For the purposes of this discussion, I will focus on the recent announcement in late 2019 that they would be offering an advertising based video on demand (AVOD) service to all users of their platform. Pathways to a Just Digital Future Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activistsĪs the services provided by Plex have expanded, the value proposition provided by Plex and the stakeholders involved have become much more complex. As the company has grown, they have also expanded the services offered to their customers by enabling access to other sources of content, such as news, podcasts, streaming music (with a separate TIDAL subscription) and ad-supported movies and TV shows. While the base product is free-to-use, there is also a paid subscription, Plex Pass, which opens up a variety of features from allowing costumers to download content to mobile devices and view offline to the ability to watch and record broadcast TV from a connected DVR. Plex has thrived in this niche market, developing a loyal base of over 20 million users. Since then, Plex has expanded their offerings considerably, allowing users to connect their own personal media servers and stream their content across a variety of devices, from mobile phones to smart TV’s.
Developing from this code base, co-founders Elan Feingold, Cayce Ullman and Scott Olechowski launched Plex in 2009 as a way for users to manage and consume their own media collections.
The original concept for Plex was derived from XMBC, an open source media player to allow content to be played via a hacked Microsoft Xbox.