I learned about Web Shows on Plex this morning, took one look under “All Shows” to see what all was available… and then immediately disabled it entirely. I use Plex to host MY local content. I don’t need nor use Online Media Sources. Not News. Not Podcasts. Not Web Shows. It’s a waste of developer man-hours to keep developing and supporting them as far as I’m concerned.
Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?
As long as you can disable it, who cares? I like to approach life where more choices is a good thing.
I’m a nay as well. Until very recently Plex has always been about the content that I find (that’s why plugins were so great). Webshows is content that Plex decides for itself that I want to see. They say it in the link at the top of the forum, “only the highest quality creators; no robotic “top ten life hacks” or sparkly slime spam”.
Well, honestly, what if that’s the stuff I want? Plex isn’t going to deliver?
What about my interests? There was only one channel (fandor) I was even remotely interested in.
This is one more reason why my plex pass isn’t getting renewed in a couple months. Then I’ll be completely switched to Emby.
I might agree that it doesn’t matter, except that I suspect developing and supporting this takes away from effort spent fixing bugs and improving or implementing already-long-since-asked-for features.
…like audiobook support. -.-
It’s a no from me
I use Plex for local content
I don’t use News, Podcasts, and won’t use Web Shows. I could be way off-base, but it seems to me that Plex is trying to redefine what Plex is. With the removal of Plugins, is it just a matter of time before its local media functionality is gone, too?
I’ll check it out and attempt to make use of it. Anything that can add to my entertainment experience is a plus… but I feel like this won’t offer much value to me.
I pop into Plex News every once in a while and I still can’t figure out how to make it interesting to me.
Often I wonder if Plex is trying too hard to cover bases. Hopefully it doesn’t lose site of it’s original charter… to deliver your own media to you in the way that you want it. The focus seems to be shifting.
It feels to me like we already had this functionality. It was called “Watch Later”, it was removed and then repackaged so that I can now only choose to watch from their curated list of “Licensed Content” rather than the stuff I actually wanted to watch that was on my Watch Later playlist.
Yeah the exact reasons we were given for the removal of plug-ins.
Now we have what some of those plugins gave us, masquerading as a new killer feature. I’m not even gonna bother looking, but if the content isn’t sponsored yet, just give it a few months.
Plugins going cos hardly anyone uses them…they claim.
Web-shows here cos nobody and I mean nobody asked for them.
So good luck with anything that does have votes on a feature request.
Guess I’m nobody 
I wanted something like this for awhile now… I have library that I manually manage with just web shows which is a pain to meta data and keep updated.
Yea for me
You are assuming that the shows you watch are in the list of “Curated content”
Yeah sorry apologies.
I certainly haven’t seen a feature request?
But as @harroguk says. Now you’re limited to what Plex decide you can watch…unlike with watch later.
Making no such assumption… I’m aware they likely aren’t but this is a step towards that.
Sorry for being positive… I’ll go make a post about how plex killed my dog and dropped a house on my sister later to balance it out.
The only way webshows has the slightest chance of working is if I can add youtube or vimeo (or insert site here) channels myself. Because the content I watch (usually dry lectures in the field of my expertise) will never be available on webshows.
My interests will never be “curated” (I don’t really think they know what that word means) by plex
This was actually my first concern. I tend to watch shows and topics that aren’t conventional or as popular as most. Will I be able to add these somehow? Or am I stuck with the stock offerings?
Hey, this isn’t a thread specifically for dumping on Plex. I was genuinely asking for actual opinions, not to start a hater bandwagon.
You don’t need to take it personally that people aren’t convinced this will actually be useful, even to someone such as yourself, given the implications that it’s designed to make Plex money from sponsors rather than to let users stream what they themselves want to stream.
For myself, I don’t use Plex for online content. I stream remotely via mobile a lot, yes, but I stream from my own server what I myself have stored there.
Web Shows? Meh.
I think it depends where the content comes from.
The existing content doesn’t float my boat, however if it integrates into Youtube, or things like BBC Iplayer, then it might be more useful.
I think our media servers are personal to us, and the web shows need to be too.
If I can pull in videos from my youtube subscriptions, and load those from plex rather than jumping between apps, great.
Didn’t they literally just make a huge post last week about removing a bunch of frivolous stuff and essentially doing a feature freeze specifically so they could do what the users have been begging for and focus on the “important” things and fix all of the outstanding bugs?
I guess they forgot?
Plex is so bipolar.
So I understand plex is trying to monitise its userbase - by collecting information based on the shows users watch - which is presumably valuable to sell for marketing so platforms can target adverts better.
But I’m paying for a Plex Pass, I’d rather they spent my money on paying developers to fix what I paid for - rather than this nonsense. I’m guessing I’m not alone in using Plex for my own personal content - I can source news, podcasts and web shows from the web already.
Seriously disappointed in the direction this product is going. Fix the Panasonic Smart TV App, Fix the 4k subtitle buffering issue, fix 10 bit HW transcoding on Synology NASs, and then dick around with features no one wants, please.
