Media management platform Plex today announced a new "Discover" feature that's designed to make it easier for people to find what they want to watch across different streaming services. With Discover, customers can add any TV show or movie into their Plex Watchlist, and receive information on where to find it.
The feature will inform users which streaming service has the content that they want to watch, and if the user has a subscription to that service, the content can be watched directly from Plex. It's similar to how the Apple TV app works, but it is more universal because it does not require an Apple device, and it also works with all streaming services, Netflix included.
To go along with Discover, Plex is debuting the Plex Universal Watchlist, which is an all-in-one watchlist that lets customers keep track of anything that they want to watch. The Universal Watchlist will display newly available titles from shows that are still airing, and it will let users know where the content they want to watch is available.
Plex says that its new feature set is meant to turn Plex into a one-stop shop for all media content. In addition to supporting watchlists and content from streaming services, Plex offers a selection of free, ad-supported TV shows and movies, plus it supports personal media libraries and live content.
More information about Discover and Universal Watchlist can be found on the Plex website. Plex is free to use, but upgraded personal media management features require the $4.99 per month Plex Premium package.
Thursday October 3, 2024 2:22 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released iOS 18.0.1 and iPadOS 18.0.1, the first updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating systems that debuted earlier in September. iOS 18.0.1 and iPadOS 18.0.1 come two weeks after the launch of iOS 18. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update. According to Apple's release notes, the...
Tuesday October 1, 2024 2:09 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is working on a new iPad mini that will "potentially" be released "by the end of 2024," according to a report today from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Last month, Gurman reported that Apple had "new iPads in the works," including an upgraded version of the iPad mini. At the time, he said the device was "on deck for Apple's October event" alongside the first M4 Macs. The wording in his...
Thursday October 3, 2024 2:27 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released macOS Sequoia 15.0.1, the first update for the macOS Sequoia operating system. The 15.0.1 update comes a week after Apple first released macOS Sequoia 15. Mac users can download the macOS Sequoia update by using the Software Update section of System Settings. According to Apple's release notes, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 fixes a bug that could cause the Messages app...
Friday September 27, 2024 6:14 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.1 in October, bringing the first set of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update marks a significant step forward in Apple's AI integration, offering a new Siri contextually-aware experience and a range of additional capabilities powered by on-device machine learning and large language models. There are a couple of handy new...
Friday October 4, 2024 12:04 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Now that it's been two weeks since the iPhone 16 models were released, we've been able to spend enough time with the new devices to share a more in-depth review on their performance, battery life, feature set, and more. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've been testing the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, but the gap between the Pro models and the standard iPhone 16...
Thursday October 3, 2024 6:27 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple in October will release macOS Sequoia 15.1, bringing to Macs the first Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools, new Siri features, Smart Replies, and more. In addition, macOS 15.1 adds a handful of welcome tweaks and improvements to existing Mac capabilities. Here's what we can expect from the first major update to macOS Sequoia later this month. Note that Apple...
Tuesday October 1, 2024 1:57 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to release new MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini models with the M4 series of chips "this year," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman initially said these Macs would likely be announced during a virtual event this October, but he has been more vague about the timing lately, with wording such as "in the coming weeks" and now merely "this year." In any case, it is clear that...
Thursday October 3, 2024 9:21 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Ted Lasso will be returning for a fourth season, according to Sigmund Judge, a writer at MacStories and co-host of the Magic Rays of Light podcast. In a social media post today, Judge said he has confirmed that pre-production of the smash-hit Apple TV+ comedy series will begin in January in London, England. Apple has yet to confirm the fourth season, and there is no set release date yet....
Plex still cannot play 4K content locally, without buffering, this involves no streaming over internet. SSD drive inside iMac running Plex on that same iMac.
I heard Plex is not designed to do this, Plex is maybe intentionally not focused on playing 4K content.
Just hoping against hope that one day, Plex will suddenly add “plays 4K content“ as a brand new feature.
I play 4K content via Plex every weekend. Works just fine for me. Streams from a NUC pulling the media files of a NAS... and plays on Apple TV's throughout my house over WiFi. 4K content does need quite a bit more CPU than 1080 content does though.
I am even able to stream it over the internet when I travel... though that is heavily dependent on wherever I am having a fast enough download bandwidth to handle it.... which is rare.
Plex still cannot play 4K content locally, without buffering, this involves no streaming over internet. SSD drive inside iMac running Plex on that same iMac.
I heard Plex is not designed to do this, Plex is maybe intentionally not focused on playing 4K content.
Just hoping against hope that one day, Plex will suddenly add “plays 4K content“ as a brand new feature.
No idea what you're talking about, I stream 4K HDR from my NAS (off a standard 10TB HDD, no SSD here) to my ATV Plex client all the time.
Plex still cannot play 4K content locally, without buffering, this involves no streaming over internet. SSD drive inside iMac running Plex on that same iMac.
I heard Plex is not designed to do this, Plex is maybe intentionally not focused on playing 4K content.
Just hoping against hope that one day, Plex will suddenly add “plays 4K content“ as a brand new feature.
plex plays 4k content locally just fine. Been doing it for years. Nor does it need an SSD. In fact I can stream multiple 4k streams on my local network and outside my home to friends and family simultaneously without issue. It direct plays on my local network and to some of my friends/family who have supported devices. No transcoding needed and it uses no CPU for that.
If you're buffering then there's a problem with your network, or it's trying to transcode with a weak CPU/GPU due to a client not supporting the codecs it needs. But that's easy to see.
But 4k absolutely works just fine. I watch 4k content almost daily with it. Across a variety of devices.
You pick from a list which services you subscribe to and it lets you search their libraries. When you try to watch a show.... it pulls up a list of services and shows which ones you indicated that you subscribe to that have the content... and you pick the one you want to stream it from.
Then it passes you OUT of Plex App... and INTO the App for the streaming service... and right to the episode you want to watch.
I am not sure how it handles "Watched" episode tracking, havent watched any episodes yet.
I love this… I wonder what their privacy policy is, and how they got Netflix to work with them, yet Apple can not. This is one of my favorite features of Apple TV, the Watch Now area. I think this Plex offering is a much-needed service now that there are so many streaming options.
