching hub but then kicked off the next episode of a show I haven’t watched in about 2 weeks.
I can see this leading to a lot more searching of the library and removing a very useful current feature.
Oh I see On Deck is now in the TV Hub, I hardly ever leave the main screen as everything was On Deck. Hmm not sure if this is a step back, bad UI design or something that I will just get used to.
Edit: Nope I have reverted back just find the combined Continue Watching too limiting. The current two rows of Continue watching and On deck work very well as they are.
Tried the feature, didn’t like it, went back to separate On Deck and Continue Watching. If this ever gets elected from experimental status, I hope it will be made optional.
@DaveBinM would you know if there is an eTA on when the new CW will fix the limiting of the number of items in its list ? Sometimes it shows 6 and other times its limited to 20 when using the web client ?
IMO this should match the Maximum number of On Deck items which will appear value set on the general library settings.
I love how an “experimental” feature gets turned into a “you’ll be switched automatically” feature (newest beta says everyone is being switched over in April) this quickly. Especially given the feedback.
I really hope these upcoming curation features allow us to return to separate On Deck and Continue Watching, to return to using fan art for Continue Watching. Otherwise this attempt to give us more control is just going to end up as more heavy handedness by developers. At least give us the ability to promote things with fan art at the top of the homescreen.
I have spent the past god knows how many years downloading fan art with the title for all my movies and TV shows for the express purpose of its use in Continue Watching. Is there anyone at Plex with an inkling of how much work some of us put into our libraries. I really hope at some point Plex developers start giving some consideration to their customers.
Just a heads up to people. Ran a test on an extra Apple TV I had.
Once the switch is made there is no more On Deck even in manual management mode. Continue Watching remains fan art (yay!, but still wish I could have this in automatic mode) but is combined with On Deck. The combined Continue Watching seems to be continuous. Though bizarrely you still have the option to show the newly added GAMES in your MOVIE library in the manual management mode.
I really hope developers work to ensure the new curation features actually allow admins to set-up home screens, instead of forcing changes like this on us.
There should be an option to separate On Deck and Continue Watching.
There should be an option to continue to use fanart for Continue Watching (for more flexibility why not let admins decide if poster or fan art should be used for every Home Screen row).
After that let admins customize the Home Screen for users using their servers.
Plex completely stopped listening to their core userbase. This thread just proved it (yet again). I am seriously wondering why they asked for feedback at all.
Turning experimental status to production in a heart beat, forcing the new feature down users’ throats despite negative feedback and despite users asking for it to be made optional.
I am pretty pissed, and that’s an understatement.
I am helping myself now by turning off automatic home screen management. That brings back the old separated continue watching /on deck rows. For now, at least. Until they shut that down, too.
I like the combined On Deck and Continue Watching but would prefer to have something more visually obvious to differentiate between in progress content and up next content. I like the idea of using the background art or generated thumb for in progress titles. Maybe for the up next items an option to control season poster vs show poster too.
I don’t think it should even be an option. It’s the most obvious and logical thing to do, and a long standing annoyance with me… I posted a suggestion for that way back in Nov, 2017.
You can get the season poster in “Recently Added” if you add two or more episodes at a time, so it’s doable, and for some reason seems logical and proper to Plex, but not for a single episode anywhere. I just don’t understand the thought process for that decision.
Honestly, I hate season posters. I’d prefer them not appear anywhere because most look terrible (without a lot of manual editing) compared to the main show poster.
So the features has now also rolled out to AndroidTV and I am hating it even more, because unlike on PlexWeb, when you go back to a manual managed home screen, On Deck is completely removed.
Seriously Plex, this is not cool. Asking the community for feedback, receiving tons of negative feedback and then rolling it out regardless, without making it optional, is like punching your user in the face.
I can understand that, but I’d prefer the ability not be removed. For my home videos and other original content, I make extensive use of the season posters and would be severely impacted by their removal.
I prefer Continue Watching and On Deck to be separate lists (with thumbnails for CW instead of posters), but if you HAVE to combine them, at least put all of the CW’s at the front of the list!!! Having to dig through OD’s to find my CW’s is tedious, inconvenient, and takes me out of the flow of just watching TV. I shouldn’t have to fight the interface. Those big CW thumbnails up top were perfect - don’t “fix” them!
90+% of the time, I want to click on a CW - stop mixing them in with OD’s!
I wouldn’t want this list setup the way @TheGreatBDB would like - I like them mixed together in the new combined list - so hopefully some flexibility in options will be available to account for different preferences (which are clearly varied based on the comments in this thread).
It’s the most obvious and logical thing to do, and a long standing annoyance with me… I posted a suggestion for that way back in Nov, 2017.