Plex Inc.

Plex Inc. is an American software company that runs its namesake ad-supported streaming media service that provides television shows and movies to users worldwide, and allows them to discuss and discover content across all major subscription streaming services. Plex also develops media server software and a series of apps that allows users to stream their personal media collections from their servers to their various devices. Plex Inc. is based in Campbell, California.

History
Plex began as a freeware hobby project in December 2007 when developer Elan Feingold created a media center application for his Mac by porting the media player XBMC (since renamed Kodi) to Mac OS X. Around the same time, Cayce Ullman and Scott Olechowski—software executives who had recently sold their previous company to Cisco—were also looking to port XBMC to Mac OS X, and noticed Feingold's progress in the XBMC online forums. They contacted him and offered support and funding, and they formed a three-person team in January 2008.

The team released early versions of the port, called OSXBMC, intended for eventual full integration into Mac OS X. The developers continued collaborating with the Linux-based XBMC project until May 21, 2008. Due to different goals from the XBMC team, they forked the code that became Plex, and published it on GitHub. The OSXBMC code was kept roughly in sync with the upstream XBMC code. In July 2008, the project was renamed Plex, which the developers said was chosen because "it evokes 'cineplex' and the suffix means 'comprising a number of parts'".

In December 2009, Plex, Inc. was incorporated with Ullman as CEO and Feingold as chief technology officer. At that time, Plex had 130 apps, the most popular of which were viewers for iTunes movies trailers, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, MTV music videos, BBC iPlayer and Vimeo. Feingold said Plex apps had been downloaded about one million times. Keith Valory became president and CEO in 2013.

, Plex had 65 employees. In December 2019, Plex launched an ad-supported streaming service of movies and television shows from content sources including Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, MGM, Lionsgate, Regency Enterprises and Legendary. , Plex had about 100 global employees.

In February 2024, Plex TV started offering movies for rental. In April 2024, Plex partnered with T-Mobile.

Plex Media Server
Plex Media Server (PMS) is free software that allows users to create a client–server for movies, television shows, and music. Free Plex accounts can share personal media libraries among a user's own collection of devices or with friends. Plex Media Server organizes movie and television content and adds posters, plot summaries, cast and crew lists, technical details, critical reviews, and subtitles. Plex Media Server is also capable of transcoding files if the codec is incompatible with the device playing the media. Plex does not support DVD and Blu-ray disk images and menus, saying, "these formats just don't fit into the idea behind the Plex ecosystem." Plex Media Server can run on Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, some NAS devices, some Netgear routers and the Nvidia Shield TV. For music content, it can automatically organize files by metadata tags such as title, artist, album, genre, year, and popularity. It can also acquire content from iTunes, iPhoto, Aperture and the Internet.

A Plex Media Server can function as a home theater PC and can stream content to Plex's front-end media player client applications that run on a myriad of devices and web browsers. The media player applications are Plex, Plex Web App, Plexamp, and Plex Dash, which allow the user to manage and play content from a Plex server. The Plex app is the successor to the Plex Media Player, and runs on a multitude of platforms including Android, Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast, Roku OS, iOS, iPadOS, PlayStation, Sonos, Oculus Go, webOS, Tizen, Windows, Xbox, and macOS. Player applications on computers and Smart TV platforms are free of charge, while the apps on iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets require a one-time $5 activation fee to stream from a server. Plex's apps largely relied on the native video player and supported codecs of the streaming device's operating system. In 2018, Plex began rolling out a media player based on mpv to support additional codecs.

Plex also offers Plex Pass, an optional paid-subscription service that adds additional features to its server software and player apps such as mobile synchronization, metadata fetching for music, multi-user support, parental controls, over-the-top live TV and DVR, trailers, extras, and cross-selling offers.

In 2016, Plex launched Plex Cloud for Plex Pass subscribers, which supported cloud-based servers. Plex's launch partner was Amazon, and the service was compatible with Amazon Cloud Drive. Users were critical of the service, noting that Amazon seemed to impose upload limits. The service also supported OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive. The service was discontinued in November 2018 amid technical problems and concerns of pirated content.

Plex Media Server has often been associated with pirated content. In 2019, The Verge headlined that Plex "makes piracy just another streaming service".

Streaming media
In 2019, Plex introduced an ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) streaming service and free-to-stream live TV channels. Its content partners include Warner Bros. Television Studios, MGM, Lionsgate, Legendary, Crackle, Endemol Shine, Shout! Studios, Regency Enterprises, Kidoodle TV and A24. Plex can also be used as a client for Tidal and hosts podcasts. In 2022, Plex added a "Discovery" feature which aggregates content from other streaming media sources. As of 2023, Plex had 16 million active monthly streaming users.

In 2020, Plex announced that it would introduce a movie and television show rental marketplace. Its movie rental service launched in February 2024.