While the bulk of Plex’s features can be enjoyed for free, you do have to upgrade to a Plex Pass if you want to enjoy some nicer features. During my testing, I had no trouble with streaming wirelessly over my gigabit router and mid-tier Internet service, nor did I encounter any codec errors from playing an incompatible file. Like other options, Plex also transcodes on the fly and automatically adjusts its performance and quality for available bandwidth. 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.The code will be more stable and efficient on the CPU, according to Plex developers. On Apple silicon Macs, Plex users can expect improved transcoding speeds, though there may not be a significant difference. It can be downloaded from the Plex website.
The preview version of the Plex Media Server must be installed manually and will not auto update to newer releases, which is something to keep in mind. This new package includes Plex Media Server for both Intel and Apple Silicon architectures, so you don't have to worry about what you are installing. We present, the Plex Media Server "Universal" build for macOS. The existing Mac server versions run just fine under Rosetta2, but native is always better, right? Well, here it is!!! Since the introduction of the Apple M1 chip for macOS, users have asked for Plex Media Server to natively support "Apple Silicon". At the current time, the release version of the Plex Media Server runs using Rosetta 2. The new version of the Plex Media Server uses the "Universal" build for Macs, which means it is compatible with Apple silicon and Intel Macs. Popular media platform Plex today announced the launch of a beta version of the Plex Media Server that has native Apple silicon support.