Since the main point of having an Android TV is to watch video content, opting for a comprehensive media center app is a must. Most Android TV owners follow that line of thinking, and when the time comes for them to choose an app which they’ll use as their all-inclusive media hub – Plex is usually one of their top choices. Apart from being a media center with an integrated media player, Plex also boasts some other convenient features like Plex Cloud and is available on phones, tablets, and gaming consoles in addition to TVs.
Not surprisingly, a lot of functionality of the Plex Media Player has been protected by a paywall, until now. Namely, you had to pay for a so-called Plex Pass to access it. However, as of today, Plex Media Player and all of its features are available to everyone, completely free of charge. On top of that, the application has been redesigned and received a few new features. For starters, you can now use the Plex Media Player on a computer and control it with any regular keyboard or a mouse. In other words, users finally have a better alternative to pulling up a Media Player window and navigating through a regular TV user interface if they want to bring Plex with them wherever they go.
Furthermore, Plex now also features Kodi support. Well, a Kodi add-on, that is. As it turns out, Plex developers admitted that Kodi may be a better option for people looking for a media player with as much customization options as possible, which is why they’ve decided to come up with an official Kodi add-on so that people can still use Plex powered by all of Kodi’s resources. In other words, the Plex add-on for Kodi technically won’t turn Kodi into Plex, but developers claim that we’ll never know the difference. While potentially useful, note that this feature isn’t free and is only offered to Plex Pass subscribers. However, unlike most other companies which sell software as a service, Plex is also offering a lifetime Plex Pass for $160, which amounts to less than four years of subscription. Which means, if you’re serious about media streaming and have experimented with Kodi in the past, a premium subscription to Plex could still prove valuable to you.