Plex Watch Together

[Raelone 19]

That's nice, but useless for a lot of us.  My parents have a Sony TV using the Emby's client for it.  Most people are using the native client for their TV or Roku etc.  A Web-Only solution might work for some, but I suspect most want it built into the server so fully supported everywhere.

[grainsoflight 2]

6 hours ago, Raelone said:

That's nice, but useless for a lot of us.  My parents have a Sony TV using the Emby's client for it.  Most people are using the native client for their TV or Roku etc.  A Web-Only solution might work for some, but I suspect most want it built into the server so fully supported everywhere.

I agree, this still presents a degree of difficulty and is not an acceptable solution.

[grainsoflight 2]

On 8/1/2024 at 11:53 AM, Kyrunner said:

Why would you move from Emby? Just use  Kodi with Kodi for Emby Connect. It has watch party built into and works great with Emby 

It does? I cant find anything about a watch party feature

[t123thomas 63]

29 minutes ago, grainsoflight said:

It does? I cant find anything about a watch party feature

To activate watch party in e4k,

Step 1

navigate to the addon to configure the settings >playback>Remote clients/Watch together for my I checked all the settings simple to understand after saved the settings.

Step2

Navigate back to the movies or tv list highlight which movie you wish to watch together.

Press "C" on the keyboard it will populate a menu 

Then select Emby options

Then select watch together

Then list of clients or users will be displayed 

Then select among list of active users that you wish to watch with

Then the process will kickoff syn

Enjoy it!

[grainsoflight 2]

34 minutes ago, t123thomas said:

To activate watch party in e4k,

Step 1

navigate to the addon to configure the settings >playback>Remote clients/Watch together for my I checked all the settings simple to understand after saved the settings.

Step2

Navigate back to the movies or tv list highlight which movie you wish to watch together.

Press "C" on the keyboard it will populate a menu 

Then select Emby options

Then select watch together

Then list of clients or users will be displayed 

Then select among list of active users that you wish to watch with

Then the process will kickoff syn

Enjoy it!

Is it possible to do with remote users? I may have to look into it but im incredibly green with kodi

[evil_crab 23]

In my experience, Emby 4 Kody watch party is very unstable. It works fine for initial sync, but in 80% of cases it does not properly sync pauses/unpauses.

[grainsoflight 2]

1 hour ago, evil_crab said:

In my experience, Emby 4 Kody watch party is very unstable. It works fine for initial sync, but in 80% of cases it does not properly sync pauses/unpauses.

I was worried about that. I was debating buying lifetime emby premier but I'm not sure at the moment, I've gotta wait and see how this plays out, it sounds too up in the air. Does emby even have an official roadmap?

[Lawlkin 0]

Following along, would love this feature brought to emby

[neohasse 7]

4 years later its seems obvious they are waiting for someone to do it for them.

[BillOatman 596]

2 hours ago, neohasse said:

4 years later its seems obvious they are waiting for someone to do it for them.

It really cannot be implemented in a good way outside of the core Emby code. If you look at how Jellyfin implemented it (you can as it is open source) you will see why.

The reason really just has to be what has been said by the team many times, it just isn't deemed important/useful enough to the general Emby user population to bubble to the top of their priority list yet.

[TVTech 7]

Nearly five years later and they still have us playing this crabs in a barrel game to compete for the prize of getting our feature request moved to the top of the priority list. What I want to know is what exactly IS at the top of their priority list as far as feature requests, because as far as I can see, very few if any new feature requests ever gets implemented. 

 

[TMCsw 246]

2 hours ago, TVTech said:

because as far as I can see, very few if any new feature requests ever gets implemented.

That's not really fair or true...

Because once a FR is implemented, a few people may give a like or thanks, but soon you never here about it again.

It's only the ones that aren't yet implemented that people keep complaining about... 

[shanarago 3]

It looks like Plex is removing the "Watch Together" feature in there next update. At least in part, they said the feature should still work in the browser, but who knows how long that'll last. It's  a shame. I use this feature quite a bit.

[jspanitz 14]

5 minutes ago, shanarago said:

It looks like Plex is removing the "Watch Together" feature in there next update. 

Emby devs ahead of the curve 

[darkassassin07 652]

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2619590/plex-is-dropping-a-popular-feature-from-its-new-streaming-apps.html

 

With Plex dropping this feature, this could be an opportunity for Emby to pick up the slack in the competition and win over customers that are looking for alternatives.

[bakes82 167]

1 hour ago, darkassassin07 said:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2619590/plex-is-dropping-a-popular-feature-from-its-new-streaming-apps.html

 

With Plex dropping this feature, this could be an opportunity for Emby to pick up the slack in the competition and win over customers that are looking for alternatives.

If plex is dropping it, it means its not a actively used feature and thus emby shouldnt even bother looking at it either.  Plex is still supporting it via browser and there is an emby solution for that.

[Neureka 16]

6 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

If plex is dropping it, it means its not a actively used feature and thus emby shouldnt even bother looking at it either.  Plex is still supporting it via browser and there is an emby solution for that.

Actually, based on how the email reads, it seems like it was used quite a bit and that they may revisit adding it in the future.

It sounds like they want to release the new "Plex Experience" sooner rather than later.

 

Quote

And because we’ve seen your love and tremendous response to this feature, we don’t preclude the possibility of offering similar functionality again in the future, using new tooling.

Quote

We know that this decision will impact many of you, and we appreciate your support and understanding.

 

[jspanitz 14]

8 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

If plex is dropping it, it means its not a actively used feature 

Or it means that can't monetize it since that's all that platform is concerned with the last few years

[bakes82 167]

2 minutes ago, jspanitz said:

Or it means that can't monetize it since that's all that platform is concerned with the last few years

Well I mean when you have a product people want ..... they already implemented the featured and are pulling it, Emby hasnt even committed to saying they will added it and this is what 5yrs old now? Does netflix even have the option? Like if the main players in the space arent having the feature, that means its pretty niche and well Emby has VERY long dev cycles with almost no features being added, plus this feature would need to be added in to every client, and well looking at how the clients are now some of them are missing very basic features, sorry to be a realist here.

[Neureka 16]

11 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

Well I mean when you have a product people want ..... they already implemented the featured and are pulling it, Emby hasnt even committed to saying they will added it and this is what 5yrs old now? Does netflix even have the option? Like if the main players in the space arent having the feature, that means its pretty niche and well Emby has VERY long dev cycles with almost no features being added, plus this feature would need to be added in to every client, and well looking at how the clients are now some of them are missing very basic features, sorry to be a realist here.

When it comes to Netflix and other studios, it doesn't make sense to help people share their content. They want to milk as much as they can.

Plex is taking money from investors and the only thing they care about now is making money. They're now redesigning all of their apps and this doesn't make them money so they're putting it on the back burner.

Edit: They're not pulling it just to pull it. They have a new app and they don't care to waste resources on anything not related to their new direction for generating money. (hint: it's not self hosted media)

Edited February 26, 2025 by Neureka

[bakes82 167]

5 minutes ago, Neureka said:

When it comes to Netflix and other studios, it doesn't make sense to help people share their content. They want to milk as much as they can.

Why, you both would need an active netflix subscription .... do you even know wtf youre talking about lol

Also the plex redesign aligns all their code base to react so yeah it makes alot of sense to not add bloat of unused features, so its now actually easier to add features since its all just a single code base, ex bundled react web client.

[Luke 42077]

I think you guys missed this part:

Quote

we don’t preclude the possibility of offering similar functionality again in the future, using new tooling

They wouldn't say that if they were killing off the feature. 

The way I read this is that if there is adequate demand from users, it will likely return, but they want to measure that first and be sure of it. But most importantly, they want to get their new apps released, and they don't consider this feature important enough to hold that process up.

I'm sure they have telemetry that shows it is not a heavily used feature, otherwise there's no way they'd remove it.

[Neureka 16]

20 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

Why, you both would need an active netflix subscription .... do you even know wtf youre talking about lol

They've been actively trying to crack down on people sharing entire accounts. They're not going to invest in more ways for people to share content, regardless of subscriptions.

Do you know what you're talking about, or are you just trying to be an ass?

 

7 minutes ago, Luke said:

I'm sure they have telemetry that shows it is not a heavily used feature, 

They said:

Quote

We know that this decision will impact many of you, and we appreciate your support and understanding.

They're aware of how many people use it.

9 minutes ago, Luke said:

otherwise there's no way they'd remove it.

They didn't remove it for the sake of removing it. They've rewritten their apps and want to push it out the door without having to delay the release.

Putting extra engineering effort into something that doesn't make them money doesn't make sense to them.

Self hosted media isn't what makes them money anymore. We are the minority.

[grainsoflight 2]

16 minutes ago, Luke said:

I think you guys missed this part:

They wouldn't say that if they were killing off the feature. 

The way I read this is that if there is adequate demand from users, it will likely return, but they want to measure that first and be sure of it. But most importantly, they want to get their new apps released, and they don't consider this feature important enough to hold that process up.

I'm sure they have telemetry that shows it is not a heavily used feature, otherwise there's no way they'd remove it.

"Let's break it and see who gets mad" is a Musk method of doing things, not a good method of doing things. And Plex only words things vaguely so they won't get sued by people that bought into one service while they transition to a completely different type of service. Ask all the people that still don't have functioning live TV and DVR after 2 years

[Luke 42077]

6 minutes ago, Neureka said:

 

They didn't remove it for the sake of removing it. They've rewritten their apps and want to push it out the door without having to delay the release.

Exactly.