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Best Plex NAS in 2024
Create your very own media streaming service with one of these powerful NAS enclosures
Setting up a Plex media server gives you a versatile platform to store, catalog, and stream all kinds of media — music, movies, shows, photos, and more — using the files you already own. Think of it as combining Spotify, Google Photos, Netflix, and OneDrive all into one service that doesn’t cost you a monthly fee on your server. Using Plex itself is free, with an optional upgrade to unlock additional benefits, including hardware transcoding.
Plex's excellent Plexamp music player is now free for everyone
It's now free to stream music, but many features are still locked behind Plex Pass
Plex Pass is a subscription service that nets you a variety of features on Plex, including offline playback and the ability to skip end credits in TV shows and movies. For the last few years, you've also received access to a surprisingly good music app called Plexamp when you subscribe. Now, Plex is amping up its music service by offering it free to all.
LastPass breach could've been stopped with a 3-year-old Plex update
This story's more than about one employee's Plex account
LastPass has taken a reputational tumble from one of the great password managers out there to becoming mired in infamy after not one, but two massive data breaches last year. We learned more details about the second incident last week — a malicious party installed a keylogger onto a senior engineer's home computer through an exploit in Plex, the personal cloud service for movie storage and streaming, and was able to break into corporate-level caches as a result. But it turns out that the engineer had a big part to play in this major failure as well.
Plex will let you skip end credits — yes, there's a catch
Plex’s custom credit detection algorithm can tell credit rolls from scenes
Plex is super easy to set up for managing your large library of movies and TV shows, especially if you own one of the best Synology NAS enclosures. But the reason many people prefer Plex over other services is the fact that it offers a ton of smart features. Adding to that list, Plex is now getting the ability to skip those lengthy end credits in your movies and TV series with just a single click.
Plex will soon be your one-stop place to access all your streaming services
That’s one more thing Plex can do for you
You might know Plex for its ability to arrange your scattered movies and TV collection into a user-friendly Netflix-like interface. While it does an excellent job of managing your media stored in say, one of the best Synology NAS enclosures, Plex has been branching out with more stuff to keep you hooked to its app. Plex Discover is one such venture that lets you find new shows and movies and even directs you to where to find them. Discover has been in beta for a while, and now we finally know when it will be rolled out as a standard feature.
Use Plex? You should reset your password immediately
Plex has confirmed a possible data breach, and it’s recommending a password change
Streaming app Plex remains one of the most popular Android streaming apps, but if you use the app, it encourages you to reset your password as soon as possible. This follows a potential data breach that the company has recently discovered. In an email to users, the company confirmed some key information about the leak.
After years of delay, Plex replaces its desktop media player client
Plex is looking to keep home theater techies satisfied
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Mediaphiles have had years to cope with the imminent demise of the Plex Media Player. Plans were first announced in August of 2019, right when the Plex had also released its intended replacement, the Home Theater PC app. Outrage from the crowd stopped everything in its tracks for three years, but at last, Plex is now calling time of death for PMP. Long live HTPC.
Plex is dropping podcast support, leaving you only 1,385 places to listen to your favorite shows
Like Spotify and Google Podcasts and Pocket Casts and...
Everyone has a podcast these days, and if you're the developer behind a media app, chances are you've added support for podcasts to it, too. It doesn't matter if you're loading up Spotify or browsing through YouTube — you'll find podcasts everywhere you go. Plex wants to be home to all of your media, but if you count podcasts among your endless library of stuff, you'll want to find a new service.
Plex thinks it can out-Google-TV Google TV at helping you find that next great show
Trying out universal discovery and watchlist support
You may use Plex as a way to justify owning and storing your favorite movies and TV shows in an easy-to-reach place. You may even use it to share a remote movie night with your faraway friends and family. Now, the service is taking a crack at what Google TV isn't able to do properly: sorting out all the titles you can see with the streaming subscriptions you've paid for.
Restore your Shield TV's Plex server and app permissions with Nvidia's 9.0.1 update
You know, for your entirely legal video collection
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It's hard to find a more dedicated fan base than Shield TV owners. Nvidia granted them a belated Christmas gift just a couple of weeks ago with a long-awaited update to Android TV 11, but unfortunately, it wasn't all sunshine and roses. A bunch of apps, including Plex, were outright broken after the upgrade. Thankfully, a new fix is on its way to help relieve many of those issues.
How to choose the right Plex server: PC vs. NAS vs. Shield vs. Raspberry Pi
Some are cheaper, some are better
You can still load discs into a dedicated player like a caveman if you want, but we live in the age of streaming. Almost every piece of media you could ever want is at your fingertips... as long as you can figure out which streaming service it's currently on. If you care about control, you can manage your own media library with Plex, and the first step in that journey is to decide what kind of hardware will run your Plex server. You can just use your PC, but a dedicated piece of hardware like a NAS box is more efficient. What's a movie buff to do?
Google kills its plans for Pay-integrated bank accounts before they even launch
Google Pay won't be getting those Plex accounts after all
Google's plans last year to build a branded banking service may never actually pan out. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google's giving up on "Plex," its multiple-bank approach for integrating financial services more directly inside the redesigned Google Pay. The company was working with several partner banks to offer accounts certain standardized feature sets and deep integration into services like Pay, paired with other customer-centric features like no overdraft or monthly fees. However, no actual release date was ever set for Plex, and the project has reportedly been abandoned.
Feel like Android TV keeps looking worse? Plex's latest interface is all about giving users control
Make your streaming library look as modern as you'd like
Plex is the go-to media server solution for millions of streamers around the world. No matter how powerful it is, the interface has never been a highlight of the service. It's not bad by any means — it's just nothing special, lacking the je ne sais quoi of other modern streaming platforms. If you've been hoping Plex would get a stylish reboot, you're in luck — the company has put all of its control into your hands.
Update your Shield's Plex Media Server app through the Play Store to get it working again
A lot of users seem confused after the latest version didn't automatically install
One of the NVIDIA SHIELD's most impressive capabilities is running a Plex media server, something that isn't usually possible on a streaming set-top box. But some users have had issues with it for the last couple of months, complaining that a lack of updates has broken their home-built video streaming server. There's a straightforward solution: update the Plex server app on the Play Store, since the server won't update itself automatically.
Plex thinks you'll pay to stream old Atari games that you definitely cannot find for free on the internet
But it can also stream your totally legit, not pirated classic game ROMs
Plex started as a way to organize and stream your media library, but it has since expanded to include live TV, ad-supported streaming video, and Tidal music, among other things. Now, Plex is dipping its toe into gaming. The new Plex Arcade service lets you stream a collection of classic Atari games to your devices. More interestingly, you can also stream your collection of classic game ROMs. However, Plex Arcade won't be free—it's $5 per month for regular users and $3 per month for Plex Pass subscribers.
These are the best replacements for Play Music's upload library
Spoiler alert: None of them replicate Play Music's feature set 1:1
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Google killed Play Music in October 2020, a service many people loved for one feature in particular: its online music file locker with uploaded songs that seamlessly integrated with Play Music's streaming catalog. You could also just add titles you own and listen to them without ever having to pay a dime. Luckily, there are a few alternatives that replicate some of Play Music's capabilities, including its successor YouTube Music.
Google is getting into banking — again, if you count the failure of Google Wallet
It's called Plex, and you can sign up for the waitlist now
Google has decided the time is right to get into banking — again, kinda. This even more deeply-integrated do-over is called "Plex," and this time, it's going to be backed by a pile of partner institutions, starting with Citi and Stanford Federal Credit Union, but expanding to include nine more later. You can't sign up just yet, but there is a waitlist.
Plex 8.5 on Android TV lets you quickly sign in with Google
No need for another device or 4-digit pin code
Plex just received an update that makes logging into the app from Android TV a lot faster and smoother. Instead of requiring a separate device and a 4-digit pincode, you can simply log in with Google if you've previously associated your Plex account with your Google one.
Plex is still the best solution for streaming movies, music, and shows you own to all your devices (we even wrote a guide on how), but the company has slowly been integrating free ad-supported content into the apps. Plex already offers a selection of free on-demand content, and now "live" TV channels are being thrown into the mix.
How to rip your movie collection to watch anywhere
Stuck in quarantine? Now's a great time to digitize those DVD and Blu-Ray discs
Physical media has its time and its place, but in the era of ultra-fast home Wi-Fi and high-res smartphones and tablets, a Blu-Ray or DVD basically makes no sense for a lot of the ways we now consume content. While ripping your collection of discs to digital can be time-consuming and comes with a real cost (disk space), going through the trouble can get you something Netflix can't: permanent, go-anywhere access to your complete media collection that no one can take away.In this guide, we'll show you how to get started ripping your DVDs and Blu-Rays, stripping the DRM protection, and converting them into more space-friendly and watchable formats for all of your devices. As a bonus, we'll show you how to get a media server up and running so you can stream those movies from any device, anywhere.