In short, running Plex is like running your own private and polished streaming service, where you’re the one curating the library. Want to hook your new smart TV right into your media collection without any additional hardware? Buy the right TV and that’s no problem either. Want to watch it on your laptop at your in-laws’ house? Also no problem. Want to watch your TV show in the backyard on your iPhone? No problem. Your Plex server will, transcode all your media content on the fly, so that it plays properly on whatever device you’re using. Then, from any of those devices, you can remotely access your entire media library and watch it with no hassle.įurther, because the Plex model is a server/client one, you don’t have to worry about copying files to your various devices and dealing with issues like playback quality, video resolution, and other details. You can install it on Windows, Linux, or Mac computers as well as Android and iOS, video game consoles like Xbox and PlayStation, your Apple TV, and there are even smart TVs that come with Plex built right in. The Plex model is simple: you park all your media on a single computer with the Plex server software installed, and then you install Plex on on all your other devices. Plex is a centralized media server system that eliminates virtually every problem you run into while managing a large personal media collection.

Even for serious geeks with a lot of experience managing their media, it’s a huge pain to get all your devices talking and accessing the same collection. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.

How to set up plex media server on pc