Plex Cloud has launched. The media streaming platform now allows users to host content on cloud services, starting with Amazon drive. Any interested media aficionados can sign up for the beta starting today, though current Plex Pass subscribers are given priority access.
On a Plex Blog post, the company states “For the first time, you get a full-featured Plex Media Server in the… er… cloud. But the important thing is that you no longer need to worry about it! Plex Cloud is always on and accessible. We take care of all the annoying stuff like software updates and power bills.”
Plex Cloud differs from traditional Plex services, which require users to host their content on a local computer or hard drive. The company now encourages users to "Run your always-on Plex Media Server in the cloud without the need for an always-on PC or network-attached storage device (NAS)."
Plex has said that most of the core features are available at launch and that "we’ll be working to add some of the currently-unavailable features over time," which include “Camera Upload, Mobile Sync, Cloud Sync, Media Optimizer, DLNA, and DVR." Although the service currently only runs off of Amazon Drive, the service will add support for other cloud providers in the future.
Plex enables users to organize movies, television shows, music and photos and access them on all major desktop, mobile, console, and streaming devices. This past July, Plex released a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app for desktop, with a Windows 10 Mobile version still in development. They announced support for the new Apple TV in September.
To use the service, customers will have to purchase a Plex Pass for $4.99 a month in addition to storage space on Amazon drive. Users can choose to either use a free account on Amazon, which includes unlimited storage for photos and 5 GB of storage for everything else or they can pay $60 annually for truly unlimited storage.
Source: Plex Blog