Watchlists

General Discussions Plex Features
1

The new Discovery and universal Watchlist feature had me very interested, excited even, but I’m beginning to wonder about that.

Having selected all my subscribed services, my Watchlist is still empty. So Plex is NOT harvesting watchlist information from those services. It’s just creating another watchlist, albeit one which can contain content from multiple sources. However, that does not simplify anything. It is as I said, just another watchlist.

This is certainly not what I was hoping for. All services to which I subscribe have some sort of ‘watchlist’ and aggregating those into one place would certainly be advantageous if they were kept in sync. So e.g. add a movie to Prime’s ‘watchlist’ would also see that appear in Plex. Likewise, find a movie in Plex’s Discover and add the one available on Prime to Plex’s watchlist would add that to the Prime watchlist. Now that would be a great feature.

As far as I can see, what this new feature provides is just another list to have to maintain and curate. If I’m in the Prime/Disney/Apple etc app and see something I want to add to a watchlist, I can add it to that service’s watchlist with a few clicks/taps. To add that to Plex’s watchlist means switching to Plex, performing a search, adding it to the Plex watchlist and then having to switch back to the original app to continue with whatever I was doing. This is NOT a convenience feature.

Tell me I’m missing something here.

2

Correct. Plex does not have a way to link to your accounts on these other services, mostly because they don’t allow it.

3

I suspected this would be the problem, but such a shame that business greed detracts from the experience of those businesses’ customers.

4

Yeah, my father has this dream, where we could log into one program with all our streaming service accounts, and have a combine one-player program that lets you swap between watching Disney+ shows and Netflix shows, alongside other stuff. He’d hoped that this new Plex feature was that, but I had to tell him that there is no way in HELL these big streaming services will let you access their content in another person’s app. Most likely, all kinds of secure background connecting has to occur to prevent being able to see their videos without a paying account, and they do not want to open up access to all that to someone else’s apps control.

5

Your father and I share the same dream. :grinning:

6

I don’t expect to be able to watch within Plex, but how about at least getting a unified Ui that accesses and uses your watched status?

So I click on Shark Tank from inside plex, it then opens the Hulu app and I watch the episode, then in plex it shows that I have watched that episode and adds the next episode to “Continue Watching”. This way from within plex it all looks native, and simply redirects you to watch in the other app.

7

@MrZoops You’re describing the Apple TV app, it works exactly like that for pretty much every service except Netflix (they took their ball and went home).

I belive that Android TV does the same thing (including Netflix!), but I don’t use it so I can’t speak to that directly.

8

I don’t believe it tracks your watched progress in other apps though.

9

What do you mean?

10

That is what I was trying to say.

11

This is exactly how the Apple TV app operates

12

It’s not, because how would plex know if you’ve watched the episode? You cannot sign into any apps and it doesn’t scrobble back to plex. It also doesn’t add that series into your ‘Continue Watching’ queue like a local file.

13

Which is most certainly why this BETA of a feature is USELESS. It’s not beta but a half baked prototype that doesn’t have legs and a brain to stand on.

Sure there’s ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES but that should have been dealt with behind the scenes and not pushed out until it had much more functionality than what was forced upon us.

People are visiting the forums to add input of what they wish to have added, but Plex definitely should have brainstormed those ideas already. Why get everyone worked up, coming up with ideas, assumptions, and frustration over the use case of this feature.

1 Like
14

I can see some use for this ‘extra’ watchlist. Maybe there’s a movie/show you hear about, but don’t know where it will be/is showing. In that case a Plex search and adding to Plex’s watchlist solves that and when you want to watch, you’ll be taken to the relevant app/service to do so. All without having to manually determine where you can watch it. However…

I don’t see that as a ‘must have’ feature and it involves yet another watchlist to have to monitor and it is quite possible that later when you decide you would like to watch that particular movie/show, but cannot now remember where it was ‘saved’, you now have one more watchlist to have to search through in order to find it.

So, overall I don’t think Plex’s new watchlist actually improves anything. A little bit better in some circumstances and a a bit worse in others. So it seems to be 1 step forward and 1 step back and on balance, it doesn’t seem worth the effort to implement.

It simply cannot replace the watchlists of the individual services, so it’s another, essentially unnecessary watchlist.

On the Apple TV, Apple themselves are best placed to provide such functionality and they’ve failed to provide any seamless integration of the other services (Netflix being and obvious spanner in the works). I originally thought their concept was great, until I realised how flawed it was and in any case cluttered up with trying to push ‘paid for’ content. So I reverted to just using each app independently, each with its own watchlist. The Apple TV+ app cannot even get that right and calls it something else.

Overall, despite enjoying the streaming experience and not wanting to go back to anything else, it amazes me the poor job most services make of their apps. Every one of which should provide certain basic functionality, like:-

• Decent fast forward and rewind during which you can actually see the timeline and actual scenes (thumbnails) of the video.

• Drill down through the data, so Show/Series/Episodes and NEVER present so much content in a single scrolling row that finding anything is impossible (like all 100 episodes in one single row - BBC I’m talking to you).

• Multiple user accounts and then for each…

• Remember FOREVER what has been watched.

• Simple ability to modify such status, to set any movie/show/episode as ‘watched’ or ‘unwatched’.

The above are the most basic requirements and to be fair to Plex, they meet and exceed them, which is more than can be said for the behemoths like Sky, Amazon, Apple etc who have the resources to absolutely nail the user experience, but have failed miserably.

If we’re talking ‘universal watchlist’, it needs to be a separate app on its own. Trying to tie it in with any other app/service that provides its own content is never going to be satisfactory. Each app/service should deal with its own content and hopefully fulfil the basics (see above) and then one other dedicated ‘search/watchlist’ app that has no allegiance to any individual service and whose search can be configured to e.g. in/exclude non subscribed content. Its watchlist then being an amalgamation of all watchlists in those subscribed services (specified in much the same way as Plex is attempting now). So any addition to a service’s watchlist, made within that service’s app will appear in this independent ‘universal watchlist’ and everything is kept in sync.

So pretty much what we hoped this new Plex feature was, but isn’t. However it occurs to me that Plex should split whatever functionality they can implement into a separate independent app. and leave the Plex app to just deal with Plex content.

It also occurs to me that an independent app would have a much better chance of agreement and co-operation from all services and avoid the petty squabbling like between Apple and Netflix, due to their business competitiveness and which ultimately screws it up for the users. Let each service do their own thing, but let an independent third party bind them into a cohesive user experience.

Pie in the sky? Maybe. But such an independent app would have a better chance of co-operation than any one individual competitor trying to do that within their own app.

15

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