What is Plex? Everything you need to know

Plex is one of the most important streaming services, even if it's not one of the most well-known offerings. While the best streaming services often place large libraries of shows and movies at your reach for on-demand viewing, Plex lets you become the master of your own domain. 

If you have a collection of media (or know someone else with one), Plex enables you to stream all that stuff from a computer or server onto your TV. And while you can pay for Plex, a lot of its best features are actually free — as are the movies and TV shows and channels it airs. And one of its latest features makes Plex one of the best streaming apps, is actually all about working with some of the top streaming services around.

And not only are Plex apps available on the best streaming devices, but a mastery of Plex will complement the best Netflix shows and the best Hulu movies.

Whether you’re a video hoarder with hundreds of movies just begging for a media server, or a casual streamer looking for a different approach, Plex is well worth at least a few hours of your time. Read on to find out exactly what it is, and how you can make it work for you.

Plex TV explained

You can refer to Plex as a streaming service, because that is technically true. Originally, Plex was a way to utilize videos stored in a remote location, so you could streams them on a device. So, by default, Plex was a media server. This means that many see Plex as a way to provide their own content instead of relying on a big company’s library, which usually changes from month to month.

Then, Plex got more dynamic, adding an ad-supported streaming service that offers free TV and movies, and it also connects to other free streaming services. 

Plex also wants to help you learn about what you're watching with Discover Credits, which looks like its own IMDb. To find it, go to the cast section of a movie or show's page, or just look at the "People" options when you search. There, you'll find a bio and social media links, that actor's most famous roles and their filmography — which will include where you can watch those shows, in both libraries and services accessible to you.

While Plex itself can walk you through the process of setting up a media server, it works like this: You provide your own video content, and put it in a special folder somewhere on your computer. You direct the Plex software to this folder, and Plex then makes your computer available as a server. By using the Plex app on another computer, a mobile device or a streaming gadget plugged into your TV, you can stream content from your computer to another platform of your choice.

This is also precisely how streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video deliver video to you, just with some extra steps in-between. “The cloud” is really just “a computer somewhere else that’s always turned on.” 

Granted, media servers are a dime a dozen. Streaming players from the PS4 (but not the PS5) to Roku devices have media server apps built in; even Windows Media Player works as a pretty passable media server in a pinch. What sets Plex apart is how well it organizes media, and how pretty the whole interface looks. 

While most media servers leave you scrolling through an endless list of poorly named files, Plex automatically organizes your shows into seasons, complete with title cards and episode descriptions. It tells you who starred in your movies, and can even find lyrics for your music. It makes your own library look just as pretty as anything from Netflix or Disney Plus.

Plex downloads

Plex is available as both a media server and an app that receives streamed media. You can download both versions from the Plex website.

Plex free TV and movies

Plex offers two kinds of free streaming online; both are free because there are ads inserted. Plex offers free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels, which collect shows into linear TV "channels," which are basically like playlists with ad-breaks. It does offer news programming in its FAST channels, such as NBC News Now. PLEX also offers ad-supported video on-demand (AVOD) content, where you can see TV shows and movies of your choice.

Plex Pass

Plex offers a premium tier called Plex Pass. While the free tier doesn’t bill you monthly, there’s a $5-per-platform activation fee if you want to use the Plex Android and iOS apps. The Premium tier costs $5 per month, $40 per year or $120 for a lifetime pass. If you use Plex a lot, the lifetime pass pays for itself after two years; otherwise, use your best judgment.

Plex live TV

Live TV & DVR functionality is a top Plex Pass feature, enabling you to hook up an antenna, tuner and hard drive at home, then broadcast it remotely to your Plex account. Plex will even offer a comprehensive guide based on your local listings. 

It’s amazingly useful — if you like network TV and can’t watch shows as they air, at any rate. A Premium subscription also gets you mobile app access (assuming you haven’t already paid to activate them separately), trailers and extras for movies you own, and lyrics for your song library. It’s also the only way to get parental controls on Plex.

In my opinion, the Premium subscription’s benefits are relatively modest, unless you specifically want live TV recording. But the subscription is also not that expensive.

Plex Server for hosting your own content

Here, we come to the crux of the issue. Plex is a wonderful service, provided that you can bring your own movies, TV and music to the party. The only question is, where can you get this stuff? Most of our TV and movies come streaming these days, and even those that don’t usually download in proprietary formats, viewable only in the app where you purchased them.

First off, music is pretty easy to come by. You can buy and rip CDs, if you want to go old-school, or you can usually download MP3, WAV or FLAC files from your digital vendor of choice. (iTunes is the obvious exception, but Apple is hardly the only game in town anymore.)

Movies and TV are a slightly thornier issue. A lot of Plex users build their libraries by ripping DVDs they already own. This is not technically legal, particularly if your DVD comes with encryption. At the same time, at least one state court has ruled that ripping DVDs, provided you don’t share the content, counts as Fair Use. At the very least, we can say that from a practical standpoint, ripping DVDs exclusively for your own use is unlikely to ruffle any feathers. Based on my research, no private individual has ever gotten in legal trouble for this.

You can also record your own shows from TV, using features like Plex’s Live TV DVR, or similar services that let you record cable programs. Programs like PlayOn let you record programs from streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Doing so usually violates the Terms of Service, but it’s not illegal and, again, so far as I could tell, no one’s ever had an account canceled because of it, so long as they kept the recordings private.

Of course, far and away the most common way to build a Plex library is simply to torrent content. It’s not legal, and the ethics are highly questionable, but I would wager that most people reading this piece have torrented something at least once — perhaps only because there was absolutely nowhere else to find the content. Anything beyond that, you can pursue at your own risk.

Bottom line

Since the best features on Plex are free, there’s no barrier to trying it out for yourself. If you need material to fill your media server, try downloading some public domain movies, and give it a go. Getting a Plex server up and running usually takes less than half an hour, and getting an app set up requires even less time than that.

Plex has been one of my favorite streaming services over the past few years, but I’ve also been able to acquire a lot of my own content during that time. If you don’t have a media library to call your own, you may wonder what all the fuss is about — but if you do, you may wonder what you ever did without Plex.