Plex Watch Together

[Luke 37008]

23 hours ago, Vidarr said:

Hello @Luke do you have any news on that matter many of us are requesting for such feature is it even in the roadmap ?

It's something we're interested in for future updates. thanks.

[Toonville 0]

Any updates on this ? My server is massive and it would be nice to watch movies together with my family in other countries

[Luke 37008]

It's something we're interested in for future updates. Thanks.

[ziggyds 1]

Eagerly awaiting this feature 

[MrMackey 26]

17 hours ago, ziggyds said:

Eagerly awaiting this feature 

me too!

[Savard1ka 0]

Same! I've seen a couple of examples of people creating their own outside alternatives, but if this were to become a core feature I'd switch from my Lifetime to Plex right away. 

[Skyfay 19]

I hope this feature comes in the near future

[jspanitz 7]

Came here looking for this - really hoping this makes it in the product soon

[bxpressiv 1]

Would love to see this feature added. With the pandemic, traveling for work and being divorced and not living with my kids this would be really useful. 

[khat17 2]

4 hours ago, bxpressiv said:

Would love to see this feature added. With the pandemic, traveling for work and being divorced and not living with my kids this would be really useful. 

Sent you a message. There is a project on here, but takes a bit of work to set up. There may be alternatives. Check your messages. 

[neik 835]

10 minutes ago, khat17 said:

Sent you a message. There is a project on here, but takes a bit of work to set up. There may be alternatives. Check your messages. 

Mind sharing?

[khat17 2]

22 minutes ago, neik said:

Mind sharing?

For the one that's on here: 

I've also sent you a PM. There are other projects and forks off Emby. I really love it, and even though I have both Plex and Emby lifetime - I much rather Emby. It's just a bit annoying that even a fork off Emby has the feature now native. I'm still waiting. 

Edited September 12, 2021 by khat17

[bxpressiv 1]

Thanks, I love Emby (Lifetime worth it) and like to share my love of it with friends and family so a watch sync function would be a great fit to show off its capabilities. I'll try Plex again as a dual server just for this task and see how I go- I had transcoding issues the last time I used it but that was years ago.

I understand this is a niche task and I'd pay Premier fees for friends and family for them to be able to share an experience with me.

[ertagon2 44]

On 5/29/2020 at 2:18 AM, Luke said:

Hi, yes this is something we're very interested in. Thanks for the feedback.

So... how goes the thing?

[dannymichel 102]

On 3/11/2022 at 7:45 PM, ertagon2 said:

So... how goes the thing?

I have the same question.

[jspanitz 7]

Let's be real, it's never happening. Emby development is glacial.  Regretting I didn't stick with plex years ago.

[Gilgamesh_48 942]

6 minutes ago, jspanitz said:

Let's be real, it's never happening. Emby development is glacial.  Regretting I didn't stick with plex years ago.

And I feel exactly the other way. Plex was/is a HUGE disappointment for the years I used it. I fought switching simply because I detest change but I finally mostly switched several years ago and I am about as happy with Emby's software as I have ever been with anything.

I also do not agree that Emby's development is glacial. I have found that Emby produces substantive changes almost twice as fast as Plex.

As far as the actual request in this thread I believe if it takes the Emby any eal time at all it should be placed on the furthest and deepest back burner there is or, even better, just completely abandoned. There is no one I know that would find this of any value and it produces many more places where problems can crop up.

If it were produced as an optional plugin so it had no part in the actual code then it would be, for me, OK. But by giving everyone the option of having it on or off but built into the code itself it just produces another point of failure.

To put it bluntly. The time wasted producing this unneeded and mostly unwanted "feature" could be much better spent fixing the little bugs that always have cropped up or actually adding features to Emby that most people will use.

[rbjtech 4222]

I'd like to understand the requirement a little more.

The existing API allows you to fully control the 'session' and start/play any media you like (fully control, stop,start,pause etc).

Therefore, if you just collection all the session Id's (those users who are logged on to Emby, local or remote, doesn't matter) and then you fire a  simultaneous 'play' command to them all at the same time,  they will all play at the same time.

A 'watch' task is used to monitor the sessions - if anybody pauses, then emby sends the same pause to all the other sessions.

This is exactly how Autoskip works in Introskip ..  .. but obviously only on a single session.

Is this what people mean by 'Watch Together' ? 

@chef maybe a quick proof of concept could be put together in your lunch break ?  

Edited March 18, 2022 by rbjtech

[dannymichel 102]

30 minutes ago, jspanitz said:

Let's be real, it's never happening. Emby development is glacial.  Regretting I didn't stick with plex years ago.

i hear you. i just can't use plex right now because it's extremely slow on fire stick

[jspanitz 7]

I still love emby, but waiting two years for a feature that many have asked for is glacial development.  Other platforms (plex, jellyfin not to mention the likes of hulu, disney, etc) have turned the same request around in a much timelier fashion. It was a really great thing during the pandemic to be able to watch shows with others (had to use other services to do so) and it would have been great to be able to do the same with my emby instance and my catalog of shows.  I think I've seen 2 people say it was a worthless feature - guessing they don't have friends or family that they like to watch with.

[dannymichel 102]

How can it be a worthless feature if literally everything else has it?

[Gilgamesh_48 942]

21 minutes ago, dannymichel said:

How can it be a worthless feature if literally everything else has it?

That is the same idea as: "If your friends all jumped off a cliff would you jump too?" Which in one form or another parents have said to children since there has been history and, probably, since primitive humans first discovered the uses to which an antelope's thy bone could be put.

A popular feature is just as apt to be a bad feature as an unpopular one in fact a lot of time the true value of a feature is inversely proportional to its perceived value.

I believe it is a "feature" that only a small minority of people want and I believe that an even smaller minority would actually use it after the novelty wears off.

In many ways I care very little one way or another about any "Watch together" implementation but it has been my experience that many times when a feature gets added it effects the basic operation of the code it was grafted onto or jammed into.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Gilgamesh_48

[ertagon2 44]

1 hour ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

That is the same idea as: "If your friends all jumped off a cliff would you jump too?" Which in one form or another parents have said to children since there has been history and, probably, since primitive humans first discovered the uses to which an antelope's thy bone could be put.

A popular feature is just as apt to be a bad feature as an unpopular one in fact a lot of time the true value of a feature is inversely proportional to its perceived value.

I believe it is a "feature" that only a small minority of people want and I believe that an even smaller minority would actually use it after the novelty wears off.

In many ways I care very little one way or another about any "Watch together" implementation but it has been my experience that many times when a feature gets added it effects the basic operation of the code it was grafted onto or jammed into.

It is just like a seatbelt, most of the time it has no use but when u need it you need it.

Most of the time I don't watch together. But when I need it, I need it.

 

[BillOatman 496]

17 hours ago, rbjtech said:

Is this what people mean by 'Watch Together' ? 

@chef maybe a quick proof of concept could be put together in your lunch break ?  

Basically.  People meet up in some sort of lobby inside plex and the movie is started. The feature keeps everyone in sync, if one person pauses everyone is paused.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/watch-together/

@chefand I have had conversations about it, and like you said the remote control api would allow the pause/play etc.  For us to do it in a plugin would require a external server for the "lobby", or have plugins from different users communicate to each other.  It hasn't gone further than a few "what-if" messages, largely due to IntroSkip being worked on. And the fact that a core Emby implementation would be much easier and better.

Edited March 19, 2022 by BillOatman

[rbjtech 4222]

13 minutes ago, BillOatman said:

For us to do it in a plugin would require a external server for the "lobby", or have plugins from different users communicate to each other. 

For users streaming from the same emby server (ie your friends and family are using your emby server), then this can all be controlled from the session manager - no need for any external server ?

If you mean cross Emby servers - then yes, some sort of common control point will be required and that will have many hurdles to overcome.  The obvious advantage Plex has here is they know everything each user does centrally anyway, Emby does not and never will - so any form of data sync will need to be strictly anonymous in design. 

Maybe the solo server option could be investigated as a quick win - gathering the session Id's and pushing the command to play them all at the same time is trivial..

Edited March 19, 2022 by rbjtech