What I want isn’t for me - it’s for my friends - the guys that could really benefit from a Random Hub of unwatched items that appear on the Home Screen…
JUST LIKE START WATCHING FOR TV SHOWS.
I have added Movie: ‘Actor/Director’ which isn’t terrible - it isn’t what I want, but at least my friends can see something… and if it weren’t for the fact that Movie: ‘Actor/Director’ stalls on loading - that it won’t even show up most of the time unless you load, reload, reload, wait, pray, hope - there it goes - it’s not what I want either.
Start Watching loads a random list of Unwatched Shows every time Home Is Loaded (within reason) and NOTHING I can find for Movies does the same thing - and works every time the page loads.
Smart Collections could be very cool at some point…
If Plex ever decides to fix them so that Users can see what’s in them.
In their current state they are no good to me, or anyone else.
Well… outside of the “watched” flag bug, I have been able to provide myself and users’ home screens with smart collection hubs and having a random option is a step forward as well (specifically addressing the topic here) so I’m happy to say “thank you” for a feature improvement and am hoping the bugs with Smart Collections get some correction sooner rather than later to make the new feature more functional and useful.
Since the watched flag does work for me, some of these are better for me than the built in ones and I wasn’t able to do that before so I’ve had QoL improvements. I can appreciate it’s still very frustrating for some folks expectations though.
Well… outside of the “watched” flag bug, I have been able to provide myself and users’ home screens with smart collection hubs and having a random option is a step forward as well
as long as those Smart Collections aren’t created from TV Libraries - yes, your users can use/see them
My friends have already been trained that on this page drilling for media must be initiated - if you’re going to get somewhere.
I’m not interested in creating more Drilling Rigs on the Home Page. It takes 10 clicks to change the state of Subtitles WHILE A FILE IS PLAYING. My friends are hammering away like woodpeckers to see if an item has an extra version, they got the jackhammer out if they want to see what language an audio track is, they doing paradiddles with Neil Peart’s old drum sticks to do anything on New and Improved Plex.
I’m not all that interested in creating more clicking opportunities for my friends - who are as old as I am and would like to be doing something else other than drilling for something when the bucket comes up for kicking.
A Row of Unwatched Movies that’s different every time (within reason) that facilitates The Pre-Play screen of a Movie when clicked - JUST LIKE START WATCHING FOR TV SHOWS - that appear on the Home Screen is my goal…
“To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go…”
The topic here was you wanting a Home Screen with a more variable row for recently released movies.
“Home Screen” meaning the actual HOME tab in Plex. Besides some user related flags having a bug (like unwatched) you can create a “random recently released” row for your Home Screen now and you couldn’t before.
So I’m confused how this new feature is not almost exactly what you were asking for in this topic? I get that it doesn’t fix some of your other wants\needs but it does seem like you just got (outside of the known bugs) what you wanted?
Edited to say “almost exactly” since the random smart collection doesn’t really refresh the same as the “start watching”… yet?
They’d have to drill into a Smart Collection - BLIND, armed with only hope - one of these days when they can see what’s in it - and be presented with 10 movies that hopefully change now and then.
That isn’t ANYTHING like START WATCHING for TV Shows. <— a line of posters that change (almost) every time the Home Screen Loads that when clicked lead to a prize - the pre-play screen of an unwatched Movie.
You can create a row on your Home Screen, using a smart collection (see previous articles and posts), that will show random unwatched new releases. This will show for you or your users (though with that known bug about user references). @hthighway indicated this isn’t working for TV Shows (another bug) but I’m definitely using it for movies.
It’s a row of posters, click on the poster with “play” button (on screen or on remote) and off it goes…
That Random Movies row doesn’t update every time but it does update after a period of time (I haven’t timed it). But if I leave and come back after awhile it’s different.
I don’t see where you think they have to dig into the collection? It works the same to play a movie in that row as playing a TV Show from a “Start Watching” row.
Edit: I also just tested using “Hide Collection” function and the smart collection doesn’t show in the Library (just collections page) and doesn’t hide its contents either with the setting. Useful to keeping that area cleaned up.
Then down there to replace the row:
Top Movies with “whoever that is”…
is a Smart Collection Poster.
… I’m old, half blind, nearly completely crazy, but that’s not going to work for me like START WATCHING FOR TV SHOWS.
For one thing my OCD is going to go into orbit around Jupiter when a Horizontal Row of something is replaced by a Smart Collection Poster - that has to be drilled into before you can see what’s in it.
I KNOW what’s going to happen:
It’ll never be opened.
That’s what’ll happen.
But before any of this can be test flown to see if the wings are ripped off in flight - Smart Collections have to work for Users.
That may never happen for all we know.
Plex is augmenting and expanding development for a feature THAT DOESN’T WORK!
That’s not how it works. When you add the Smart Collection as a row it adds the contents of the smart collection to the row - not the poster representing the smart collection.
Look at the titles of those two rows I show in my screenshot. That’s the content of that smart collection.
We’ve all been here — that’s why you were confusing us!
If it’s TV Shows … it’s broken I believe.
If it’s Movies they’ll see the same thing if you set it for them but SOME flags for the filters are messed up if they are user specific.
So… my friends see MY (as admin) unwatched movies. That’s one of the couple of known bugs with Smart Collections
Edit:
Bugs I’m aware of for Smart Collections
User watched flags
TV Show smart collections won’t show on Home Hubs for users
The count and thumbnail for a smart collection aren’t accurate (if you limit to 30 movies, the generated poster and count still says the entire library count)
A’ight… thx to you both for the training, but here we are - still waiting for Plex to Fix Smart Collections so they can be tested - then deployed - since that testing part is being left up to us.
That is likely true… but a random option came up pretty quick so maybe there’s hope.
I don’t think Smart Collections have caught on much yet and I also think the majority of Plex users don’t share to users so… I kinda get why it might not be high priority. Like I said - for me - there are QoL improvements so I’m happier even if it’s not working perfectly yet.
Edit: Also… a whole new category of poster and background creation for the Plex Poster crowds.
Other than the glaring issue with TV Show Libraries
The watched/unwatched thing would be nice to have fixed, and now that they’ve begun exposing more of the api (randomly), I’d like to see filepath exposed as well
