How to Take Music and Movies Anywhere With Plex Cloud
Plex is already a great way to stream media from your PC to all of your devices . The recently launched Plex Cloud makes this even easier by hosting your media for you. Instead of keeping your computer on and connected all the time, you can simply upload your data to Amazon and stream it wherever you go. Here’s how to set it up.
The beauty of Plex and Plex Pass is that you can stream any media in any format to any of your devices, wherever you go. The only downside was that you still needed space to host the files you own and manage. Plex Cloud takes this limitation away from you and is easy to set up.
What you need before you start
Previously, you had to set up a Plex server on your own computer that was always connected to the internet if you wanted to stream your movies or TV shows from your computer to your phone. It’s okay if you have a reliable Internet and a computer ( or NAS ) that you can keep running, but it also puts a lot of responsibility on your own hardware. If you lose the Internet or your computer freezes, you need to fix it. With Plex Cloud, you can stream from Amazon servers, which means you’re less likely to overload your server with movie streaming, and if your internet gets out of the house, you can still stream elsewhere.
To set up a Plex Cloud server, you need the following:
- Amazon Drive Account : If you are a Prime subscriber, you already have an Amazon Drive account that can store unlimited photos and 5GB for other files. That’s great, but probably not enough for your music and movie collection. For $ 60 a year, you can subscribe to unlimited storage. This is not necessary, and Plex states that Plex Cloud will work with any Amazon Drive account, but 5GB is not much, so you might need to update to make Plex Cloud useful.
- Plex Account with Plex Pass: The Plex Cloud is exclusive to Plex Pass users, so you’ll need to make sure you have a subscription. The Plex Pass costs $ 5 a month, $ 40 a year, or $ 150 for a lifetime license .
- Decent Internet Connection: After your Plex Cloud server is set up, you need to upload all of your media to your Amazon Drive account. Depending on the size of your library and the speed of your internet connection, this may take some time. Before downloading, make sure you have a reliable connection, preferably wired (for speed only) and without strict data limits. You don’t want to burn your hat by customizing this.
- Plex Cloud Invite: At the time of writing, Plex Cloud is only available through an invite. You can sign up for an invitation here . Hopefully Plex will drop this requirement soon, so by the time you read this you can skip this step.
Keep in mind that Plex Cloud can be quite expensive. Between the required Plex Pass and the highly recommended Amazon Drive subscription, you can end up paying almost as much as a Netflix subscription every month to store your own downloaded content. Plus, you have to download the whole thing and then download it again to watch on all your devices anywhere. If it’s worth it, go ahead.
How to set up Plex Cloud
Once you receive an invitation, it’s time to start the fun. To set up a Plex Cloud server, follow these steps:
- Sign in to your Plex Web account.
- From the server drop-down menu in the upper left corner, select Plex Cloud.
- After the introductory screen, you will be redirected to log into your Amazon account.
- Once you’re signed in, Plex will install the Plex server into your Amazon Drive account. Wait for it to finish, then click Continue.
- Now upload your music, movies, videos and everything else to Amazon Drive. Check out Amazon’s documentation here to see how . Note. You will need to use the Amazon Drive desktop client to download any files larger than 2GB .
- Organize your media files on Amazon Drive into folders. Creating separate folders for movies, TV shows, music and photos will help you organize your files in Plex later.
- In Plex Web, add folders from Amazon Drive to your libraries just as you would normally do on your own server .
Once everything is up and running, your Plex Cloud server will be available like any other server from the dropdown menu in the various Plex apps. Just select Plex Cloud on your computer, home theater, set-top box or iOS or Android device and start streaming at home or anywhere in the world.
Copyright Notice
It’s no secret that while Plex bills itself as a way of sharing “your” media, it’s often used as a way to stream movies and TV shows you’ve copied from one device or form of media to another. Whether you’ve ripped your own DVDs to back them up, save home movies, or download a bunch of copyrighted material, Plex doesn’t know the difference, and since it’s entirely for personal use, no one scans yours. files or hard drive to figure out.
Plex Cloud adds a new level of complexity to this challenge. Since it uses Amazon Drive to store files, whatever you download is subject to Amazon’s terms of use . In these terms, Amazon states that you are responsible for ensuring that you have the right to copy any files stored on its servers and that Amazon has permission to access your files to “enforce the terms of the Agreement.”
It is unclear from this whether Amazon is actively scanning files in an ongoing search for copyrighted material such as YouTube’s Content ID system , or whether Amazon will simply take action against your account if it ever finds out about it . Either way, you can take a chance if you choose to upload terabytes of movies to your cloud account. If you don’t mind the risk (especially if you don’t plan on sharing your library), go for it. However, if you’d rather stick to the right side of Amazon’s terms of use, or don’t think the risk to your Amazon account is worth it, stick with or avoid videos that are yours and are entitled to.