Plex, far ahead from its maiden journey as a personal media server, now offers a comprehensive solution for exploring, streaming, and sharing content across various platforms, even including their own ad-supported Free TV and movies. The streaming service recently enhanced its user experience with social networking features, and today, Plex is extending its social capabilities by publicizing user profiles and fostering an interactive review environment.
The inception of social networking elements on Plex dates back to November 2023 with the launch of “Discover Together”, encouraging users to forge profiles, connect with friends, and broaden their watch horizons. Despite initial hesitations, amid concerns over privacy, Plex later addressed these by ensuring adult content wouldn’t pop up in the Activity feeds.
This paradigm shift of incorporating a social experience positions Plex not just as a competitor to other free, ad-supported streaming platforms but also as an alternative to dedicated social networks oriented towards movie and TV reviews like Letterboxd and TV Time.
Excitingly, Plex now enables users to share a public URL that leads to their profile on the service. By default, Plex users will be discoverable via the app’s search, assuming they haven’t disabled this feature. Your profile will allow others to witness what you’re watching, what’s on your Watchlist, without tampering with your existing privacy settings.
Moreover, users can decide to share their Ratings & Reviews with other Plex users, allowing anyone, friends, or only signed-in Plex users to read these reviews. Alternatively, users can opt to keep these Ratings & Reviews private.
Parallel to these social advancements, Plex is also unveiling a preview of its fresh user interface, launched initially on Apple TV. This entails updated navigation, more personalized media customization, easy feature access, a more enriched experience coupled with beautiful artwork and Plex’s versatile social networking features.
As an added perk, Plex Pass subscribers will now have access to HEVC hardware encoding promising superior video quality while conserving bandwidth. Initially in preview mode for select users, it’s now available for all subscribers.
Original source: Read the full article on TechCrunch
