Company type | Private |
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Founded | December 2009 |
Founder | Elan Feingold, Cayce Ullman, Scott Olechowski |
Headquarters | Campbell, CA, U.S. |
Key people |
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Products | Client–server software, streaming media |
Number of employees | ≈ 100 (2019) |
Website | plex |
Plex Inc. is an American software company that runs its namesake ad-supported streaming media service that provides television shows and movies to users worldwide, and allows them to discuss and discover content across all major subscription streaming services. Plex also develops media server software and a series of apps that allows users to stream their personal media collections from their servers to their various devices. Plex Inc. is based in Campbell, California. [1]
Plex began as a freeware hobby project in December 2007 when developer Elan Feingold created a media center application for his Mac by porting the media player XBMC (since renamed Kodi) to Mac OS X. [2] 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 Mac OS X, and noticed Feingold's progress in the XBMC online forums. They contacted him and offered support and funding, and they formed a three-person team in January 2008. [3] [4]
The team released early versions of the port, called OSXBMC, [5] intended for eventual full integration into Mac OS X. [2] The developers continued collaborating with the Linux-based XBMC project until May 21, 2008. Due to different goals from the XBMC team, they forked the code that became Plex, and published it on GitHub. The OSXBMC code was kept roughly in sync with the upstream XBMC code. [6] In July 2008, the project was renamed Plex, which the developers said was chosen because "it evokes 'cineplex' and the suffix means 'comprising a number of parts'". [7]
In December 2009, Plex, Inc. was incorporated with Ullman as CEO and Feingold as chief technology officer. [8] [9] [10] [11] At that time, Plex had 130 apps, the most popular of which were viewers for iTunes movies trailers, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, MTV music videos, BBC iPlayer and Vimeo. Feingold said Plex apps had been downloaded about one million times. [5] [12] Keith Valory became president and CEO in 2013. [13]
As of July 2016 [update] , Plex had 65 employees. [14] In December 2019, Plex launched an ad-supported streaming service of movies and television shows from content sources including Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, MGM, Lionsgate, Regency Enterprises and Legendary. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] As of August 2019 [update] , Plex had about 100 global employees. [23]
Initial release | 2008 |
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Stable release | |
Operating system |
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Platform | x86, ARM |
Available in | 43 (server) languages [25] |
Type | Media server and player |
License | |
Website | plex |
Plex Media Server (PMS) is free software that allows users to create a client–server for movies, television shows, and music. Free Plex accounts can share personal media libraries among a user's own collection of devices or with friends. Plex Media Server organizes movie and television content and adds posters, plot summaries, cast and crew lists, technical details, critical reviews, and subtitles. Plex Media Server is also capable of transcoding files if the codec is incompatible with the device playing the media. [26] Plex does not support DVD and Blu-ray disk images and menus, saying, "these formats just don't fit into the idea behind the Plex ecosystem." [27] Plex Media Server can run on Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, some NAS devices, some Netgear routers and the Nvidia Shield TV. [28] [29] For music content, it can automatically organize files by metadata tags such as title, artist, album, genre, year, and popularity. [30] [31] [32] It can also acquire content from iTunes, iPhoto, Aperture and the Internet. [33] [34] [35]
A Plex Media Server can function as a home theater PC and can stream content to Plex's front-end media player client applications that run on a myriad of devices and web browsers. [36] [37] [38] The media player applications are Plex, Plex Web App, Plexamp, and Plex Dash, which allow the user to manage and play content from a Plex server. [39] [40] The Plex app is the successor to the Plex Media Player, and runs on a multitude of platforms including Android, Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast, Roku OS, iOS, iPadOS, PlayStation, Sonos, Oculus Go, webOS, Tizen, Windows, Xbox, and macOS. Player applications on computers and Smart TV platforms are free of charge, while the apps on iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets require a one-time $5 activation fee to stream from a server. [41] Plex's apps largely relied on the native video player and supported codecs of the streaming device's operating system. In 2018, Plex began rolling out a media player based on mpv to support additional codecs. [42]
Plex also offers Plex Pass, an optional paid-subscription service that adds additional features to its server software and player apps such as mobile synchronization, metadata fetching for music, multi-user support, parental controls, over-the-top live TV and DVR, trailers, extras, and cross-selling offers. [43]
In 2016, Plex launched Plex Cloud for Plex Pass subscribers, which supported cloud-based servers. Plex's launch partner was Amazon, and the service was compatible with Amazon Cloud Drive. [44] Users were critical of the service, noting that Amazon seemed to impose upload limits. [45] The service also supported OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive. The service was discontinued in November 2018 amid technical problems and concerns of pirated content. [46]
Plex Media Server has often been associated with pirated content. In 2019, The Verge headlined that Plex "makes piracy just another streaming service". [47]
In 2019, Plex introduced an ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) streaming service and free-to-stream live TV channels. [48] [49] Its content partners include Warner Bros. Television Studios, [50] MGM, Lionsgate, Legendary, Crackle, Endemol Shine, Shout! Studios, Regency Enterprises, Kidoodle TV and A24. [51] [52] Plex can also be used as a client for Tidal and hosts podcasts. [53] In 2022, Plex added a "Discovery" feature which aggregates content from other streaming media sources. [54] As of 2023, Plex had 16 million active monthly streaming users. [55]
In 2020, Plex announced that it would introduce a movie and television show rental marketplace. [56] Its movie rental service launched in February 2024. [57]
Kodi is a free and open-source media player and technology convergence software application developed by the Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most streaming media, such as videos, music, podcasts, and videos from the Internet, as well as all common digital media files from local and network storage media, or TV gateway viewer.
A home theater PC (HTPC) or media center computer is a convergent device that combines some or all the capabilities of a personal computer with a software application that focuses on video, photo, audio playback, and sometimes video recording functionality. Since the mid-2000s, other types of consumer electronics, including game consoles and dedicated media devices, have crossed over to manage video and music content. The term "media center" also refers to specialized application software designed to run on standard personal computers.
The following comparison of video players compares general and technical information for notable software media player programs.
Amazon Prime Video, or simply Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered both as a stand-alone service and as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced by Amazon MGM Studios or licensed to Amazon, as Amazon Originals, with the service also hosting content from other providers, content add-ons, live sporting events, and video rental and purchasing services.
A digital media player is a type of consumer electronics device designed for the storage, playback, or viewing of digital media content. They are typically designed to be integrated into a home cinema configuration, and attached to a television or AV receiver or both.
Boxee was a cross-platform freeware HTPC software application with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV. It enabled its users to view, rate and recommend content to their friends through many social network services and interactive media related features.
PlayOn is a streaming media brand and software suite that enables users to view and record videos from numerous online content providers. The suite consists of two main products: PlayOn Cloud and PlayOn Desktop. PlayOn Cloud is an online service for recording digital video streams, accessible via native iOS or Android mobile device applications. PlayOn Desktop is Windows-based software that acts as a streaming dashboard and hub on the PC. The available streaming websites are organized as channels in both products. Users browse through or search the video content found in those channels in order to record the videos for later viewing. PlayOn Desktop allows watching the videos real-time on the PC, or casting the videos to a TV via a streaming device or gaming console.
Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 615 million monthly active users, including 239 million paying subscribers, as of March 2024. Spotify is listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts.
Over-the-top (OTT) media service is a media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms—the media through which companies have traditionally acted as controllers or distributors of such content. The term is most synonymous with subscription-based video on demand (SVoD) services that offer access to film and television content, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. This content may include shows and movies for which the OTT acquired rights from the content owner. Programming may also include original content produced specifically for the service.
BlueStacks is an American technology company recognized for its creation of the BlueStacks App Player and other cloud-based cross-platform products. The BlueStacks App Player enables the execution of Android applications on computers running Microsoft Windows or macOS. The company's establishment traces back to 2009, founded by Jay Vaishnav, Suman Saraf, and Rosen Sharma.
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 with a mobile device or personal computer through mobile and web apps that can use the Google Cast protocol, or by issuing commands via Google Assistant; later models introduced an interactive user interface and remote control. Content can be mirrored to video models from the Google Chrome web browser on a personal computer or from the screen of some Android devices.
Roku is a brand of smart TV operating systems, smart TVs, streaming devices, and smart home and audio products designed and marketed by Roku, Inc., headquartered in San Jose, California, United States. Roku's smart TV products primarily offer access to streaming media content, including streaming television, from online services.
Android TV is a smart TV operating system based on Android and developed by Google. It is available on television sets, soundbars, set-top boxes and digital media players. A successor to Google TV, it features a user interface designed around content discovery and voice search, content aggregation from various media apps and services, and integration with other recent Google technologies such as Assistant, Cast, and Knowledge Graph.
Emby is a media server designed to organize, play, and stream audio and video to a variety of devices. Emby's source code was mostly open with some closed-source components as of August 2017, releases of the software published via the Emby website are however proprietary and cannot be replicated from source due to the build scripts also being proprietary. As of version 3.5.3 Emby has been relicensed and is now closed-source, while open source components will be moved to plugins. Due to this, a free open source fork of Emby was created called Jellyfin. Emby uses a client–server model.
The Apple TV app is a line of media player software programs developed by Apple Inc. for viewing television shows and films delivered by Apple to consumer electronic devices. It can stream content from the iTunes Store, the Apple TV Channels a la carte video on demand service, and the Apple TV+ original content subscription service. On iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Vision Pro, and Apple TV devices it can also index and access content from linked apps of other video on demand services.
Jellyfin is a free and open-source media server and suite of multimedia applications designed to organize, manage, and share digital media files to networked devices. Jellyfin consists of a server application installed on a machine running Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux or in a Docker container, and another application running on a client device such as a smartphone, tablet, smart TV, streaming media player, game console or in a web browser. Jellyfin also can serve media to DLNA and Chromecast-enabled devices. It is a fork of Emby.
Haystack News is a free ad-supported streaming service for local, national and international news video available on smart TVs, over-the-top platforms and mobile apps. Haystack uses data from each user—such as location, topics of interest and favorite publishers—to create a personalized playlist of short news clips. The platform also hosts live channels from local, national and international news outlets.
Free advertising supported streaming television (FAST) is a category of streaming television services, akin to linear or cable TV, represented by platforms such as Pluto TV, Rakuten TV, The Roku Channel, Samsung TV Plus, Tubi, and Xumo. These services offer traditional television programming and studio-produced movies without a paid subscription, funded exclusively by advertising. They stand apart from platforms predominantly featuring user-generated content, as well as from subscription-based ad-supported services.
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