The Plex media player for Android has begun rolling out version 6.0 of its app for Android phones and tablets today via the Google Play Store and will be soon available from the Amazon Appstore. The main feature in this release is that many video codecs are now supported by the app. Users can play files locally or open content from another app in Plex and should play if they are one of the many supported formats.
There are several drawbacks to the application when it comes to playing back local files; they include:
- Casting or flinging a video file to Chromecast or another Plex app is not currently supported.
- Most video files can be played, including native Android formats and some third-party formats. Some non-native formats require the Plex app to be activated/unlocked to allow full playback of content that cannot otherwise be played natively.
- Only subtitles inside the video file are displayed. External subtitles are not currently supported.
- For local files, Plex does not remember your playback position. After stopping playback, you will need to manually seek to return to your position.
There are also limitations regarding offline playback, they are:
- When playing a video format for the first time ever, the Plex for Android app needs to be online to update player support components. After this happens once, all videos on that format can be played without an Internet connection.
- Online video metadata such as title, poster, artwork, summary, and cast is only available online.
The formats that Plex has added support for with regards to local playback are MKV, MP4, AVI and WMV. Those are just the file formats that Plex has listed but it claims that the app supports even more.
Source: Plex
