Search is a server query#
Reel's live search requests ranked results from the selected PMS, covering movies, shows, episode titles, and people. It does not build a second permanent full-library search index on the Roku.
Movies, shows, and episodes share the server's relevance ranking. Reel filters episode results to genuine episode-title matches so a series-name match does not flood the interface with every episode in that series. Matching episodes are grouped under their show.
The advanced Search result limit controls how many results Reel requests. Higher limits can find more matches but require larger responses and more processing. The UI also bounds the result data it hands to rendering, so the request limit is not a promise that every returned item becomes a visible card.
Show one query returning movies, a show with episode-title matches, and a person result.
Title pages#
Title pages combine artwork, descriptions, cast, technical metadata, and related titles. Their content depends on the information PMS supplies and the relevant Reel presentation settings.
Rich artwork is a presentation of that metadata, not evidence of a different media file. Missing cast, an incorrect poster, or an unwanted title match should first be checked against the title in Plex. The owner-supplied studio and rating images use a separate filename-to-metadata match.
Cast and director discovery#
Person discovery connects movie and television credits in the accessible library. Search can return people from actor and director tags; Reel combines the relevant identities into a person result rather than treating every per-library tag as a different person.
The resulting local filmography describes media on the server that the active profile can access. It is not a claim to contain every production in that person's career. Differences between profiles can be explained by their library access.
Owner implications#
Metadata quality affects discovery. Correctly matched titles and usable cast/director credits provide the relationships Reel can follow. Increasing a search limit cannot manufacture missing metadata or bypass a profile restriction.
When diagnosing search, distinguish no matches, an incomplete result set, and a failed request. Check the query, selected server, profile access, and result-limit setting before treating the condition as a broken local index.