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Plex Media Player Now Doesn't Require a Subscription; Pass Users Get Kodi Plug-in (engadget.com)
Plex and Kodi, two popular home theater apps, can get both of them together. Plex has announced its new Kodi add-on so you can include your Plex library in Kodi (provided you're a Pass user). From a report on Engadget: The new plugin includes most of the features you'd come to expect from Plex, which means it'll play back nearly any video or music format and cleverly categorize your media library. It simply lets you run the two media centers simultaneously without losing any of your customizations. It's currently only available to Plex Pass subscribers (it will be released publicly soon) and it doesn't yet work with Plex Companion remote control, but it does sport a brand new user interface (UI) that Plex says helps to "showcase some of our new thinking."
Plex started off as OSXBMC a fork of the XBMC when the XBMC devs were focused heavily on Windows/Linux.
https://www.plex.tv/blog/plex-...
A bit more insight into this in the announcement from the company itself rather than an article on the announcement.
You do release this is optional. And even if you do require authentication, you can whitelist IP and IP ranges that don't require authentication. I whitelist the IPs for my Rokus, FireTV, etc.
Honestly it is much more than that. Like a song you are listening to? You can queue up a 'plex mix' which queues other songs similar to the one you are listening to. Actually works pretty good. Need to transcode that video from a codec not supported on your playback device? Plex does this. I even have one running on a raspberry pi in my truck with my music on it. I have an android car radio, and run their client as my music in the truck. Can pick a genre, song, etc and queue a plex mix while I am driving. All running on Linux. Also downloads and manages trailers for movies, etc. Want to watch a movie or listen to a song while at your hotel on business, or on the road? Plex provides an interface for that as well, with bandwidth optimization with re-encoding.
BTW, most of this functionality is available in the free version. If you want some of the more advanced features, you can choose to pay them for it. I pay for the pass primarily because I want to support their development of a server that really is great for all your media.
Or you could simply use an SMB share for all your music and hunt around by filename. A very different experience. I haven't even scratched the surface on the organizational capabilities for large collections that plex provides.
Re: Why run two?
Kodi for highly customizable local access and Plex Media Server for external access and transcoding for STBs, mobile devices and less capable clients (cough iOS cough)
Plex has had user authentication for a while, something that Kodi just got recently, and it's easier on Plex to track viewing where Kodi needs the gymnastics of a third-party database and some time investment to get that running.
On the other hand, Kodi is much more flexible for playback formats and presentation, and it has a much better addon ecosystem. Plex has Channels but they're an afterthought for most people, and the Plex presentation on a given client probably sucks unless you really love scrolling through long lists one title at a time.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K