How To Use Plex To Put All Your Streaming Services in One Place

Plex is the most recent platform with ambitions to change into a central hub for all of your video streaming wants: A brand new characteristic known as Discovery brings companies together with Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Disney Plus collectively in a single interface. It could be sufficient so that you can spend extra time in Plex, or maybe to present it a go for the primary time.

If you’re utterly new to the Plex expertise, you possibly can consider it as a form of non-public Netflix or Spotify that you simply run your self. You present the video and audio recordsdata, and Plex serves them as much as all of your units, whether or not that’s a sensible TV upstairs in your house or a smartphone on the opposite facet of the world.

Parts of Plex are free to make use of and different elements require a Plex Pass, yours for $5 a month or $40 a yr. The options that we’re speaking about right here can be found in Plex totally free, although you do after all must be signed up for the assorted streaming companies that you really want to have the ability to search by means of.

There are two elements to Plex: The server shopper that you simply set up on the pc or NAS machine that has all of your media on it, after which the assorted apps that you simply run in your different computer systems, in addition to your smartphones, tablets, TVs, and consoles. The server shopper finds, organizes and serves up all of your media, and the Plex apps can then be used to entry it.

We’re going to imagine that you simply’ve already bought Plex up and operating in your units, however if you happen to haven’t, it’s not troublesome to get began: Head to the main Plex website to register a free account and to obtain the assorted bits of software program that you simply want. You’ll be taken by means of all the required processes, step-by-step.

Find Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and More

At the time of writing, Plex is showcasing Discovery proper on its entrance web page: You can simply begin typing within the identify of a TV present or film that you simply’re in search of, and also you’ll be proven matches from throughout the streaming universe. From the Reacher sequence to the movie Nomadland, there’s now an inventory web page for all these titles on the Plex web site, along with particulars on the companies the place you should buy them, hire them, or watch them as a part of an current subscription bundle.

To begin getting these titles added to your personal private Plex expertise, you possibly can check in and open the Plex web app. You might nicely get prompted to start out including streaming companies as quickly as you open the app, but when not, you possibly can click on on the Discover hyperlink on the navigation bar on the left (the compass icon), then Select my streaming companies.

Discovery is out there in all places else that Plex is, after all. From the cell apps, faucet the menu button (prime left), then the cog icon and Streaming Services to configure the companies that seem contained in the Plex interface. At the second, it’s the online app that gives probably the most complete entry to Discovery, however that will change over time.

The streaming apps which are obtainable to hook up with will rely upon the place you might be on the planet, however the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, HBO Max and Hulu are all supported—in truth, the listing of platforms you possibly can entry is longer and extra complete than we have been anticipating.

Plex Isn’t Perfect

You ought to restrict your expectations although: Your watching isn’t synced in Plex, and in reality you don’t even must check in to those different companies. What Plex is doing is letting you uncover what’s in these different apps—therefore the identify of the characteristic—in addition to itemizing what’s trending and what’s beneficial by means of these different companies too.

One further little bit of performance that’s useful is a common watchlist you can handle in Plex. No matter the place one thing is streaming, you possibly can add it to this watchlist, and Plex will let you know the place it may be discovered (and for the way a lot, if related). It’s just like the watchlist that’s now accessible by means of Google TV.

In some instances, Plex can ship you straight to the related app when you choose a title, nevertheless it is dependent upon the machine you’re on and the actual Plex app you’re utilizing (you possibly can’t stream stuff from Netflix inside Plex or something like that). You might must nonetheless manually change to the opposite app once in a while to really get to your content material.

It’s potential that a few of these connections might get pulled over time, after all—Netflix would a lot moderately you regarded for stuff on Netflix moderately than Plex—however for now it really works very nicely. When you seek for one thing, outcomes from all of your streaming apps in addition to your Plex library present up, and you may decide the way you need to watch one thing.

We ought to point out that Discovery remains to be labeled as being in beta, so you possibly can anticipate one or two bugs and a few new options to get launched over time. It’s already working fairly nicely although, and there’s actually some usefulness right here: Plex says that viewers within the US spend a complete of 600 million minutes an evening deciding what to look at, a complete that may simply begin declining barely, due to Discovery.