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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 further provides a platform to discuss and discover content across all major subscription streaming services. Plex also develops media server software and a series of apps that enables 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]
In February 2024, Plex TV started offering movies for rental. [24] In April 2024, Plex partnered with T-Mobile. [25]
Initial release | 2008 |
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Stable release | |
Operating system |
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Platform | x86, ARM |
Available in | 43 (server) languages [27] |
Type | Media server and player |
License | |
Website | plex |
Plex Media Server (PMS) is free software that enables 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. [28] 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." [29] Plex Media Server can run on Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, some NAS devices, some Netgear routers and the Nvidia Shield TV. [30] [31] For music content, it can automatically organize files by metadata tags such as title, artist, album, genre, year, and popularity. [32] [33] [34] It can also acquire content from iTunes, iPhoto, Aperture and the Internet. [35] [36] [37]
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. [38] [39] [40] The media player applications are Plex, Plex Web App, Plexamp, and Plex Dash, which provide a way for the user to manage and play content from a Plex server. [41] [42] 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. [43] 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. [44]
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. [45]
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. [46] Users were critical of the service, noting that Amazon seemed to impose upload limits. [47] The service also supported OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive. The service was discontinued in November 2018 amid technical problems and concerns of pirated content. [48]
Plex Media Server has often been associated with pirated content. In 2019, The Verge headlined that Plex "makes piracy just another streaming service". [49]
In 2019, Plex introduced an ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) streaming service and free-to-stream live TV channels. [50] [51] Its content partners include Warner Bros. Television Studios, [52] MGM, Lionsgate, Legendary, Crackle, Endemol Shine, Shout! Studios, Regency Enterprises, Kidoodle TV and A24. [53] [54] Plex can also be used as a client for Tidal and hosts podcasts. [55] In 2022, Plex added a "Discovery" feature which aggregates content from other streaming media sources. [56] As of 2023, Plex had 16 million active monthly streaming users. [57]
In 2020, Plex announced that it would introduce a movie and television show rental marketplace. [58] Its movie rental service launched in February 2024. [59]
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 or co-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.
Apple TV is a digital media player and microconsole developed and marketed by Apple. It is a small piece of networking hardware that sends received media data such as video and audio to a TV or external display. Its media services include streaming media, TV Everywhere-based services, local media sources, and sports journalism and broadcasts.
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.
Voddler was a Stockholm, Sweden-based provider of a video-on-demand (VOD) platform and a streaming technology for over-the-top (OTT) streaming on the public Internet. In Scandinavia, Voddler was primarily known for the commercial VOD-service Voddler, which was launched in 2009. As a company, Voddler was founded in 2005 and developed its own streaming solution, called Vnet. Vnet is based on peer-to-peer (p2p), where all users contribute by streaming movies to each other, but, unlike traditional p2p, Vnet has a central administrator who decides which users that have access to which movies. Due to this exception, Vnet has been referred to as a "hybrid p2p distribution system", "walled garden p2p" or "controlled p2p". In addition to running the consumer service Voddler, the company Voddler also offers, since 2013, Vnet as a stand-alone technology for other streaming platforms. The service Bollyvod, a global VOD-service for Bollywood-content that Voddler built for the Indian movie industry, was released as a pilot in 2014.
Movies Anywhere(MA) is a cloud-based digital rights locker and over-the-top streaming platform that allows users to stream and download purchased films, including digital copies redeemed from codes found in home video releases as well as digital purchases from participating services. Movies Anywhere is operated by The Walt Disney Company. The platform provides content from Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. The system utilizes an internal platform known as KeyChest, which synchronizes content licenses from digital distribution platforms linked to a central user account.
Over-the-top media service refers to a media service offered directly to viewers via the public Internet, rather than through an over-the-air, cable, or satellite-based provider. 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.
BlueStacks is a chain of cloud-based cross-platform products developed by the San Francisco-based company of the same name. The BlueStacks App Player enables the execution of Android applications on computers running Microsoft Windows or macOS.
Roku is a brand owned by the American tech company Roku, Inc. It is used to market consumer electronic products such as smart TVs, streaming players, as well as a free streaming service.
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.
The Nexus Player is a digital media player that was co-developed by Google, Intel and Asus. It was the second media player in the Google Nexus family of consumer devices. Originally running the Android 5.0 ("Lollipop") operating system, it was the first device to employ the Android TV platform. The Nexus player supports Google Cast, the feature for selecting and controlling media playback on a television that was first introduced by Chromecast. Sales of the Nexus Player were discontinued in May 2016, and product support ended in March 2018.
tvOS is an operating system developed by Apple Inc. for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software was based on Mac OS X. Starting with the second generation, the software is based on the iOS operating system and has many similar frameworks, technologies, and concepts.
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.
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