Software Update: Plex Media Player 1.0

Plex, known for the Media Server software, has developed a new media player and has now released its first stable release. Plex Media Player is the successor to Plex Home Theater. At the moment it is only available for PlexPassusers, a paid service that includes discounts on ‘Premium features’ and early access to new versions, but it will be available to everyone at a later date. The media player is suitable for a large number of platforms, including the Raspberry Pi, and is based on the open source mpv-media player. The media browser is powered by Chromium 45. The release notes can be found below.

Introducing the Plex Media Player
We’re incredibly proud to be taking the wraps off the future of premium media consumption in Plex. We’ve had a crack team working for the better part of a year on an app we’ve built from the ground up to deliver the absolute highest quality media browsing and playback experience. It represents an exciting new direction for us in lots of ways, and we call it the Plex Media Player. Because, well, it plays media. (Full disclosure: we ran Most Best Great Media Player Ever >9000 v3.11 for Media past marketing and they didn’t bite.)

We took a long, hard look at our current flagship for home theater enthusiasts, Plex Home Theater, and asked ourselves which bits we wanted to take to the next level and which ones we’d be happy sacrificing in a leaner, meaner, more beautiful , purpose-built high-end Plex experience.

The final must-have list, written on an IPA-stained napkin, looked something like this:

• Best media playback engine in the world. Needs to play every format under the sun. Needs to render hellishly complex anime subtitles without batting a tentacle, and support all the high-end features true Home Theater devotees want: refresh rate switching, display sync, rich subtitle support, popcorn maker integration, etc.
• Most beautiful, efficient media library browsing experience in the world, scaled to any resolution (jagged posters and fonts are so 2002).
• Truly cross-platform, with hardware acceleration, even on a Raspberry Pi 2. (How does a lovely 1080p UI on the Pi sound?)
• Accurate determination/prediction of airspeed of various swallows (laden/unladen).

Will it be available to everyone?
The new app is launching as an early preview version for our Plex Pass subscribers. Once the preview period ends, it will be available to all users; we’ll make another announcement when that happens.

Where’s search, TV theme songs, etc.?
Search is a big priority for us and we’ll be adding it as soon as possible. You can find information about notable planned features and known issues in our forum.

What about mouse support, though?
Don’t worry, Plex Media Player lets you use your mouse if you like pointy cursors.

Is Plex Home Theater Still Around?
Plex Home Theater is still available and open source. We’re no longer actively developing it and are focusing our efforts on making Plex Media Player the best experience possible. (We’ll continue to make bug fixes for PHT for now.)