Plex Cloud service goes live for all Plex Pass subscribers

Back in September, Plex announced a new service called Plex Cloud, a way to store media files in the cloud rather than on their own hard drive. The feature has its appeal, mostly the easy expansion of cloud storage relative to the huge amounts of time it takes to upgrade and backup 1TB+ hard drives at home. Plex Cloud has thus far only been available to some users as a beta, but it is now available to all Plex Pass holders, the company has revealed.

Plex, of course, is the free software enabling anyone to create their own media server, making it easy to access one's own music and video libraries. The most common way to use Plex is via a computer with a large hard drive (internal or external) loaded with content. Plex Cloud replaces that hard drive with a cloud service of the user's choice: either Google Drive, Dropbox, and/or OneDrive.

The big advantage here is that you don't need to have a PC or NAS unit that is always running, and if you're traveling, you don't have to worry about your home Internet or electric going out and cutting off your access. It takes somewhere around 60 seconds or less to fire everything up for the service on your preferred viewing device.

The ability to store content in the cloud and access it via the server software has been requested by users for a long while, and though it is now available, the process to reach this point wasn't easy, says Plex. "It turns out a lot can go wrong," the company says, speaking about the development process.

Regardless, you can use the service now if you have a Plex Pass subscription starting at $4.99/month.

SOURCE: Plex Blog