Plex Media Server 1.18.9.2571

Home media servers are no longer restricted to locally connected systems, which almost always required a computer. Plex Media Server gives you the freedom to access all your media on different devices irrespective of your location. The free media server turns your home PC into a versatile streaming media center that rivals premium services.

The client side supports a wide variety of devices and systems, and the development community is quite active. Users should therefore expect support for even more devices and services.

Using Plex Media Server

When we installed and lauched Plex Media Server, it asked us to specify the folders we wanted it to index and share. The program recognized our music and video titles, including their respective details like cast, cover art and rating. It can also add synopses of the titles gleaned online. We could change between generic folders containing text file names and a database showing library information and imagery without typing anything.

It is an in-browser extension that plugs into Plex website to give users access to their respective content. When we launched the server, it took us to Plex homepage where we could manage our content. We could manage our own videos or add channels to view online videos.

The server allowed us to organize our media in different ways. We could save TV shows and movies we had not completed into a special folder and keep new media files into another special folder. This made it easy for us to find the content we wanted. The Activity tab allowed us to check our past activities.

The devices you use to access your media do not need special codecs because Plex Media Server transcodes both video and audio automatically and in real time. You can use the media server on a variety of devices, including iOS, Android and Roku boxes, all of which deliver descent video and audio quality. Users add Plex to Roku as a channel that connects to their servers. We managed to stream some videos in 1080p HD. However, transcoding is a resource-hogging process that requires a dual-core system.

Pros

• Support for many devices and systems
• Slick interface across all platforms
• Support for almost all media file formats
• Easy to search and browse files

Cons

• Transcoding is a resource-hog

Plex Media Server provides a complete solution to online video and audio streaming. Although this is a free media server, you need to pay PlexPass to sync media between different devices and share media, which costs $3.99 a month.