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Watching my rips of The Dick Van Dyke Show and suddenly I’m seeing commercial advertisements while watching my PERSONAL videos.
Having NO COMMERCIALS was why I went with PLEX in the first place…WTF did you guys change with my latest update?
This happens when you accidently choose the Plex free on demand version instead of the show in your own library
I’m not in Free on Demand. I’m in my personal library. And I have a Lifetime Plex Pass…
What pisses me off is it wasn’t there…and now it is after an update. That’s B$hit that MicroSloth does…
No, you didn’t watch your media from your personal library.
If you have Movies & TV enabled in your settings under “Online Media Sources” (see screenshot) then results from there will show up when you do a search. Also, there is a chance of the results from “Online Media Sources” showing up in On Deck or Continue Watching (depending on how you have that set).
Every single time someone posts something like this it is because they accidentally watched the show/movie from Plex’s free On Demand library and not their own for one of the reasons I mentioned above.
Simple solution is to disable all the online media sources (technically for this case only “Movies & TV” needs to be disabled but it sounds like you wouldn’t want any of them) shown in the screenshot above (that is what I normally have but I had to enable “Movies & TV” to be able to search “Dick Van Dyke” and see if showed up in the free On Demand section (which is does, see screenshot).
-Shark2k
Hmmm, search has changed as I have all online sources disabled but in the new version I am getting external results which didn’t happen before.
Edit - it isn’t a widespread issue in that not all searches bring up external media but it does happen.
Edit 2 - I just went back and redid a search using the keyword that brought up an external item. It no longer shows up in search and yet I made no changes to my settings. Sounds a bit weird. Are Plex fixing things in the backend ?
LMAO… 
Do you see where “Library” is selected? And I scroll down and select MY CONTENT and not some “online” source?
They changed something in the program and activated features in the update.
I’ve now disabled all external resources. I don’t stream content from PLEX outside because I live in BFE and my internet isn’t the greatest…which is why I use PLEX in the first place.
If you prove that Plex is interfering with playing local files you will be Internet famous because it will be an enormous scandal.
If this is really happening it should be trivial to collect hard evidence. Maybe see if you can get Plex to display the media info screen while an ad is playing and take a screen shot.
If Plex has made this policy, I’ll be right behind you out the door.
(If anyone at Plex is reading… You guys gotta put a different overlay on your streams, or otherwise differentiate them in some unmistakable way when they are mixed in with our files. We see these posts weekly.)
I think what others are saying is if you have external sources enabled, that is considered part of your "Library’.
I think OP is showing us the Library view of his TV Shows, which indeed should be only local files.
But, it is easy to pick a Plex stream by mistake IF Plex’s sources are pinned, AND IF you pick a show from the Home screen where it recommends what to watch next. If both those things are true, your files and Plex streams both appear. Click too quickly and you can get the wrong one.
If you search in your library and have external sources enabled, it can return external media.
What surprised me was I just tried it with external sources turned off and got an external item. Tried same search again and it is no longer there (via the Web app).
Takes me back to the external porn media fiasco but I’ll assume this is just a blip or a one off mistake.
I haven’t been bitten by Search, because I got bitten by my Home page mixing up sources first, then turned them off.
I would keep Plex’s sources pinned IF they made it crystal clear what was theirs, and what was mine. I am not totally opposed to ad-supported content, I just need things better compartmentalized.
I ran a beta update and it turned on Live TV setting. I previously had it turned off.
Updates not respecting settings ?
It was a beta update so meh.
That might (now) be so, but prior to this latest release it NEVER showed advertising on my PERSONAL library. I made no changes, just updated the PLEX software…
We don’t “search” the library. We go directly to the folders and open the video directly.
Here’s a question for ya… Are you able to recreate the problem?
In other words, can you prove that Plex is injecting adds into your personal content?
If you cannot reproduce the issue, then the most likely explanation that this was a one-off occurrence and it really is more likely that somehow, someway, you actually DID play content from the free add driven online libraries… When lends the next question… How did you manage that?
I’d really like to see a recording of that. Particularly the starting point and how you navigated to the movie.
You don’t have any trailers activated, to play before the movie starts?
(This prefrence is to be configured in every client separately)
Yes, I could reproduce it…
Shutting off external content has fixed it. We don’t stream from Plex anyway…I have apps on the TV for that.
I took video. This time I just hit “Resume” to start it…typically I go to the season folder and check what episodes have been viewed (green check mark) and then select the next one.
No previews, no trailers…
But the site won’t let me upload video…I tried.
I don’t think there’s any debate on where the ads came from. This was 100% the Plex free on demand version and not your own file on your file system that was interjected with an ad
Plex has repeatedly stated this will never happen and if it did it, there would be a s*#tstorm on the internet like you’ve never seen in your lifetime
People would be cancelling their memberships and deleting their accounts by the 1000’s
Obviously, this was a mistake. The only real question is how did this actually happen
I have heard people say that Plex content somehow replaced their own in the continue watching row and they didn’t notice until a commercial played. This is just as bad IMO and should never happen either
I have not heard anyone else say they picked their own show from their own library and it played Plex content unless they were mistaken
If you can actually reproduce this, you can upload the video to Google Drive or Dropbox and just post the link along with a set of logs
I could be mistaken but I don’t believe Plex logs your play history if you watch free on demand content
Go to Dashboard → Your user profile → View Play history
If you played your own file with ads interjected into it, you will see the episode listed there from the time and date you played it
If you don’t see it, that will verify that it was Plex content
And there it is!.. So it was never on your personal content, and you somehow streamed a copy from the online libraries.
It’s always user error with this issue 
