Plex has just announced Plex Cloud, which may be the simplest way to access all of your personal media from anywhere, without needing to leave a PC or NAS drive on all the time. Plex Cloud links a Plex Pass to an Amazon Cloud Drive account. This allows the Plex app to stream media directly from the Amazon Cloud Drive, without needing to have a PC or NAS running Plex’s server software.
Amazon’s Cloud Drive costs just $59.99 per year for unlimited storage. Add in the $39.99 per year cost of a Plex Pass and you’ve essentially got your own private streaming service for around the cost of a Netflix or Amazon Prime membership. Plex says not all the features of a standard Plex server are supported with a virtual server using Amazon Drive. For starters Camera Upload, Mobile Sync, Cloud Sync, Media Optimizer, DLNA, and DVR are currently not supported, but Plex says they’ll be working to add support for those over time.
My main concern is it doesn’t seem like Plex is working with Amazon to provide this service, and is instead just piggy-backing on Amazon Drive to make it work for their liking. Since Amazon Drive is primarily intended to be used as a backup service, it’ll be interesting to see how Amazon feels about Plex users using the service to stream multi-gigabyte files on a daily basis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon puts a stop to this, if in fact they weren’t consulted before the launch of Plex Cloud.
Plex Cloud is currently in closed beta through an invitation process which gives priority to those with a Plex Pass.
Updates
1:42 pm I’ve reached out to Plex and have been informed that they have worked with Amazon to bring Plex Cloud to customers. Plex says that “it’s a mutually agreed upon partnership,” so my concerns with Plex Cloud are unwarranted.
2:03 pm I asked Plex about the Amazon Drive rule that limits streaming video to less than 20 minutes. They said Amazon transcodes videos less than 20 minutes and Plex transcodes videos greater than 20 minutes.
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My problem is and as cool as this sounds? Commercial Bluray/DVD rips (even via MakeMKV and Handbrake) being illegal once they hit Amazon’s servers. This is a very gray area here. I’m not as scared about music. But movies? Woah! Nay nay nay!
wont last long
I agree. Amazon may be okay with it but the MPAA and the studios will shut it down.
Someone will have a better solution than this. Plex is terrible in my book.
What competitor software is out there with as large of a platform support? Also what’s wrong it it?
PLEX has been the greatest software to play basically ANY file you have across multiple platforms and remotely. PLEX has literally changed the game.
Most publishers don’t care that you make your own copy, it only becomes a problem when you share that copy. Obviously if people start sharing through Amazon Cloud you may see your account be banned or the file deleted. So behave
Amazon does scan for and delete content that fingerprints as pirated media. So you would only be able to use this with your own legitimate blu-ray rips and DRM-free DVR’d OTA TV.
Of course some entrepreneurial individuals get around that limitation using encrypted filesystems like EncFS on Linux, but Plex isn’t going to support that stuff.
In your update you said Amazon cant transcode video more than 20 mins. Doesnt that make it essentially useless?
I like Plex but stick with kodi cuz Plex needs a dedicated computer or NAS. But if the company providing the service handles it for me Id be very interested. If nothing else its a step forward. Lots of people (not me) arent buying PCs but doing everything on their phones or tablets. To a company like Plex this might mean they need to evolve.
Perhaps I am missing something here. How do you get your files into cloud drive? Upload them from your house using your slow upload speed and your bandwidth?
Yes. Its mostly dependent on your network speeds, 4g or wherever you’re streaming to.
And it doesnt seem like amazon cloud is designed to stream HD video.
One positive. I have streamed movies from my house to relatives through my fast network to there’s which was less than 15d 8up and it worked fine.
Ive also tested streaming from google drive & onedrive from my home and with 4g and the results were pretty good.
If Plex modifies somethings (sort of like advancedsettings for streaming in kodi) it has potential.
But if Im gonna pay for 2 services I expect it to work very well.
Sounds like a sweet setup.
Mind sharing the details of your setup? I have an AFTV and use drives hanging off an Apple TimeCapsule as my network shares. Router is old (I was AC capabilities) so willing to go with new router.
So does Amazon link the accounts on their page, because no way in hell should anyone give another company like Plex their Amazon account & Password and allow them access to their entire Cloud Drive or Account information including credit cards on file.
Can you install addon bundles to plex cloud?