I was surprised to see that Season 11 and 12 are now listed when you browse the “Watch Free!” section. However, selecting the episodes takes you to a page where the only options are “Watch Free”, which takes you to a broken “thanks for joining!” page, and “Learn More”, which plays the season trailer. Is this an error? Or simply a confusing, poorly done promotion?
EDIT: To clarify, this is on the desktop website.
My gizmoplex app doesn’t allow me to play any of the s11-12 episodes without buying/renting first
Mine won’t either, normally. This is a new development, starting today. It shouldn’t display at all under Watch Free.
Also the exact url that “Watch Free” redirects to is MST3K: THE GIZMOPLEX.
Curious.
The banner at the top of the page says seasons 1-10, but it clearly lists 11, 12 and 13 in the drop-down of seasons. And if you follow those to the movies for those seasons, there’s a “watch free” button.
It’s all behaving exactly the same for me, and I own the episode that I tried to play. So it’s… It’s weird.
Unfortunately, I don’t think those seasons/episodes are free.
You can catch some of them on Twitch or Pluto, but I understand that’s not the same as on-demand viewing.
They really need to audit the Gizmoplex and create consistency throughout the user experience of the app. That being said, development is REALLY expensive. I think the percentage they put aside for the new Season 14 will allow some of those user improvements to be implemented.
The classic episodes are the only episodes you can watch for free.
It’s clear that they aren’t actively working on the Gizmoplex at this time, they don’t even have a banner advertising the new Season 14 campaign.
I kinda wish they allowed volunteers to work on the site, it could use a dedicated team to improve it.
The only places I can catch the Netflix season episodes are in the Turkey Day Marathons, where I can see Avalanche, and Carnival Magic.
I could be misremembering, but I believe that focus is currently on upgrades to the virtual theater, which I’d think will involve backend changes that will be seen in regards to some of those types of glitches?
I could be wrong, I could be misremembering?
Shrug.
Edit: in fact, the work being done on the virtual theater may have required some kind of change on the backend that is causing this? Maybe by the time the improvements on the virtual theatre are complete, S11/12 will be available as-supported/free to stream?
Or, I’m completely mistaken
Maybe, but it’s not really glitches that are an issue, everything within the Gizmoplex streaming app feels a bit half baked. And much of it is UI that isn’t carried over into the virtual theater site. The data is more than likely shared, but I hope they focus on the UI of the streaming app and not neglect it in favor of the virtual theater (which I have visited maybe twice, and will more than likely never go back to.)
But I’m also one that doesn’t really utilize the synced watch party feature than many streaming apps have. I find it really strange to have a movie night remotely with friends lol. I’m sure if I enjoyed that, the virtual theater would be much more appealing to me, to me it’s a museum of the 90’s websites that came before it.
I think because they have stated “classic episodes” being free to stream that anything after the Netflix area is pay per view/buy outright.
Unfortunately, the Gizmoplex crew have no control over the app. It’s developed by Vimeo OTT.
We can continue to make feature requests, and I’m sure the Gizmoplex crew sends them along to Vimeo, but I’m also sure that the response is “more money” and/or “our system doesn’t work that way”.
If we far exceed the goal for 12 S14 episodes, perhaps a good stretch goal would be for app improvements. (If the Gizmoplex part of the funding distribution on the crowdfunding page doesn’t already account for funding app feature requests as well as Theater upgrades)
