It's built for torrenters (and usenetters) who download massive collections of files, have them sit on local hard drives, and want easy ways to organize them and play them back. and it does an amazing job of that.
I used to have a large legally obtained CD and DVD collection. Getting a home media server, ripping everything, and using Plex to access is an awesome upgrade compared with physical media. In particular, avoiding physical media that will break for stuff like kids movies is great.
Also, managing all the photos we have and take so that they are available on all our devices is great, especially since we are a mixed iOS and Android household.
So no, it is not only for downloaders with massive collections of files.
> It's built for torrenters (and usenetters) who download massive collections of files
It's also nice for us who have had a physical media collection (video & music) converted into a pure digital collection and want to be able easily to consume that anywhere, anywhere and on any device with zero friction.
Especially local media-sync is useful for long trans-atlantic flights and works much better (and space-efficiently) than just copying the full-fidelity files to the device, which in the end may not be capable of playing them properly at all.
Basically Plex is very good at completely eliminating issues regarding playback format and compatibility and ensures whatever is in your library always plays back correctly at whatever target-device you have.
I'm not going to deny that torrenters etc probably represent a big portion of the Plex user-base, but I'd like to remind people that actually owning your own media-collection is a still a thing, and I don't see any reason to make software managing such collections a suspicious category to be in.
Yep. I used to be one of those guys with two 250-CD binders full of all sorts of music. I went to the used CD bin weekly through high school and college because they had deals with 3 discs for $10 so most weeks, I'd use my paychecks to pay the bills and tip money for CDs. Later on, I amassed quite a collection of DVDs as well.
Later on, I realized I was watching and listening to just about everything via my computer or mp3 player so I began the process of ripping everything to my RAID (now just a standalone NAS).
Of course, I did sell those CDs and DVDs on craigslist afterward so that's just about as legally dubious as downloading unlicensed copies. I just figured I didn't need the stacks of plastic circles laying around anymore and could use the cash.
Either way, between rips and still occasionally buying mp3 albums on Amazon, I've got a load of digital media and Plex is an excellent way to stream it all to devices in my house. I use my phone or a laptop as the "remote" and the Plex server streams to my Chromecast, Xbox, or other computers from the NAS. It's a great setup. For people who want to use an Apple TV as their media extender, it looks like they have the option to use Plex as well.
Honestly this is a bit of a surprise since I thought Apple typically wanted to steer you toward iTunes for local media streaming but as someone who really doesn't like iTunes and generally avoids it whenever possible, Plex support makes Apple TV an actual option now.
It's not built for you at all.
It's built for torrenters (and usenetters) who download massive collections of files, have them sit on local hard drives, and want easy ways to organize them and play them back. and it does an amazing job of that.