Plex Launches Live TV Worldwide
The do everything streamer expands feature-set with 80 live channels.
Plex began in 2008 as a piece of software to organize your own downloaded media files into a do it yourself Netflix of sorts, a year after Netflix launched Netflix Instant Streaming. It has improved on the basic offering all those years back into a fully featured streaming service and software stack. Plex forked off from XBMC (or Xbox Media Centre) around 2008 to become a Mac version of the home media server software. Since then Plex has moved in its own direction so much so that with the help of their Plex Pass premium subscriptions offering as of 2016 Plex employed 64 people.
Plex recently launched their own ad-supported free streaming TV & movies offering that was added to all users’ software with the rollout of an update. The news today is that they are launching 80 live linear TV channels, with most of those channels available worldwide. You won’t see any big name channels amongst these. Instead a lot of the channels are algorithmically programmed with advertisements dynamically inserted in. Plex has said they will be monitoring how each of the channels perform and will remove channels with low usage. They are also saying that they have plans to add 50 - 100 new channels over the coming year.
I have used Plex myself since 2010 and have been ever so impressed with the software. It has grown with me as a technology user and media consumer. I can’t say I really use the ad supported movies and TV offering. But I did try out the live TV feature and it seemed to work great. I left one of the music channels on in the background while I used my iPad. I have to say the music channel I had on had better taste than the new Foxtel MTV music channels. I prefer the old [V] & MAX music channels for background noise.
I am a Plex Pass Lifetime member and have been for over 5 years now. I love Plex so much that I sometimes gift lifetime Plex Passes to family and friends as a means of supporting Plex.
I understand that Plex needs to come up with ways of making money to be able to support the development of the software and to pay employees as they have apps on as many platforms as Netflix does. That can’t be cheap to maintain. In one of the articles I read this morning Plex says it is quite comfortable with revenues coming in and they are happy with how the ad supported products are performing. If this means that they can continue releasing software updates to all supported software platforms then this makes me quite happy.
In the future I cannot wait to see how this all pans out. Plex expanding the number of channels available. Will they add premium, traditional TV channels like Comedy Central or the big one HBO? I’m guessing that would entail a pay product and probably be US only. And considering Plex Media Server is built on the unspoken back of piracy maybe it’s users would baulk at paying for a pay TV service. Perhaps that’s why most of the Plex offerings are free and ad supported.
I was musing with a friend that perhaps Plex will be acquired by another media company. I can’t really put my finger on who would acquire them. Meanwhile said friend reckons Plex may go the way of Napster once media companies realize what the Plex software is really capable of and the ecosystem of piracy that is behind it. If Plex gets shutdown I’d be devastated. I just hope with Plex trying to become as legitimate as possible things don’t go that way. And besides there is nothing illegal about the software Plex makes. It can’t be held liable for what it’s userbase does. Companies like Spotify and Skype had shady beginnings. And Plex never really had that shady of a beginning anyway.
In the product roadmap is also the opportunity to create live Plex TV channels out of the content in a user’s Plex media library. So for instance, the example given is you could create a TV channel for your kids.
Some of the users in the r/Plex subreddit on the announcement of this feature complained that Plex should get back to it’s core competency of creating requested features for the Plex Media Server and Plex apps. As well as much needed bug fixes that some users are suffering. In my experience using Plex Media Server on Linux the file permission issues to add hard drives was definitely a barrier to entry and caused untold headaches for a days.
But in fairness Plex has released Plexamp (like Winamp but for your Plex music collection, Plex Dash (organize and maintain your Plex media libary in a handy app) and the skipping intros to TV shows with artificial intelligence in the past few months. Features that I think are excellent innovations coming out of a now 12 year old company.
I think Plex’s next move should be to acquire Tautulli, an app that monitors what you and your server users watch. I get the sense that Tautulli isn’t that big and wouldn’t cost that much to acquire for a company of Plex’s size. Tautulli is actively developed and has a reasonable fan base. I’ve been using it for about three or four years now back when it was called PlexPy. (I think they had to change the name after a complaint from Plex. So at least Plex is aware of them).
Some people would be using Plex as a complete replacement for all their streaming services. But I use it to compliment them. I still subscribe to Netflix, Stan, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+ & Quibi (somebody stop me subscribing to all these streaming services. Haha.) I like the fact that when I watch something on one of the streamers that it registers with them as somebody having watched. In turn creating demand for more of that type of content or another season of the show I’m watching on that streaming service.
In conclusion, I’m optimistic about the future of Plex and love their work. I would recommend their software both as a server maintainer and someone who just uses the apps you watch Plex content on. Who knows? One day we may even see a Plex Original TV show, movie, stand-up comedy special or documentary. I can dream can’t I?
Nice article. Near the bottom think you're compete should be a complete. I think the million dollar question is legitimising Plex - while I appreciate you support paid media more than most, many Plex users may not take the same approach and it is difficult for me to see where Plex can go given it's core function is essentially supporting piracy.