Why Does Plex Insist on Displaying Spoilers?

So I’ve just had a world cup game spoiled and I want to know why can’t we disable the screen grab option? Surely there is some reason, after all these years and hundreds of requests. As a paying customer I feel its my right to know WHY!

The reason is that Plex does not care! They are perfectly able to choose the screen grab from early in the file or even to make it optional but they choose not to.

Plex believes in all cases Plex knows best and we poor users are simply too dumb to possibly have any valid ideas that contradict what Plex has decided to do in the first place.

PMS take screengrabs from 3 places in the file 25%, 50%, and 75%. It should use the 25% one as the default unless it couldn’t generate it for some reason, then it uses the next one. If PMS is somehow making a screen grab from later in the file, that would be a bug. You’ll need to provide details so we can look into it.

"PMS take screengrabs from 3 places in the file 25%, 50%, and 75%. "

Could you guys take half an hour out of your day and change those values to 1%, 2%, and 3%? It doesn’t matter if I’m not seeing the very end of a recording. 25% can spoil a sports game! I started the recording late, but got like an hour of postgame. So the score was more like three quarters into the game! I didn’t know the last few minutes, but most of the game was still spoiled! I don’t get why we HAVE TO HAVE these screen grabs. Hell they can spoil regular TV shows as well.

The idea for the screen grabs was originally intended for movies and tv shows. Sporting events were not considered a common item since all metadata had to be provided manually. But now with DVR, this is more common. I’ll check with the team to see if changing the times for the screen grabs should be changed. However, 1, 2, and 3% seem quite useless to me.

“However, 1, 2, and 3% seem quite useless to me.”

Wouldn’t a very early screen grab be more likely to get the title card? Anyways, turning them off would be even better.

The idea of the image, like the ones that get downloaded is to give an idea of the episode. For example, for a sporting event, if you only get the title, you wouldn’t know who’s playing and then wouldn’t know if you had the right file or not. You would have to rely exclusively on your files being named correctly.

I have seen requests from users to allow turning the screen grab feature off.

"The idea of the image, like the ones that get downloaded is to give an idea of the episode. For example, for a sporting event, if you only get the title, you wouldn’t know who’s playing and then wouldn’t know if you had the right file or not. You would have to rely exclusively on your files being named correctly.

I have seen requests from users to allow turning the screen grab feature off."

Well either you should have metadata from the DVR recording, or you know what it is from the filename. I have literally never wondered, “hey whats this file” and needed a screengrab to find out.

I have a feeling not many people at Plex watch sports. That’s not meant to be derogatory, its just an observation. Here is the issue from sporting fans perspectives:

  1. We don’t want to see the score at all if we are watching a DVR’d recording. I don’t care if its 3 minutes into the game. However, different events actually start at different times. What I mean by that is sometimes they start 1 minute after the scheduled recording, sometimes there are talking heads/pre game for 30 minutes, even an hour. Different networks handle this in different ways even for the same sport.
  2. Screen shots are especially bad for motor racing, and REALLY REALLY bad for formula 1 races. Literally half of all passing or more occurs in the first few laps. So even if the grab is on lap 3 of 70 a screen grab can just ruin the race.

@lobosrul said:
2) Screen shots are especially bad for motor racing, and REALLY REALLY bad for formula 1 races. Literally half of all passing or more occurs in the first few laps. So even if the grab is on lap 3 of 70 a screen grab can just ruin the race.

Perhaps you could solve this by watching a more interesting sport. :wink:

1 Like