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Have you heard about the best new streaming platform on the internet? It is fully customizable, works on any device and, most importantly, is free. The only problem – and, I mean, go, it's hardly a problem – it's just that could be illegal, depending on how you use it. (In other words, it depends on the hacking you plan to do.) I'm talking about Plex of course.
There is more content streaming than ever before and even more ways to consume it. these days we are drowning in the choices. Nevertheless, the diffusion of all this seems a little different in practice, in particular because the subscription to a set of services can be expensive – quickly. Plus, if you subscribe to more than two services, say, it's hard to browse through their different offers to find something you want to watch. To have too much choice, it is exhausting.
Due to the convoluted nature of license agreements and the vagaries of corporate competition, what is broadcast on Netflix is very different from what is available on Hulu or Amazon Prime. Network-specific streamers such as HBO Max and Disney +, as well as more specialized offerings such as Shudder, Kanopy, Mubi and Criterion, are still different. All have the same goal, which is to lock intellectual property to keep people in continuous flow. That's a lot!
Plex, a company that sells multimedia server software, has found itself in the strange position of being the answer to this problem. It has two components: the software that organizes the media content on your computer's hard drive, and the client-side program that allows you and your family to deliver that content wherever you are on any device. It's clean. It's beautiful. It's extremely simple to use. It looks a bit like Netflix. Except that all the content is personalized, personalized by the person who runs the server. In the words of the company, the two components of its software are "the key to the happiness of personal media."
What Plex does not say, however, is how this happiness is obtained. Because what's on Plex servers is populated by people, most of the business content you've found there is probably pirate. And that's the main tension of using Plex: while the software itself is explicitly legal, the media that fills its servers managed by the client is not – at least what is protected by the right to 'author. Of course, the company does not tolerate this particular use of its software. A spokesman commented, in part, "Plex supports content creators and does not tolerate hacking", before going to the terms of service page.
For what it's worth, the business is legitimate. It started as a free leisure project in 2007 when developer Elan Feingold had a free weekend while his wife was away. In his words, he needed "something to keep [him] occupied. It turns out he recently had a "heated discussion" with a friend about programming languages. So he decided to try to wear the Xbox Media Center on a Mac. Some software managers who had recently sold their PostX company to Cisco – Scott Olechowski and Cayce Ullman – got involved. Then, in 2009, the project became the commercial activity that still exists today, to carry out the mission stated by Feingold in a 2008 interview: creating "a highly scalable HD * multimedia platform for all" .
A decade later, it is clear that Plex has fulfilled its mission. Today, you can even remove your cable subscription and access live TV via the app (after a small technical investment). What is particularly convincing at Plex is the ease with which it consumes.
This convenience can not be overestimated. Because even if hacking has lost its value in the golden age of streaming, it is back because it is now more difficult to determine how to legally distribute what you want to see. My inbox is a real field of free trials canceled just in time. This means that if you are technically savvy, maintaining a Plex server is equivalent to calculating the amount you are willing to pay for your convenience. If you are a person who has access to one of these servers, the calculation is easier: why pay more if you can just listen to streaming from your friends?
Liz called from a train on the way to Washington, DC, in the middle of nowhere, according to his estimate, and the signal did not stop cutting. It was as if our conversation was being buffeted or otherwise suffering from one of the various afflictions that afflict the media on a continuous basis. She explained that her experience in Plex had been mediated by a strong community to which she belonged in the late 90s and early 2000s and whose server is updated regularly with new TV shows and new movies. . Then she became cautious.
"Unfortunately, I'm not supposed to talk about it," she said. I pointed out that she had not given me any details of identification. She continued (though conspiratorial).
The Plex contingent of his forum, managed by a few people with servers at home, has only rarely given these coveted invitations. To get one, you had to either know one of the people running a server, or be very active on the forum at the time. (She described herself as an "old person on the Internet.") "They have not given any invitation for 15 years or something," Liz said. "I've already seen someone trying to sell his account for $ 1,000 on a Yahoo Quora thread," and they were immediately banned. She believes there are "thousands" of users, although there is no way to know for sure. Despite this, it is reliable, safe and clean.
"You will not, for example, go to Pirate Bay and take a risk with a random tracker," she said. "They are people you know and trust. And we commented on the status of each other during, uh, that then, I guess, it's been 15 years now?
In other words: today, hacking resembles what futurists envisioned about streaming media. You sign up for a service, broadcast as much as you like and just work. Most of the people I spoke to for this story experienced the same thing. Roughly, they are Internet savvy people who needed a solution to a home media problem and who came across a non-compliant use that does not necessarily feel illegal.
Shawn's story was similar: he was looking for a home delivery solution that was not difficult to maintain. Plex has replaced a complicated configuration of Linux. "I wanted to spend more time relaxing with my family instead of jumping into the baskets of Linux," he wrote in an e-mail.
For Shawn and his family, Plex is primarily for television shows, casual movies, home videos and music. This fills the gap between Netflix, Amazon Prime and what he bought on iTunes. (Right now, Shawn and his wife are watching Schitt's Creek, which is on Netflix, but they are also watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which is on a broadcast network, via Plex.)
"A girl was watching all White collar, that Netflix shot half way without warning, it is now accessible via Plex, "said Shawn. Otherwise, it sometimes broadcasts audio that is not available anywhere else, such as "Underworld remixes from the '90s and unreleased tracks from Fiona Apple."
Plex gives it the ability to drop any media into an organized library that can be read almost instantly. If her nine-year-old daughter wants to revisit her performance in a school production of The sethe said, he is immediately available. Shawn looked a little embarrbaded to have given what was essentially a sales pitch. On the other hand, he said, "as a parent and as a person who has to watch a screen all day at work, everything that makes my digital life simpler and more organized gives me the right to a gold star. "This is a custom streaming service built exactly for his family's specifications.
Jon came to Plex after buying a Chromecast and wanted to transfer the video from his computer to his TV because it was the simplest solution to this problem. At first, he just set it up for his personal use. But now he has jumped on his roommate friend's server, which may be home to a dozen people. "I hacked a decent number of things," he said. "I'd rather pay people for the content they're making and all the rest," continued Jon, noting that he remains subscribed to Netflix, Hulu and HBO (though he shares it with someone else). One of them).
For him, Plex is meant for things that fall through the cracks, like a media that is not on a streaming service – the Extraterrestrial franchise, for a person – or things that are only in theaters because it's not a big fan of going to the movies. (Among the theaters, he says, "I hate that cinemas have reclining seats.If I wanted to look at something in a recliner, I would stay home.") Jon says he's not not rented movie since last time. he did not have access to Plex.
Andrew found Plex because his wife had a hard drive full of .MKV files that Roku would not play with the sound. "For most of my adult life, I mostly watched movies and TV via my laptop or desktop screen," he writes in an email. "It was not necessary to set up a media server for broadcast on a smart TV until about two years ago, when I finally had an apartment with a bedroom (and subsequently a house)."
He has Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime subscriptions, but he uses Plex for the other things: "HBO things like the recent Chernobyl miniseries or Star Trek: Discovery, "he said." You can put needles under your fingernails and I still would not pay for CBS All Access. "Andrew calls this an essential antidote to the ongoing fragmentation of streaming media content.
Patrick was part of an imageboard site that invited him to a more secret dissident site. From there, he joined the group's Plex servers in 2015. He says 100 people probably have access to it.
"We usually do not buy anything," said Patrick, a very experienced teacher. "I would never buy TV shows on Amazon or iTunes. We just wait for it to come streaming. And if it's not streaming, we'll wait for Plex. "
Plex servers work a lot like secret societies or private clubs. They can be big (like Liz), small (like Shawn) or any intermediate size, but they have only one purpose: to simplify the experience of streaming media and make it human. The multimedia catalog of each Plex server is different. They go beyond license agreements (because hacking) and anonymous algorithmic curation (because a person chooses what they find there) to personalize the streaming.
"Plex's mission is to provide a unified multimedia experience that allows users to gather the media of interest into one application, available on just about anything with a screen," said a Plex spokesperson in a statement. . The only thing they do not mention carefully, that's why.
I have been a Plex user for a few years now. A friend of mine who lives in the Midwest maintains it, adding elements based on what the members of our small online community demand. (He uses a "pretty big" gaming computer to run it, he said, chatting.) For him, keeping the server is like running the 39, one of the early linkblogs.
"I can organize my favorite media in a place that my friends can easily see and explore," he said. And the requests give him an insight into media that are not part of the general public – things that are not Game of thrones, Mad Men, or breaking Bad. It is a catalog of what we have lived over the years. It's a record of different lives across the country and the world.
For me, connecting to his Plex, it's a bit like visiting a library. There is a lot of things to watch and listen to, and most of them are outside of what's available on American streaming platforms (read: anime). This is not the only way I consume most movies and TV, but it has its place, which is more common than anything.
The other day, this friend was upgrading his digital storage, which he uses to organize everything on the Plex server. We all took a bit to cover the costs, but it was also to recognize the value of what he had done for us. Streaming from the library of someone does not have the same importance as watching the same thing on Netflix. What I mean is that every Plex server is special because it's made for people.
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