Availability is a separate decision#
Reel separates whether a configurable feature exists for your users from its value and permission. The saved configuration carries availability independently of the owner's default and whether the setting is locked.
Settings included in the Reel 1.0 baseline are always available. Feature availability shows their controls as On and disabled: they establish the baseline rather than presenting a switch that can remove existing functionality.
Future configurable additions arrive Off until the PMS owner adopts them. A software update alone does not make those additions available to the server's Reel users.
Adopting a future feature#
- Open Feature availability in the owner settings.
- Read the feature or group description and enable the availability control.
- Review and publish the change.
- Manage its value and user permission in the normal Settings category once available.
Adoption does not mean that viewers can change every setting. You still choose the default and permission separately. Client refresh determines when a publication takes effect on each device.
Show the baseline entries with their fixed On state and the explanatory panel.
Withdrawing a feature#
The management view retains adopted future features so the owner can withdraw them. Withdrawal makes the feature unavailable after publication and refresh. It discards its managed defaults and permissions, and clears corresponding personal choices on clients that observe the withdrawal.
Withdrawal is not a temporary lock
Do not rely on previous choices returning after re-adoption. If the goal is to require a particular value while preserving personal overrides for later, use a permission lock.
Devices learn about availability through refreshes. A device that misses a withdraw-and-re-adopt cycle does not have a complete history of every intermediate publication.
Updates and compatibility#
The owner-control commitment concerns the configurable feature surface. It is not a promise to freeze implementations, performance, every factory default, or the behavior of external Plex services.
The current beta has already undergone configuration-format changes. Pre-certification data can be reset or rebased as the format evolves. Do not treat a beta payload as a permanent interchange format or hand-edit it from an older encoding description.
When Reel detects a newer configuration it cannot safely edit, it refuses the owner write. Use a compatible version to make the next publication rather than overwriting the saved data with an older client.