Plex transforms your library into a visual menu, adding metadata like cover art and IMDB results to enhance your viewing experience. If you have multiple terabytes of media content with metadata, cover art, etc., it will only populate this information as fast as your connection permits.Īside from this folder-specific issue, the menus are beautiful, fast, and easy to navigate from every platform I have tested. The menus are fast and easy to navigate, though I do run into some hiccups trying to browse my stupidly large music collection. One of the first things you’ll notice about Plex is that its menus are beautiful on every platform. Remote access is ready out of the box and does not require any port forwarding or additional setup. Setting up your Plex server is a largely automated process, and getting a stream set up on the other end is usually as simple as downloading the free app for your chosen platform, be it a smart TV, web browser, XBox One, PlayStation, or Apple TV. Or, if you leave your PC on 24/7 you can use that too.

Plex can be set up on any hard drive, ideally, a NAS (network-attached storage device), but since I already use a web server to store my media collection I can install Plex on the server. Plex is possibly the most popular media server software out there, as it offers an easy setup and a highly flexible system for managing different types of media libraries. Menus don’t handle large media collections well (depends on connection quality).

Many features require a subscription or lifetime pass.

Provide cover art, music videos, trailers, and more.

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