Use Plex to Create Your Own Personal Streaming Service
Plex , which started out as a local media server—something to stream movies from your computer to your phone or TV—has grown into an entire media ecosystem. You can use a free Plex account to watch a library of free movies, discover new TV shows or movies, and create an all-in-one watch list that covers all the popular streaming services. Plex is obviously a lot of things – some free, some paid. Let’s figure it out.
What is Plex?
Plex’s modular media center starts with its own free streaming service. Anyone with a free account can watch and enjoy a large list of free movies and TV shows. They partner with Crackle, Paramount, MGM, Lionsgate, and others to provide free movies and TV shows you might actually want to watch, with a catalog of over 50,000 titles.
Plex also has a Live TV feature that allows anyone to stream over 1,000 channels in real time, as well as custom channels depending on where you live. (You can find a list of all channels here .) However, their collection leaves much to be desired. Sure, you’ll find niche kung fu, anime, and comedy movies to watch, but Plex doesn’t have a catalog that can compete with a popular streaming service like Netflix, and even their Live TV catalog is missing. You can use it to keep up with the news, but it won’t replace a dedicated Live TV service like Sling TV or Hulu, or old-fashioned cable TV.
Plex can help you create your own streaming service
Plex shines as a media management platform. This is a great way to create your own 4K media streaming service, local or remote.
Here’s how it works: You set up the Plex app on your PC, Mac, or NAS system where all your movies, TV shows, and music are stored. Then follow the easy-to-follow setup guide and tell the Plex app the folder where your media is saved. Plex will launch its wizard and show your entire media collection with associated posters, metadata, trailers, and more.
You’ll feel like you just created your own Netflix app and it didn’t cost you a penny. Plex has streaming apps for all platforms—as long as the Plex Media Server app is running on your computer, you can use all that media to stream locally on any of your devices. This could be a Smart TV, iPad or Android smartphone.
And that’s how you created a free streaming service that anyone in your family can use and also share with other Plex users who are also away. With it, you can let a friend from another on the other side of the country watch the movies you have. Streaming files locally is effortless, and you can also enable remote access to check out your entire collection from anywhere in the world as long as your home computer is turned on.
Plex also has a paid tier called Plex Pass, which adds offline downloads for streaming apps, so you can download movies to your iPad before you go out without even connecting it to your computer. With this subscription, you also get premium features for photos and music, auto-tagging, text support, and more advanced sharing restrictions for general users.
Plex Pass costs $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year, or you can buy it outright for $119.99. As good as the service is, you don’t need to pay for it, especially if you don’t plan to use the offline download feature often.
Plex lets you create a universal watchlist
Universal Watchlist is a relatively new addition to Plex that instantly turns it into a streaming hub that connects popular online streaming services to your media.
It couldn’t have happened at a better time. It’s harder than ever to keep track of all the new and exciting TV shows that are coming out. For general use cases, JustWatch is a great option , but if you plan to use Plex, their built-in option will add convenience.
Moreover, it is easy to use. Find a title in Plex and use the Bookmark button to add it to your watchlist. Right below, Plex will tell you where you can stream, rent, or buy your media. Click on an app and Plex will open the service and the movie will be ready to watch.
Verdict
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use media center for your own collection of movies and TV shows, Plex is hard to beat. There are other options, such as Jellyfin , that offer more features, such as free offline downloads. But Plex offers a superior overall package, and the user interface is unparalleled in the media center space. Additional features like a universal watch list make the experience more enjoyable, but a collection of free media and Live TV channels is still missing. For more details, check out PCMag’s full review of Plex .