Plex Cloud emerges from beta, turns cloud storage accounts into media servers

Plex on Thursday announced the official launch of Plex Cloud, bringing the remote media access feature out of beta for people with a Plex Pass subscription.

The option creates a cloud-based Plex Media Server, avoiding the necessity of a constantly-running computer or network-attached storage, the company said. Users have to attach their own Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive account.

Movies, photos, TV shows, and music can be uploaded, but the size of an account will dictate how much storage is available. Files must also finish uploading before streaming can start, and OneDrive users are restricted to personal accounts.

Notably, Plex stripped out Amazon Drive support during the beta. Apple's own cloud storage service — iCloud Drive — is incompatible.

Plex Pass costs $4.99 per month, $39.99 per year, or $119.99 for a lifetime subscription. Some other perks include DVR functions for broadcast TV, offline caching on mobile devices, and expanded music playback features.

Plex clients are available for the iPhone and iPad as well as the Apple TV, and on Macs via the Web. The iOS app is a free download and runs on any device with iOS 9.3 or later, but some features are gated behind Plex Pass and/or a one-time purchase.

Some other supported platforms include Roku, Android, Chromecast, Xbox, PlayStation, and the Nvidia Shield.

9 Comments

dachar 330 comments · 11 Years

About 7 years ago

Recently l tried to use Plex. I found it disappointing. The software would not recognise my videos. There appears to be no easy to understand installation instructions on the Plex site. The option of running from NAS is only available if you have a NAS with fast powerful chip and the right operating system. Sadly it seems many NAS are not the right specification.

eightzero 3141 comments · 14 Years

dachar said:

Recently l tried to use Plex. I found it disappointing. The software would not recognise my videos. There appears to be no easy to understand installation instructions on the Plex site. The option of running from NAS is only available if you have a NAS with fast powerful chip and the right operating system. Sadly it seems many NAS are not the right specification.

I tried it long ago, and I presume they have improved the experience since I tried to set it up on a OSX 10.6 mac mini. My takeaway was I really wasn't the target audience. Someone that is a huge TV/Movie/Music consumer with a lot of travel and kids in their lives probably finds this indispensable. I did see on the Plex website they offer a service to come set it up in your home for $300.

I also wonder about the HDHomeRun capability. The silicon dust products are intriguing and I see an Uber-esque sort of sharing opportunity. SCOTUS shot down Aereo, but I wonder if an individual could share their Plex served media in a legal way. Probably not. But if I had a "friend" in range of broadcast HDTV that would let me put an antenna and a HDHomeRun box on their roof, and connect to my Plex Cloud thru their internet connection, that would be...useful to many. Right?

StrangeDays 12951 comments · 8 Years

dachar said:

Recently l tried to use Plex. I found it disappointing. The software would not recognise my videos. There appears to be no easy to understand installation instructions on the Plex site. The option of running from NAS is only available if you have a NAS with fast powerful chip and the right operating system. Sadly it seems many NAS are not the right specification.

What types of videos are you trying to use? I haven't run into any popular codecs it couldn't do.

hagar 132 comments · 16 Years

Maybe I'm an exception but I still use iTunes to manage my movies and TV shows. There are some great tools out there that import all your files into iTunes and then they are easily available on AppleTV and iOS devices. I use VideoDrive for the job: converts video tracks if necessary and adds descriptions and artwork along the way.

I do agree with the critics that iTunes 12 is quite counter-intuitive, but I hope that Apple will either fix it, or finally split it in multiple applications and still maintain compatibility with existing media libraries.

polymnia 1080 comments · 15 Years

I've got a lifetime PlexPass membership. I use a Mac mini as my server and a NAS to store the files. Thus avoiding the NAS processor-is-too-weak-too-transcode-video-in-real-time problem. Red Fox makes a product that can rip Blu Ray content to disc, though it must be run on a Windows machine. After ripping, a Blu Ray folder can be run through MakeMKV to produce a file that can be dropped into the Plex library.

Its kinda technical, but worth the effort. I don't need a Blu Ray player at every tv in my home anymore. With an Apple TV and Plex App I have access to my full collection of movies.

Now, cloud storage? That is a tough sell. My full-size Blu Ray transfer collection is TBs in size. Prohibitively large to store in the cloud. I'm guessing I'm not the target market for this feature.