Plex (software)

Plex
Developer(s) Plex, Inc.
Stable release
1.13.8.5395 / 21 September 2018 (2018-09-21)
Preview release
1.11.0.4666
Operating system
Platform x86, ARM
Size
  • Server:
    90–105 MiB (compressed, depending on the platform)
Available in
languages
List of languages
Type
License
Alexa rank Increase 1,159 (September 2017)[2]
Website www.plex.tv

Plex is a client-server media player system and software suite comprising two main components. The Plex Media Server desktop application runs on Windows, macOS and Linux-compatibles including some types of NAS devices. The server desktop application organizes video, audio and photos from a user's collections and from online services, enabling the players to access and stream the contents. There are also official clients available for mobile devices, smart TVs, and streaming boxes, a web app, and Plex Home Theater (no longer maintained), as well as many third-party alternatives.

Plex sells a premium service called Plex Pass, with features like synchronization with mobile devices, cloud storage integration, metadata and matchings for music, support for multiple users, parental controls, live TV and DVR, trailers and extras and cross-selling offers.

Background

Plex began as a freeware hobby project in December 2007 when developer Elan Feingold created a media center application for his Apple Mac. He decided to port the media player XBMC (now known as Kodi) to Mac OS X.[3] Around the same time, Cayce Ullman and Scott Olechowski—software executives who had recently sold their previous company to Cisco—were also looking to port XBMC to OSX, and noticed Feingold's progress via XBMC online forums. They contacted him and offered support and help with funding. Feingold, Olechowski and Ullman formed as a team in January 2008, and founded Plex, Inc. in December 2009.

The team released early versions of the port, which they called "OSXBMC".[4] Their purposes were to bring to the project a complete integration to the Mac.[3]

Fork

The developers worked on the XBMC project until May 21, 2008. Due to different goals and vision from the XBMC team, they shortly forked the code to become Plex, and published it on GitHub. The code was kept roughly in sync with the Linux code.[5]

The new name was announced on July 8, 2008. Ullman came up with the name Plex² or Plex Square, due to the unavailability of plex.com, and the availability of plex2.com. Feingold suggested Plex² was too unwieldy and the single word, Plex, was ultimately chosen because the "plex" suffix evokes "comprising a number of parts".[6]

The team began to work on a media center component to aggregate not only local content but also to bring together web-based multimedia services. The new library system was redeveloped from scratch.[4][7]

The CenterStage UI group, a team aiming at improving the home theater PC UI interface, teamed with Plex to develop the idea further.[8][9][4]

Relations with content companies

Plex initially developed applications for services such as Hulu and Netflix. Hulu deployed "counter-measures" by creating changes deliberately to prevent Plex from parsing their HTML. Netflix and Hulu services are no longer officially available with Plex anymore.

The relationships with content companies were not completely adversarial. Some companies contacted Feingold to add their content to Plex, including music streaming service Spotify.

Future

To make the project viable, the team looked to bring the Plex experience to other devices, without the need for users to dedicate another computer as a HTPC.[3][10]

In December 2009, the project evolved into a commercial software business owned and developed by a single for-profit startup company, Plex, Inc., a U.S.-based high tech firm that is responsible for the development of the Plex Media Server and media player app front- and back-ends, its client–server model, all accompanying software under the Plex brand name, as well as the exclusive, copyrighted, proprietary parts, whether distributed on its own or as a third-party software component in products manufactured via a strategic partnership. Elan Feingold, Scott Olechowsi and Cayce Ullman were the three founders, with Ullman and Feingold taking on full-time roles as the CEO and CTO, respectively.[11][12]

At that time, Plex had 130 apps, the most popular of which were Apple Movies Trailers, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, MTV Music Videos, BBC iPlayer and Vimeo. In an interview for TechCrunch, Feingold declared Plex apps had been downloaded about 1 million times.[4][13]

In 2011, Ullman resigned as CEO and left the company.[14][15] Keith Valory became the new CEO in February 2013.[16][17]

In 2014, Plex raised $10 million from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. In an interview at CES 2014, Scott Olechowski, Plex Chief Product Officer, added that Plex was considering eventually adding paid music downloads, or teaming up with a music subscription service, to give users a chance to grow their music library. These partnerships, like the one with VEVO, were costly for Plex, which led to fundraising from Kleiner Perkins.[18]

As of July 2016, Plex has 65 employees.[19]

Plex Media Server

Plex Media Server (sometimes called PMS or PMS Software[20]) is the back-end media server component of Plex. It organizes audio and visual content from personal media libraries and streams it to their player counterparts, either on the same machine, the same local area network, or over the Internet. It can run on Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, NAS devices, or on Nvidia Shield TV.[21]

Introduced in 2009, Plex Media Server was originally called Plex Media Center and was based on Kodi, formerly known as XBMC. Plex Media Center's source code was initially forked from XBMC on May 21, 2008.[4][5] This fork continued to be used as a front-end media player on Linux for Plex's media server back-end until Plex fully replaced it with a proprietary version in October 2015.

Indexing

Plex Media Server can acquire content from sources such as iTunes, iPhoto and Aperture.[22][23][24]

The video library, a key feature of Plex, uses one of the Plex metadata databases. It allows for the automatic organization of video content by information associated with the video files (movies and recorded TV shows) themselves.

The music library is another of the Plex metadata databases. This library allows for the automatic organization of a music collection by information stored in the ID3 or M4A tags,[25][26] such as title, artist, album, genre, year, and popularity.[27] Plex Pass users also have the ability to access the whole music video catalog from VEVO.[28]

Tagging

Using Agents, Plex automatically gathers metadata information and artwork for media stored in the Plex library. These metadata are scraped from sites including The Movie Database (TMDb), TheTVDB, Fanart.tv, Freebase, CineMaterial, VEVO, Last.fm and LyricFind[29] and OpenSubtitles.[30]

Media formats

Plex media player software is able to decode high-definition video up to 4K resolution, as well as 10-bit H.264 sources.[31][32] With the appropriate hardware, Plex also supports hardware decoding of H.264 video.[33][34]

Plex handles all common image file formats with the options of panning, zooming and slideshow with "Ken Burns effect", with the use of CxImage open source library code.

Remote access

Plex Media Server can be remote controlled via a web interface. As Plex does support NAT-PMP and Universal Plug and Play protocols, the connection should be automatically configured. While a Plex account is reported necessary to help redirecting port and improve availability, configuring the ports manually does work, but when the users accesses the remote web interface, login and password to a Plex account are required.[35]

On June 4, 2015, Plex announced all connections to Plex Media Server via its web app interface would be encrypted with SSL support.[36][37]

Plugins

Plex Media Server can be extended using plugins and apps. These can be installed via a built-in library of free third-party plugins that allow Plex users to download content from providers including National Geographic, NBC, The New York Times, Twitch.tv, Vimeo and YouTube.[4][38] As of July 2016, there are 131 channels available.

This app store is accessible either via a dedicated Plex Media Server section called Channels, or via Plex Home Theater, the old Plex Media Player.[39][40]

Multiplatform

While Plex was initially a Mac OS X-only application, Plex Media Server is also available for Windows and Linux.

Plex first announced support for Linux on May 14, 2011, offering availability for Ubuntu 10.01, Slackware 13.1 used in unRAID NAS devices, and ReadyNAS (NAS from Netgear using Intel CPUs). Support for Windows was added on October 28, 2011.[12]

On October 19, 2016, Netgear released the Nighthawk X10 AD7200 router, the first commercially available router with Plex Media Server built into the router administration interface.[41]

Player apps

Player apps are Plex's front-end allowing the user to manage and play music, photos, videos and online content from a local or remote computer running Plex Media Server.

Plex Web App

Plex Web App: Users can manage their libraries, server settings, and watch content from this browser-based interface

Plex released a web UI for all users on November 16, 2012.[42]

Plex Media Player

Plex Media Player, announced on October 20, 2015, uses hardware acceleration for a consistent user interface across all devices.[43] While Plex Media Player is reported to be open source and its code available on GitHub as GPLv2,[44] not the whole software is actually open source. Only the host parts of the application can be contributed.[43]

Plex Media Player is compatible with Windows 7 and upwards, OS X Mavericks and upwards, embedded platforms like the Raspberry Pi 2 and Intel NUC,[45][46] with some Linux compatibility.[47][48]

Plex Home Theater (discontinued)

An example of the TV Episode interface on Plex. Includes fan-art background

Previously known as Plex Media Center, Plex Home Theater[49] was the software component used as the front-end media player for Plex's back-end server component.

The old and now obsolete Plex Home Theater is still distributed as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL), with source code on GitHub.[50]

On October 28, 2011, support for Windows was announced for Plex Home Theater, which brought integration with Windows Media Center.[12]

In October 2015, Plex Home Theater was discontinued in favor of the Plex Media Player.[51]

Amazon Fire TV

Plex announced an application for the Amazon Fire TV, the same day it launched on April 2, 2014.[52]

Android

On February 16, 2011, six months after the iOS app release, Plex announced its Android application.[53]

On June 25, 2014, support for the Android TV platform was announced. Features specific to Android TV included a redesigned home stream and voice control support.[54] The Android TV application can run on the Nexus Player.[55]

Apple TV

With the fourth generation of Apple TV, third-party developers could write their own applications, removing the main limitations of previous models. The app received text based subtitles support on December 23, 2015.[29]

Chromecast

On March 13, 2014, Plex announced free support of Chromecast in its iOS and Android applications.[56]

iOS

An iOS application was released on August 30, 2010 and provided a way to use iOS devices to remote control a Plex Media Server and view media on the iOS device.[57]

In March 2011, the iOS platform received a massive UI refresh. New features included grid views, improved UI around channels, removing second level menu and replaced by filter list. Support for TV Out, AirPlay, multi-part media, image caching, subtitles and audio stream selection were added.[58]

On November 19, 2012, the Plex Pass feature Mobile Sync was implemented on iOS.

On August 10, 2015, Plex announced a complete rewrite of the app supporting the new features of Plex Pass like Mobile Sync, Cloud Sync, Plex Home, Plex Mix and music and video extras.

LG

On September 2, 2010, Plex announced a partnership with LG to integrate the software component into LG 2011 NetCast-enabled HDTVs and Blu-ray devices.[10][14][59] Only NetCast models from 2013 and models running webOS were supported.[60]

Opera TV

An app for Opera TV was announced on December 12, 2014. Plex was the first personal media organizer to join the Opera TV Store.[61]

PlayStation

Plex announced their apps for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 on December 17, 2014.

Roku

On May 3, 2011, Plex announced a client app on the Roku, available by installing the Plex private channel.

Samsung

On August 3, 2012, Plex announced support for Samsung TV and Blu-ray players.[62] Samsung Smart TV and Blu-ray players are supported.[63]

Sonos

On July 20, 2016, Plex announced product support for Sonos devices.[64][65][66]

TiVo

TiVO DVRs have a Plex app from software version 20.4.7a or higher.[67]

VIZIO

On October 15, 2014, Plex announced a partnership with VIZIO in order to have rights to release a Plex application on their devices.[68]

Windows

On March 30, 2012, Plex announced the availability of Plex for Windows Phone.[69]

On December 4, 2012, Plex announced a client application for Windows 8 using the new Metro interface.

Xbox

On October 5, 2014, applications for Xbox 360 and Xbox One were announced, supporting voice and gesture control of the devices.

Plex Pass

On August 28, 2011, Plex announced a paid version of the service, called Plex Pass, offer the following advanced features:[70][71]

  • Mobile Sync – Offers synchronization of movies, music and photos with mobile devices.[70][72] The synchronization supports filters, allowing users to sync everything, limit based on duration on movies already watched or media that has just been added. Previously known as PlexSync.[72]
  • Cloud Sync – Allows access to cloud storage providers. The feature was announced on October 14, 2013, with initial support for Amazon Cloud Drive, Box, Dropbox and Google Drive.[73] Support for Bitcasa was added on December 13, 2013.[74]
  • Plex Mix – Allows music playlists based on moods and lyrics.[28][75] Lyrics are synced across devices.[29]
  • Plex Home – A feature allowing advanced multi-users mode and fast switching between users[76][77]
  • Parental controls – Ability to restrict content available to underage users
  • High quality content – Access to high quality movie trailers, cast interviews, and other extras for movies in the library was added on July 31, 2014. The feature allows users to select the number and the kind of trailers to read.[24]
  • Camera Upload – Syncs photos from phones or tablets to Plex Media Server in order to access them from other devices
  • Live TV – Live broadcast TV available directly on certain devices. Additional antenna and a tuner are required.
  • Plex DVR – Allows recording of HD broadcast channels

Privacy

On July 2, 2015, Plex revealed the machine hosting their blog and forums had been compromised. Personal information like IP addresses, forum private messages, email addresses and hashed and salted passwords had been accessed. This access was gained via a 0-day vulnerability in their forums software.[78]

Following this intrusion, Plex decided to migrate their forums to Vanilla Forums, reducing the sysadmin maintenance and security burden self-hosting their forums represented.[79]

On September 20, 2017, Plex announced a new privacy policy in which it was no longer possible for users of Plex to prevent their user data from being collected.[80] However, in a later privacy policy update, Plex CEO Keith Valory stated that they will generalize the playback data and offer users the ability to opt out of sending more specific playback information.[81]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "PlexMediaServer Translations - Get Localization". Retrieved 2 July 2016.
  2. ↑ "plex.tv Site Overview". Retrieved September 11, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 "Interview with the OSXBMC Developers – Automated Home". April 29, 2008. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "CrunchGear Interview: We talk to the lead developer of Plex Media Center for Mac OS X: It was doing Boxee-like stuff before Boxee was cool". January 15, 2010. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  5. 1 2 "XBMC for Mac forked for a separate project called PLEX (formerly known as "OSXBMC")". May 23, 2008. Archived from the original on August 21, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
  6. ↑ "Announcing Plex – Plex". July 5, 2008. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  7. ↑ "Getting to know you better – Plex". July 9, 2008. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  8. ↑ "CenterStage Splash Announcement". July 14, 2008. Archived from the original on July 14, 2008. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  9. ↑ "We're teaming up with CenterStage – Plex". July 13, 2008. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  10. 1 2 "Plex and the Future of Television – Plex". September 2, 2010.
  11. ↑ "Happy Holidays from Plex! – Plex". December 24, 2010. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  12. 1 2 3 "Laika Revealed – Plex". October 28, 2011. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  13. ↑ Anderson, Kevin (2009-10-07). "Thinking inside the box". Guardian.
  14. 1 2 "Plex to Enable Next Generation of NetCast™ Connected TVs". September 3, 2010. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Cayce Ullman – LinkedIn". Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  16. ↑ Tobias Hieta [@tobiashiet] (July 26, 2016). "@wget42 also our CEO is Keith Valory since a few years" (Tweet). Retrieved July 26, 2016 – via Twitter.
  17. ↑ "Keith Valory – LinkedIn". Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  18. ↑ "Gigaom – After raising $10 million, Plex gets ready to take on iTunes". January 1, 2015. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  19. ↑ "About Plex – Media Server – Media Streaming Server". Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  20. ↑ "Plex Terms of Service – Plex Media Server". Retrieved July 7, 2016.
  21. ↑ "Best Media Streaming Devices - Live streaming apps powered by Plex".
  22. ↑ "Plex 7 Adds iTunes and iPhoto Support and More". November 11, 2008. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  23. ↑ "Plex media center adds Aperture support, continues to shine – 9to5Mac". November 25, 2008. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  24. 1 2 "Frankly my trailer, I don't give a playlist – Plex". July 31, 2014. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  25. ↑ "Identifying Music Media Using Embedded Metadata – Plex". Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  26. ↑ "What metadata can an m4a file hold and how do I get at it?". August 25, 2015. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  27. ↑ "Adding Music Media From Folders – Plex". Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  28. 1 2 "Plex Music Goes to Eleven! – Plex". April 30, 2015. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  29. 1 2 3 "Let it snow...lyrics for all your music! – Plex". December 23, 2015. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  30. ↑ "Agents – Plex". Retrieved July 7, 2016.
  31. ↑ "Does Plex Media Player have support for 4K? – Plex". Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  32. ↑ "Plex desktop app becomes Plex Home Theater, adds AirPlay and HD audio". December 25, 2012. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  33. ↑ "Hardware Accelerated H.264 Decoding on Plex – Plex". April 27, 2010. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  34. ↑ "[FFmpeg-cvslog] lavc: add MMAL hardware decoder wrapper". March 29, 2015. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  35. ↑ "Enabling Remote Access for a Server – Plex". Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  36. ↑ "Plex Media Server SSL — Plex Forums". January 29, 2014. Retrieved July 9, 2016.
  37. ↑ "It's not easy being green: Secure communication arrives! – Plex". June 4, 2015. Retrieved July 9, 2016.
  38. ↑ "[REL] YouTubeTV - alternative YouTube plugin — Plex Forums". May 3, 2015. Retrieved August 15, 2016.
  39. ↑ "Plex media center software competes with Front Row – Macworld". June 29, 2009. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  40. ↑ "Channels from the Channel Directory – Plex". Retrieved July 7, 2016.
  41. ↑ NETGEAR. "Easiest Plex Set-Up Ever: Nighthawk X10 R9000 Router by NETGEAR". NETGEAR. Retrieved 2018-01-19.
  42. ↑ "A Plex/Web Update – Plex". November 16, 2012. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  43. 1 2 "Is Plex Media Player open source? – Plex". Retrieved July 7, 2016.
  44. ↑ "plexinc/plex-media-player: Next generation Plex Desktop/Embedded Client". Retrieved July 7, 2016.
  45. ↑ "Plex Media Player Overview – Plex". Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  46. ↑ "What are the supported platforms for Plex Media Player? – Plex". Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  47. ↑ "Building on Linux". Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  48. ↑ "Plex Media Player builds for Linux? : PleX". October 24, 2015. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  49. ↑ "Plex desktop app rebranded as Plex Home Theater". December 24, 2012. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  50. ↑ "Introducing the Plex Media Player – Plex". October 20, 2015. Retrieved July 7, 2016.
  51. ↑ Ravenscraft, Eric. "Plex Media Player Replaces Plex Home Theater, Looks Awesome". Lifehacker. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  52. ↑ "Plex is available on Amazon's new Fire TV! – Plex". April 2, 2014. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  53. ↑ "Upcoming price increase for NEW Plex Pass subscriptions – Plex". September 22, 2016. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  54. ↑ "Plex on the brand new Android TV! – Plex". June 25, 2014. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  55. ↑ "The Nexus Player is coming! – Plex". October 15, 2014. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  56. ↑ "Chromecast free for everyone, and great new features for iOS! – Plex". March 13, 2014. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  57. ↑ "Exclusive Hands-On With Plex/Nine For Mac OS X & Plex App For iOS Devices – TechCrunch". August 30, 2010. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  58. ↑ "Coming Attractions (parts 2 and 3) – Plex". March 12, 2011. Retrieved July 1, 2016.
  59. ↑ "Plex announces partnership with LG, pledges to beat Boxee Box and Apple TV for free". September 3, 2010. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  60. ↑ "Which Smart TV models are supported? – Plex". Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  61. ↑ "Opera TV Store Spotlight: Plex". December 12, 2014. Archived from the original on April 5, 2016. Retrieved July 26, 2018.
  62. ↑ "Welcoming Plex on Samsung – Plex". August 3, 2012. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  63. ↑ "Plex for Samsung [licensed for non-commercial use only] / Home". Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  64. ↑ "Plex and Sonos: Better Together & Plex". July 20, 2016. Retrieved August 10, 2016.
  65. ↑ "Requirements for using Plex for Sonos – Plex". Retrieved August 10, 2016.
  66. ↑ "How to Join the Public Beta — Plex Forums". July 6, 2016. Retrieved August 10, 2016.
  67. ↑ "Plex: App Information". June 8, 2015. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  68. ↑ "Plex and VIZIO! – Plex". October 15, 2014. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  69. ↑ "Plex for Windows Phone – Plex". March 30, 2012. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  70. 1 2 "Plex Pass Features – Best Media Streaming Server". February 11, 2016. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  71. ↑ "Part 2: Introducing PlexPass – Plex". August 28, 2011. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  72. 1 2 "Announcing the new PlexPass feature... – Plex". November 19, 2012. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  73. ↑ "Plex Cloud now supports OneDrive, Google Drive, and DropBox for storage - Windows Able". windowsable.com. Retrieved 2016-12-04.
  74. ↑ "Bitcasa joins our Cloud Sync line-up! – Plex". December 13, 2013. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  75. ↑ "How do I use mood information for tracks? – Plex". Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  76. ↑ "Introducing Plex Home – Plex". November 20, 2014. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  77. ↑ "What is Plex Home? – Plex". Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  78. ↑ "Security Notice: Forum User Password Resets – Plex". July 2, 2015. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  79. ↑ "Welcome to the new Plex forums! – Plex". July 11, 2015. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  80. ↑ "Privacy Policy Update Notice – Plex". August 19, 2017. Retrieved August 19, 2017.
  81. ↑ "Privacy Policy Changes | Plex". Plex. Retrieved September 11, 2017.
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