Plex is an American

streaming media Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content i ...

service and a client–server media player platform, made by Plex, Inc. The Plex Media Server organizes video, audio, and photos from a user's collections and from online services, and streams it to the players. The official clients and unofficial third-party clients run on

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

smart TV A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features, which allows users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TVs are a techn ...

s, streaming boxes, and in web apps.

History

Plex began as a

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

hobby project in December 2007 when developer Elan Feingold created a media center application for his Apple Mac. He ported the media player XBMC (since renamed Kodi) to

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. Around the same time, Cayce Ullman and Scott Olechowskisoftware executives who had recently sold their previous company to

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

were also looking to port XBMC to OS X, and noticed Feingold's progress via XBMC

online forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

s. They contacted him and offered support and funding, forming a three-person team in January 2008. The team released early versions of the port, called OSXBMC, intended for eventual full integration into Mac OS X. The developers continued collaborating with the Linux-based XBMC project until May 21, 2008. Due to different goals and vision from the XBMC team, they soon forked the code to become Plex, and published it on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

. The OSXBMC code was kept roughly in sync with the upstream XBMC code. In December 2009, the US-based Plex, Inc. was founded with Ullman as CEO and Feingold as CTO. At that time, Plex had 130 apps, the most popular of which were viewers for Apple Movies Trailers,

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...

Hulu Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television seri ...

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

, MTV Music Videos, BBC iPlayer, and

Vimeo Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software a ...

. Feingold declared Plex apps had been downloaded about one million times. , Plex had 65 employees. In December 2019, Plex, Inc. announced ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) of TV shows and movies available globally to free Plex accounts, from publishers including Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, MGM,

Lionsgate Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, doing business as Lionsgate, is a Canadian- American entertainment company. It was formed by Frank Giustra on July 10, 1997, domiciled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is currently headquarter ...

, and Legendary. , it had about 100 global employees.

Software

Plex is a media player system with a client–server model. Plex Media Server stores, organizes, and streams all content, while the clients are the playback applications running on myriad devices and web browsers. Plex Media Server (PMS) is the back-end component, free of charge. It can acquire content from files, iTunes,

iPhoto iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Macintosh personal computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally s ...

Aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An ...

, or the Internet, and automatically organize them by metadata tags such as title, artist, album, genre, year, and popularity. It organizes audio and visual content from personal media libraries and streams it to the player, either on the same device or over a network. PMS can run on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

, NAS devices, or on Nvidia Shield TV. The front-end player apps are Plex, Plex Web App, Plexamp, and Plex Dash. They allow the user to manage and play all content from the Plex Media Server. Most apps are free of charge. The Plex app is the successor to the Plex Media Player, and runs on a multitude of platforms:

Amazon Appstore Amazon Appstore is an app store for Android-compatible platforms operated by Amazon.com Services, LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon. The store is primarily used as the storefront for Amazon's Android-based Fire OS. including Amazon Fire tablets, ...

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

Apple TV An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ...

, Android TV,

Chromecast Chromecast is a line of digital media players developed by Google. The devices, designed as small dongles, can play Internet- streamed audio-visual content on a high-definition television or home audio system. The user can control playback wi ...

Roku Roku ( ) is a brand of hardware digital media players manufactured by American company Roku, Inc. They offer access to streaming media content from online services. The first Roku model, developed in collaboration with Netflix, was introduce ...

, iOS,

PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a di ...

Sonos SONOS, short for "silicon–oxide–nitride–oxide–silicon", more precisely, " polycrystalline silicon"—"silicon dioxide"—" silicon nitride"—"silicon dioxide"—"silicon", is a cross sectional structure of MOSFET (metal-oxide-semicond ...

, Oculus Go,

webOS webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initiall ...

Tizen Tizen () is a Linux-based mobile operating system backed by the Linux Foundation, mainly developed and used primarily by Samsung Electronics. The project was originally conceived as an HTML5-based platform for mobile devices to succeed MeeGo ...

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by th ...

, and

Streaming

Free Plex accounts can share personal media libraries among a user's own collection of devices or to friends, and access Plex, Inc.'s content library of ad-supported

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of ...

(AVOD) and free-to-stream live TV channels. The publishing partners have included Tidal, Warner Bros. Television Studios, MGM,

, Legendary,

Crackle Crackle or crackling may refer to: Foods * Cracklings, the tissue remaining after lard and tallow have been extracted from animal fats ** Pork rinds in American English, pork scratchings in British English when served in small pieces as a snack ...

Endemol Shine Endemol Shine Group B.V. (stylized in all spaceless) was a Dutch production and distribution company of scripted and non-scripted content, responsible for programmes such as '' Big Brother'', ''Deal or No Deal'', '' The Money Drop'', '' Fear Fa ...

and Kidoodle TV . Plex Pass is the optional paid-subscription service including mobile synchronization, metadata fetching for music,

multi-user Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leaving ...

support,

parental controls Parental controls are features which may be included in digital television services, computers and video games, mobile devices and software that allow parents to restrict the access of content to their children. These controls were created to ...

, OTA live TV and DVR, trailers, extras, and

cross-selling Cross-selling is a sales technique involving the selling of an additional product or service to an existing customer. In practice, businesses define cross-selling in many different ways. Elements that might influence the definition might inclu ...

offers.

Timeline of updates and major events

* September 2016
Plex DVR announced
* January 2017
Plex acquired Watchup
to integrate news into the Plex platform * June 2017
Plex announces live TV
* September 2017
Plex News
was launched * January 2018
Plex brings VR
to the platform * May 2018
Plex adds Podcasts
* October 2018
Plex integrates web shows
* November 2018
Plex partners with TIDAL
making their 60 million+ streaming music tracks available via Plex * December 2019
Plex announces ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) content
* May 2020
Plex adds Watch Together
ref name="reviewgeek.com"> * July 2020
Plex adds free streaming live TV
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Plex adds Spanish-language channels
* January 2021: Plex releases Plex Arcade

References

External links