Plex adds Apple TV app support for on-demand content

Plex for Apple TV

After initially launching to beta users, Plex has now rolled out integration with the Apple TV app to all users.

The new feature applies to Plex's free ad-supported video-on-demand library. When a user starts playing a title and doesn't finish, it will now show in the Apple TV "Up Next" queue alongside content from other providers such as Hulu, HBO, Amazon Prime Video, and others.

Notably, this does not support a user's personal media server content, live TV, or any other Plex content features.

Plex has continued to add new ways to consume content over the years, including live TV streaming and on-demand content, such as from Warner Brothers.

The Plex app is available now as a free download for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.

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3 Comments

cgWerks

said about 3 years ago

I really wish Plex would spend some time on core functionality.

Users (including many paid, like me) have been begging in many-years-long forum threads for relatively simple stuff like the ability to directly download media (ie. a video/movie transfer to a device, without transcoding it, which takes unnecessary time and resources), or downloading a selection of photos, etc.

What's worse, is when users ask for this kind of stuff (which one would think would be obvious) the Plex people in the forums seem to act like such things are unnecessary or options which would confuse the users if implemented. I just don't get it.

payeco

said about 3 years ago

If it doesn’t support your personal library then this feature is useless. The latest in a long line of useless moves by the Plex team to add features that make them money rather than features that users are actually asking for.

cgWerks

said about 3 years ago

payeco said:

If it doesn’t support your personal library then this feature is useless. The latest in a long line of useless moves by the Plex team to add features that make them money rather than features that users are actually asking for.

And, as I was noting above, it isn't just nifty new features the users are asking for either, it's core functionality/usefulness type stuff.

For example, one of the first things I ran into after setting up our library, was my wife going on a business trip for a few days. She wanted to quickly pull a few movies to watch onto her iPad mini before leaving. Nope, can't do it. It just *has* to transcode those movies, just in case they might not be compatible with the device (even though I purposely encoded them to work on all our devices). So, not only can't she do what she needs to do, it wastes resources even if one things far enough ahead to schedule those 'transfers.' Plex support seems to think having an option to directly download might get a user in a 'incompatible video' situation... even if this is an advanced option... so they refuse to implement it. LOTS of people have been asking for it for like 7 years now (if memory serves). Ironically, the limited feature library app we were previously using, does it. We just *assumed* Plex could, too. It certainly doesn't seem like it would be a hard feature to implement.

Or, photo library. So, you put all your photos in there, and organize them, add meta data, etc. So, now what can you do with them? Nothing much except give slideshows to friends on the family TV, or your device if you're on your network. Let's say I want to create a holiday calendar present for the grandparents. Can I pick some photos and have them transfer to my device so I can use them? Nope. Why? Haven't gotten a clear answer, but one of the reps said something about copyright issues in one of the forum threads. What? They are my photos! What good is a photo library if you can't easily use the photos in the library?

Every time I try to seriously use some aspect of Plex, I run into stuff like this. Unfortunately I haven' the time to start playing again with alternatives... so Plex kind of has my money coming in, and I can't really leave until I find something else. They don't seem to care that I (we) aren't happy.