First off, a positive. Let me say that I love that scrolling through the movie shows thumbnails of the current scene. You’d be surprised the apps that leave off such an important feature.
Now for my request. You probably don’t have much, or any, control over this. But if at all possible, it would be great to have a “watch bookmark” so that if you exit a movie, deliberately or otherwise, there is a “resume play” button that lets you pick up where you left off. Currently the only option is to start from the beginning and scroll back to where you were.
Apology if this is already being discussed elsewhere and I missed it. And thanks for any reply!
Maybe I misunderstand the request, but does it not already do that? I’m able to pick up wherever I left off in the Apple TV app—maybe it’s not consistent across platforms for some reason.
I heard some say it’s delayed. Have you tried watching for like 5-10 mins?
I have noticed in the Android app it’s very hit or miss if the time stamp is saved where you last left off. It seems that the request to save your spot isn’t triggered until you are watching for a couple of minutes. But when you resume, and scrub forward, that scrub doesn’t get saved until you watch again for a couple of minutes.
It’s kinda a weird way to save your spot. Probably trying to limit the amount of API calls to reduce traffic, but they could just send the timestamp where the video player losing focus or the user hits the “x”.
Yah, I stopped halfway through and tried to come back. Early days yet, I’ll give it another go. Kind of a shame it’s not better in this regard, as even the barebones Synology media player app I use for the downloaded MST3K collection has a very good resume function. (No thumbnails, however.)
It’s certainly possible with VHX, because I know I’ve used it many a time with movies in the Criterion Channel app. In fact, Criterion have their own bug where you end up with a list of movies it randomly says you’ve not quite finished and can resume that you actually have finished.
I don’t know anything about writing a VHX app, so I have no idea whether it should be a standard feature or requires some extra coding. But VHX does support resuming somehow.
And just to point it out, I notice my episodes in the vault do that (automatically start where I left off) when I stream on the laptop browser.
Criterion? I remember they didn’t have that function when they first started, but yeah, as mentioned, now they do, and they added that stuff at the top of the page where all your unfinished viewings are stored, including some you did finish. I found I have to go all the way to the end of the credits for them to disappear. Sometimes, I’ll push to the near end, and let it play out, and that clears it.
BTW, I didn’t know Criterion was associated with VHX, until I signed up for MST and in my library, along with my digital goodies, was listed Criterion, along with Ovid.TV, a movie I rented during the pandemic for the Kinstim Virtual Cinema (The Wolfhouse, a disturbing but brilliant animated feature, btw) and rentals from Milestone Films.
What I’d really like to see is the ability to pause it on one device and pick up on another. For example, I could watch part of an episode on my phone while waiting for something when I’m out and about then continue on my TV from an Apple TV or Roku when I get home.
I think that’s what most people mean with wanting resume. The position should be saved server-side, so you can pick up next time you visit from any device.
Gonna mark this as solved, as I discovered it is doing it now (maybe it did all along and I’m a thicko). On the version of the app I’m using there is a thin yellow line below the movie showing how much has been watched. The confusing part is the button says “Start Watching”, even when you’ve watched a good portion of it. I can confirm that this button does indeed resume however, rather than starting from the beginning. So the feature is there, hurrah!
The MST3K AppleTV app has been doing that for me. For over a week, it insisted that I had two shorts to continue watching, even though I had played until the player exited to the Short page?
Now this is weird. The movies don’t have thumbnails when I fast forward through them now. I would have sworn they did. Man, I’d feel like I’m losing my mind if I still had one.
ba-dum-tish