Plex Cloud Means Saying Goodbye To the Always-On PC (theverge.com)

Finally, you don't need an always-on PC or any other network-attached storage device if you want to use Plex's media player. The company has announced that it now allows you to stream TV shows and movies from your own collection via a new online option called Plex Cloud. From a report on The Verge: Plex is giving the world another reason to subscribe to Plex Pass subscriptions today with the launch of Plex Cloud. As the name suggests, Plex Cloud eliminates the need to run the Plex Media Server on a computer or Networked Attached Storage (NAS) in your house. It does, however, require a subscription to Amazon Drive ($59.99 per year for unlimited storage) and the aforementioned Plex Pass ($4.99 per month or $39.99 per year). Plex Cloud functions just like a regular Plex Media Server giving you access to your media -- no matter how you acquire it -- from an incredibly broad range of devices. Most, but not all Plex features are available in today's beta.

Comments

Pretty cool

[110010001000]

Instead of paying once, I can pay every month! I love the Cloud!

Re:Pretty cool

[Anonymous Coward]

And you can stream media at your ISP's max speed AND subject to their data caps rather than be limited to those pesky wire speeds of your home LAN with unlimited data transfers.

Re:Pretty cool

[Anonymous Coward]

By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings.

Re:Pretty cool

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, instead of just paying for electricity and hardware I have control over, I can pay for plex cloud. I'm sure I can expect other interested parties having access to my data through an NSL and my ISP to stick me for insane bw usage. Yay! What a deal!

And pay for all the extra bandwidth you need to be streaming the same files over and over from the cloud rather than just accessing them over your LAN. Also being aggravated when the cloud or your ISP goes down when you want to watch it most.

Re:Pretty cool

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cloud(tm) is awesome! Instead of paying absolutely nothing and streaming the videos I own within my own home to any of my devices, I can
(a) pay Amazon an annual fee for Cloud(tm) storage
(b) pay Plex an annual fee for a Plex Pass account
(c) pay my ISP for regularly exceeding my monthly broadband cap to watch the videos I own

Thanks for looking out for the little guy, Plex. Thumbs-up emoji.

Re:Pretty cool

[jedidiah]

The power costs of running your own little PC is gravely overblown. On the other hand, this takes everything out of your control and makes it dependent on any number of 3rd parties. Any one of them could fail.

One of the whole points of local content is that you can completely ignore any external network issues, like it not even being there.

Otherwise, you could just use Netflix and not bother with your own media in the first place.

Re:Pretty cool

[Anonymous Coward]

2016: Still falling for 'The Cloud' troll/meme

I seriously hope you guys don't do this.


Welcome to the New Reality: Nobody owns anything, you just rent or lease it, and pay, pay, pay, ad infinitum. You don't own your computer, OS, or applicatons, you rent them. You rent your house because home ownership has been made too expensive for the poor, which we are all rapidly becoming in this post-middle-class world. You lease your car because only rich people can afford to own -- but you still have to pay for maintenance. Can't even afford that? You 'rent' a ride in some other schmucks' car.

Step #2: Charge a monthly fee for breathing the air. After all, we dirty humans are major producers of the nasty greenhouse gas, CO2, so since corporations can be people, and corporations are charged for the indulgences to produce greenhouse gasses, people should have to pay to breathe the air. Can't pay? No problem, we'll put you in a 'work program' (aka debtors' prison) to pay off you debt. Never mind that you'll still rack up fees for breathing, at a substantially higher rate because you're now a criminal.. and you never pay it off, ever. Oh, and you'll be charged for your living space (cell), and the food you eat, and the water you use, and a toilet rental fee (you're required to clean it yourself though). Step #3: The New New Reality: We're all prisoners in debtors' prison. Cradle-to-grave, we own you, and you will do as you're told.


..or, you can all just reject 'The Cloud' and it's bullshit, and OWN YOUR OWN THINGS.

Re:Pretty cool

[Anonymous Coward]

(e) You get subjected to illegal scans by the MPAA and the RIAA

Sucker bait

[eyepeepackets]

Anyone who buys into this has not been paying attention: These "cloud"-based businesses vanish like the mist once their funding has dried up and there is no growing revenue stream, and if you've invested your time and data with them, you're screwed.

I Knew There Was Something Fishy...

[ewhac]

A couple years ago, I set up a FreeNAS box to solve the problem of, "the file I want to work with is not on the machine in front of me." Once set up, I also wanted a media server so I could watch stuff on the TV in the living room. Many of the comments in the FreeNAS discussion fora spoke well of Plex, which is available for FreeNAS as a plugin jail. So I installed it and gave it a spin.

I immediately knew something was fishy when I tried to connect to the local server, and the login page didn't work. I run Firefox with NoScript installed. I had the local server IP whitelisted, but the page ignored all button clicks. I click on the NoScript icon... And discover that it's trying to pull in boatloads of JavaScript from Plex.tv.

"WRONG!" exclaimed I. The whole point of a local media server such as Plex is for all media-serving code and resources to be hosted locally on my server hardware. The moment you start reaching outside the LAN to do anything, you are no longer a local server.

This discovery basically shattered any alleged positive value Plex may have had, since its primary function -- the basis on which it was sold to me -- turned out to be a lie. I promptly uninstalled it.

Now, it seems Plex has dropped the pretense altogether, and are just another disk farm outside my control. Good luck with that, guys; I'm sure you'll be able to beat Apple, Google, and Amazon at that game.