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Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

I am annoyed that somehow Plex got this to work but Apple TV app does not with Netflix.

Also annoyed that Plex does not integrate with Apple TV App itself.

I wish I could make the TV app my goto. It's great for the things that support it, but sucks that not everything does. I wish apple would be "brave" and force any apps to integrate with it.

I keep looking for a good alternative (especially given the online requirement), but it seems like Plex is the only one with a decent Apple TV app. I have jellyfin running but the app situation is less than ideal.

If anyone has any recommendations with good Apple TV support?

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This is the explanation a Plex employee gave for the lack of personal media showing up in their Apple TV integration.

> This feature will only work with our free on demand movies and TV shows. We’d love to integrate personal media as well but that’s not technically possible for a couple reasons. To make this work we provide Apple with a list of content we have available for streaming. As detailed in our privacy policy, we don’t know what content our users have in their personal media libraries.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/lniiij/plex_testing_t...

Former Netflix employee here (left back in 2013 so their stance might have changed).

At the time, Netflix was very opposed to what we called "meta search" (e.g. having Netflix titles available to look up outside the Netflix interface). The idea was that we wanted people to "consciously choose Netflix" as opposed to just choosing what they want to watch and getting it on whatever service happened to have it or was randomly chosen. I've always assumed they maintained this perspective (though, I'm somewhat surprised if they do considering the landscape today with every service leveraging their original/exclusive content more than their generic licensed library).

You sound like you know this, but for others, you can Netflix in top shelf of ATV screen, the icon will drive a whats next within Netflix above the shelf w/o opening Netflix. Netflix decided it didn’t like watchlist integration with Apple’s TV app UI, but does sorta work with AppleTV UI.

To your other question, lifetime Plex, but I also run Infuse and MrMC.

Starting 2021, went mostly native: after HBOMax, Paramount+, Peacock, Disney+, etc., I found everything integrated enough that, together with Prime and Hulu (and Netflix) we didn’t “need” Plex. Note that Hulu Live can act as cable SSO provider to enable 3rd party apps.

Roku has had this for ages, but some time ago the results for Netflix were crippled - if you are searching in the mobile app, selecting a Netflix result will bring you to a launcher for the Netflix mobile app instead of playing it on your TV. I haven't the foggiest idea why they would want this behavior but I have to conclude Netflix mandated it for some reason as they've taken other efforts to cripple the Roku experience in recent years as well. If Roku can't even get this working I have a hard time believing Plex will, considering they represent a much more existential threat to Netflix.

Get Infuse for Apple TV, it's just a front-end app / media player, but it works much better and leverages your existing Plex server installation.

I tried infuse maybe a year ago? maybe more, idk... it was around that time that Plex had that big outage that stopped you from even viewing your own local content.

I didn't hate it, but it had some quirks that annoyed me coming from Plex. But maybe I will give it another shot. Pretty sure my Jellyfin server is still just sitting there running alongside Plex.

Assuming the devices are all from Apple, I’m curious to understand what Plex provides when it’s serving Infuse on the frontend. In other words, what does Infuse lack when it’s connected to a plain file share or file server as compared to having Plex in the backend? Infuse is already able to transcode various formats as necessary. It’s also able to index media, fetch cover images, etc. Other than offloading the power usage for transcoding (which may be important in battery powered devices), what benefits does Plex or Jellyfin (or anything else) provide here?

> I am annoyed that somehow Plex got this to work but Apple TV app does not with Netflix.

I have a feeling that this is because Apple has some onerous little line in their contract that Netflix was not willing to accept. There's certainly no technical reason that it can't happen.

And it annoys the hell out of me.

I always figured that it was just Netflix wanting to be in control of the UI, recommendations, etc.

But apparently other's have this ability?

So you are probably right. Annoying as hell and tbh has led me to use Netflix significantly less... which has led me to consider canceling it.

Apple's search is run locally, and requires each app to make its content metadata available to Apple. Plex will not--cannot by design--do that.

Apple could pass the search request to each service/app and collate the results, but that's not their way.

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