Watched vs. Unwatched Indicators

[MBSki 1009]

1 minute ago, C.S. said:

Is the fear that someone will look at a poster with no green ball and not know whether they've watched all of it, or none of it?

I think that person has bigger problems.

Count me in as someone who has bigger problems then. 

[GrimReaper 3269]

6 minutes ago, MBSki said:

Count me in as someone who has bigger problems then. 

There's more of us. 

[C.S. 60]

Well OK then. I guess I just didn't realize how far we've gone down the road of outsourcing our brains. (I mean that with love and respect - after all we are all doing it to some degree.)

I'll try another angle. Do we like irrelevant information? Do we want more completely redundant information thrown at us from all directions? Because that's what I see when I see Family Guy has 5 million episodes I'm never going to watch. Same with lots of shows my family and friends love for some reason. Just trying to reduce the visual clutter.

[ebr 14903]

26 minutes ago, C.S. said:

that's what I see when I see Family Guy has 5 million episodes I'm never going to watch

You could remove it entirely from your view with one of the ways we provide to do that...

[C.S. 60]

1 hour ago, C.S. said:

Same with lots of shows my family and friends love for some reason.

It would just be better if I never had to think about it.

Perhaps an option (defaulting to the status quo, of course):

[x] Enable episode indicator only for shows I watch.

Would be nice.

[C.S. 60]

OK here's the solution. And this makes the green balls more consistent between TV and movie libraries:

With my proposed option enabled, put a checkmark on shows I've watched fully. That way anything I've never touched, be it TV or movie, has no indicator, and everything I've watched fully has a checkmark. That leaves no room for confusion, and nobody has to see a bunch of green balls with irrelevant information.

[roaku 792]

14 minutes ago, C.S. said:

OK here's the solution. And this makes the green balls more consistent between TV and movie libraries:

With my proposed option enabled, put a checkmark on shows I've watched fully. That way anything I've never touched, be it TV or movie, has no indicator, and everything I've watched fully has a checkmark. That leaves no room for confusion, and nobody has to see a bunch of green balls with irrelevant information.

Someday...

 

[C.S. 60]

Yeah I knew when I wrote that I was getting it from somewhere... Like... the same thread.

And so I may as well go ahead and plagiarize myself from earlier in this thread or some other(s) by saying again that options are good. They build good will. The user feels seen. Bonds are formed. Money.

I don't see support calls coming from this one, as long as the default stays what it is.

[McMovies 6]

On 16/12/2021 at 18:30, godbodian said:

Personally, I would love the ability/function to turn them off completely.

In my setup, there's no need for a watch indicator. I don't watch shows via Emby and our film library is for repeated use/viewing.

The green circle breaks up the aesthetic, IMHO.

+1 im in the use-case.

for general movie viewing i have Netflix/prime/disney/bhal,blah ... i have emby library loaded with my all-time favourite films.

few of posters itself are art "masterpiece" .... and this "feature" is totally destroying the "feel" and "authenticity".  

Edited February 24, 2023 by McMovies

[C.S. 60]

On 1/27/2023 at 9:24 AM, ebr said:

But then how would you (or more likely someone else on your server who didn't add the content) know which series actually had content to watch so that they could then discover which shows they are "in to"?

I apologize, but my OCD is acting up, forcing me to re-address this question, because I think it points to an extremely narrow point of view - that of someone who has been using Emby for many years and gotten used to the way things are. (You may not be considering the experience of the less experienced.)

What I would like you to do is imagine yourself as someone who has never seen Emby, maybe even as someone who knows very little about streaming or computers in general, if you can do that. Now imagine that I give you an account on my server, and you go on my server, and you see posters - posters for movies and posters for TV shows.

Logically, you assume if you click on a movie poster, then you will see that movie come up on the screen. (movie poster = access to that movie) You try it and that's exactly what happens. Hooray! Success! Everything makes sense.

Now you look at the TV posters, and you assume when you click on one of those, then you will have access to that show. You click on it, and that's exactly what happens. Hooray! Success! Everything makes sense.

Now imagine the TV poster you just clicked on with this detail in mind: There was no green ball - nothing at all on the poster to tell you how many episodes are available. Does that change anything? No, it does not, because at this point you've never seen a green ball.

Now imagine after watching the first episode, the poster for that show now displays a green ball with a number on it. I believe you would intuitively understand that Emby is helpfully showing you how many episodes of that show you have left to watch. And in addition that green ball now serves as a super visible marker for that and any other show you start watching, making them MUCH easier to spot quickly on a wall of posters. Hooray! Success! Everything makes sense.

I understand COMPLETELY why someone might want to stick with the status quo - because it's what they are used to. And that's why I and others are only asking for the option to change the way these balls behave. The status quo should obviously remain the default. Nobody is asking for anyone to have their balls taken away against their will.

And that's the last point I really want to drive home: NOBODY IS COMING FOR ANYBODY'S BALLS. It seems some people read requests like this and conclude that other users are trying to fundamentally change the way Emby works, and so they respond with something like: "No, this is wrong because I myself would never do it that way."

Great! Don't change. Nobody wants you to change, we just want the option to change.

[ebr 14903]

Please see my original response to this FR.  I agree we have a consistency issue here but it isn't a simple fix.

 

[C.S. 60]

On 4/2/2021 at 1:02 PM, ebr said:

Yes, somewhere out here (probably in multiple places) there are discussions of just this issue.  The thing stopping us from changing it is just that we've displayed things this way since the beginning and, in the past, when we've tried to change things that have been around that long it is met with a lot of resistance.

I do feel we should eventually introduce some options to tailor this a bit better.

Of course there would be resistance if you were to change Emby's default behavior. I myself would not want you to change the default behavior of the green balls, as I'm sure at least some of my users are used to it and could get confused. That's why I'm talking about a client-side option. (Maybe there are people who would prefer a server-side option, but that's not me.)

[Oomek 0]

Will this confusing behaviour ever be fixed? This thread is already 3 years old. At least an official response from the developer would be in order.

[ebr 14903]

1 hour ago, Oomek said:

At least an official response from the developer would be in order.

Hi.  Two posts up.

Thanks.

[KodiTV72 2]

On 4/3/2021 at 7:02 AM, ebr said:

Yes, somewhere out here (probably in multiple places) there are discussions of just this issue.  The thing stopping us from changing it is just that we've displayed things this way since the beginning and, in the past, when we've tried to change things that have been around that long it is met with a lot of resistance.

I do feel we should eventually introduce some options to tailor this a bit better.

Is it time for those options?

[Flest 6]

There is 1 more problem with the status viewed/not viewed!!!

does not work for collections)))