Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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

Posted by msmash on from the good-things dept.

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.

22 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Pretty cool by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Pretty cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Pretty cool by epyT-R · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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!

    3. Re:Pretty cool by mattack2 · · Score: 2

      I can see your cynical side, but the current price is $100/year total.

      I seem to spend at least that upgrading drives in my Tivos or buying external drives anyway.

      So if the "unlimited" truly is unlimited, this could be a way at least as cheap as doing it myself, and potentially easier.. (There is a Plex app for Tivo, I think..)

    4. Re:Pretty cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings.

    5. Re:Pretty cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Pretty cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:Pretty cool by barc0001 · · Score: 4, Informative

      This looks like a solution searching for a problem to solve. Who really needs their Plex library "in the cloud"? The vast use case for it is as a home media server so if you go the Amazon cloud way instead you get to upload it all (at a painfully slow rate in many areas) then have it eat into your data cap a second time as you stream it to watch. Not to mention if you have any files of a less than 100% above the board nature, the MPAA/RIAA and a subpoena may start poking around in the PlexAzon caches to see what needs a closer look. No thanks.

    8. Re:Pretty cool by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

      Oh yeah. Forgot about that. And as a bonus you can pay more when Google or Plex decide they need more revenue that year, or lose service when Google gets bored of it.

    9. Re:Pretty cool by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    10. Re:Pretty cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    11. Re:Pretty cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    12. Re:Pretty cool by PRMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is so true. I'm a cord-cutter and my internet went down on Saturday and I watched a show on Plex specifically BECAUSE it's over my network.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
  2. At best short lived at worst a trap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is either going to be shutdown IMMEDIATELY by the copyright trolls, or its a trap set by the copyright trolls

  3. Re:This deal is getting worse the further I read.. by Drethon · · Score: 2

    Yep, I'll stick with my $150 for a NAS with hard drives that actually powers up and down on demand. I'm not seeing how exactly this is an advantage, maybe unlimited storage but I don't need that.

  4. So - $100/yr for... by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...something I could do at home with a low-end shoebox computer (or better yet, an old cast-off box with a little SSD and a big platter drive stuffed into it) that would be incredibly cheaper over time, electricity included.

    And wait - who said I had to have the damned thing on 24/7 at home? I boot it when I turn the TV on - takes less time to start up than the TV does these days thanks to SSD *shrug*.

    Seriously - if I subscribed to this service, I'd be damned embarrassed to say that I did and claim that I'm a geek at the same time...

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:So - $100/yr for... by nobuddy · · Score: 2

      Not too old. Those HD movies take a bit of grunt to serve smoothly.

  5. Local Content Only For Now by WoodburyMan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been a avid Plex user for almost 2 years now. A bit over a year ago I bought a storage array NAS just for dedicated Plex storage, and built a i5 media center system that acts as Plex server and a few other things so I don't have to leave a power hungry gaming desktop on all the time. Previous to that I only kept some content on disk, and backed up media to CD's, then DVD, then Bluray. Combined, I have somewhere north of 2.5TB of content. Charter in my area offers only 60mbit/4mbit service, with 150mbit/5mbit service as a $50 upgrade. That's over 150hours to upload A week straight. Then content, when I add it, has to be uploaded. It makes no sense to download content, only to upload it, to stream/download it again. With GoPro 4K 60dps footage I have taking up SEVERAL gigs, it's just way too much to upload to Amazon, let alone upload the small trimmed down clips I want to YouTube sometimes. Maybe in the future, if ISP's in my area decide to offer actual upload speeds. As it stands if I download at 60mbit, 50-75% of my upload bandwidth is spent in just TCP acknowledgements and overhead. And symmetrical business speed is offered via Fiber only here at costs of $500+/mo.

  6. Sucker bait by eyepeepackets · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
  7. Re:This deal is getting worse the further I read.. by silas_moeckel · · Score: 2

    If your serving media files you realy do not want classic raid. Snapraid and the like are a much better option for a large volume of seldom/never modified storage. This way drives no used can spin down.

    --
    No sir I dont like it.
  8. I Knew There Was Something Fishy... by ewhac · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
    1. Re:I Knew There Was Something Fishy... by CaseCrash · · Score: 2

      I use Plex and really like it, but I am looking for an alternative because it doesn't work unless I can login into their server. So I can't watch movies on my TV from my computer unless I can verify my username/password over the internet. Really pissed me off when hurricane Hermine came through and after I got electricity back I didn't have internet for three days, so no streaming to the TV. Of movies I own. WTF.

      Cloud? Why would I add even more layers of crap between me and a movie?

      --
      No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."