TUAW's Daily App: Plex
Plex's big tease last week turned out to not be an Apple acquisition, but instead a big release, of both a rewritten Mac client to keep all of your media together in one place, and also a brand new iOS app, available now on the App Store for $4.99. Sure, the app's a little pricey, but if you use the new Plex as your media center, it's actually a must buy -- not only does it work as a remote control, but you can actually stream media from your Plex library directly to your iPhone or iPad from wherever you are.
And with a little more tweaking (you need to have the server running and know how to set up port forwarding on your router), you can even stream Plex content out over 3G, so no matter where you are with your iOS device, you can watch anything stored on your Plex install. Now that's pretty cool.
The latest version of Plex is available as a free download from the website, and the app itself is available in iTunes for US $4.99. We Mac users have always been spoiled with terrific media management software, and Plex is another great solution.
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Source: http://www.plexapp.com/
Plex's big tease last week turned out to not be an Apple acquisition, but instead a big release, of both a rewritten Mac client to keep...
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Plex9 itself came out just after I had to put my new mac mini server into a colo so... stuck with XBMC on Linux for now...
... but hmm, if the rumoured new "iTV" is real, and can playback 1080p, and uses iOS... then the inevitable version of this app that supports it would solve *all* my problems. :-)
Lot of ifs though.
I know it was just released but I'll have to agree, it's pretty buggy right now. Lag between button touches and actual action in PLEX on my mini is awful. Also, iPhone screen locks up for 5-10 seconds between button touches. Right now, really unusable but I understand it's early and hope fixes are implemented with time.
Thank goodness my Harmony remote still works with the PLEX Media Center.
$4.99 isn't pricey for an app... However even $.99 is too much for this POS. Given a wireless N connection and a top of the line quad core iMac doing the transcoding this thing has yet to properly play a video on my iPhone 4. The remote feature even locked up the whole app when I tried to hit pause.
August 31 2010 at 6:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI absolutely love Plex! Plex 9 looks great, the App Looks great.
My only wish is that it had integrated dvr capabilities that can use a tv tunner. I know there is an HDHomerun app, but I want to be able to record tv in plex. anybody know how to do this?
I've been waiting for something like this. Just grabbed it off apptrackr.
August 31 2010 at 5:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply4.99 is not too price. I have been using Plex for a long time and will get the app after I update my system tonight. The Plex guys have done such a great job I'd paly 9.99 for the app just to support them.
August 31 2010 at 1:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI like PLEX but never understood how to get it to recognize my own titles - especially when you have 2 or 3 different movies with the same title.
ex.
KING KONG (1933)
KING KONG (1976)
KING KONG (2005)
Grifmusic - press C and you get a contextual menu
Pick Movie Info and in there you can do a relookup - there is a great video right on the PLEX in the help section on how to individually fix those types of titles.
Make sure the folders for your movies are formatted like this: "movie title (1988)" (no quotes) and they should get picked up by the IMDB scraper.
It can take an afternoon or two, but once your movies and shows all have the proper format for the scrapers, you can rebuild your library from scratch very quickly if it gets screwy.
Of course, this was all pre-magical Plex Nine scraping - so maybe not necessary (installing now @ home via logmein... very excited :) ).
Is anyone else having a problem accessing the Plex website? It's ridiculously slow right now.
August 31 2010 at 12:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI can't imagine why. Mystery of mysteries. Hmmmmm
August 31 2010 at 1:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI find it surprising that even this iPhone app has to transcode video on the Mac.
Why can't anyone develop VLC or Plex app for the iPhone that has native support for AVI and DIVX files? (So far, the ones I have tried don't work all that well).
Because the iphone/ipad benefit greatly from being able to use a hardware decoder to play back video. It's certainly possible to do software decoding of other forms, but the processor usage will spike, the device will get unusually warm and battery life will suffer greatly.
Transcoding before sending on a device that has greater processor capability and no power worries makes good sense.
Not if you don't have an Intel server...
August 31 2010 at 1:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySeriously?
Pricey?!
FFS, Plex is free and tremendous.
Do yourself a favour and consider that newly released App as a "Donate" button for the Plex team.
I mean, to have a full Plex experience, I bought a PSP3 BT Remote, and Remote Buddy to go with it.
Don't you think I would have been better off waiting for the 5 bucks App to be released and spare me the trouble?
Exactly my attitude. Even if I were never to use the iOS app I'd buy it just as a way to say "thank you" to the team behind Plex. They work hard at maintaining and developing a fantastic media system which I use three or four times a week.
August 31 2010 at 12:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyAgreed. I've been using Plex since it was called "XBMC on OSX" and I've been chipping in about $10 a year for beer money for these guys. I use their app damn near every day. $5 for a combined iphone / ipad app? Done. And I still owe them another $5 for beer this year.
August 31 2010 at 12:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHot Apps on TUAW
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