Plex Pass - Do You REALLY Need to Pay for Plex?

[Music] hello and welcome back and that is Right today we want to answer a very simple question about Plex Media Server pass do you even need it there's going to be a lot of users that are moving away from streaming services moving away from Paid subscription models because not only do they want to save a bit of buns but they also want to play their own media they actually want to own it and regardless of the fact that digital media has boomed in popularity in streaming and everything and most of us watch on Netflix watch our Amazon Prime and enjoy it has to be said that has been something of a Resurgence towards playing your own media and actually buying and physically owning it before a streaming services handing over to one another making things overly complex and in this video I'm going to talk about everything you get included with the complete free version as well as the services you may be missing out on if you don't want to spend money on Plex pass now for those that aren't aware when you do play your own digital media from something like a network attached storage system like you're seeing here on screen or running from a much more modest system or reusing old PC Hardware in order to turn it into your own media server your own streaming platform you're going to be utilizing Plex Media Server then and if we make our way into my list of things here and we'll make our way uh into my list here on the screen you'll be able to see that on plex's own website downloading Plex Media Server very important different from Plex the client device is completely free there is supported by a million squillion different platforms and indeed these are just the ones listed on their official supported page there are even more out there that may have just fallen off the grid in terms of support and updates or simply being run home through or slightly hacked there in modified containers now once you download this and you've got all of your own media on that system again a network attach storage system or other the first thing that's completely free without you wanting to pay a single penny towards a Plex pass subscription which again will cost you anywhere from three to four quid a month to higher per month and per year one of the things you do get included is the ability to watch your media it would be weird if you couldn't actually just access your media on your device using Plex all Plex is doing is packaging the media in a very presentable way akin to something we've seen on the liks of Netflix on the liks of Hulu on Disney plus and more it basically creates a lovely graphical spin there and if you do want to go for just the free version and you don't want to pay a penny you'll be able to play your media you'll be able to scrape the metadata and you will be able to flicking back over to this now here you'll be able to not only watch that media but the system will scrape metadata found online and get you all of the information about that media and you do not need to pay extra for that that is included you will not need a Plex pass to do it and if you want to play on certain devices more on that later that will be free as well now on top of not only enjoying your media Plex has added in recent years some ad funded streamable content and some of those services are included for free you don't need any kind of premium pass but you will have to sit through ads in order to enjoy them so although I would argue a lot of users that going into Plex do not use these um third party movie and TV streaming services there because they're not really rivaling you know the Netflix budget we're seeing out there I will say some of the things you find out are actually quite good and if you go over some of the seasonal stuff for your Christmas your Easter your Valentine's Day there's actually surprisingly good content in there if you ER towards more seasonal stuff and none of the more General popular stuff because you won't find it on there but again remember it is ADD funding so it's free but you're paying in your time there now alongside that streaming on certain devices is actually free now I'll go into a little bit more detail about that later on but if you want to download the Plex client so that is a device that you're watching the media on mobile devices generally all of those require either a Plex pass or a oneoff payment the models do differ more on that later on but not all the devices so for example if you're running a Windows device like the one I'm recording this on and you want to access and stream the content from your FX media server remotely or locally the Windows app is completely free to download and run however for example if you wanted to use Android you're going to need to download it from the App Center and again more on that later on but that is not strictly free you can download it on your device for free and indeed if you do use it you do have the option of unlocking it as mentioned earlier on but if you don't unlock it then what you'll end up with is limitations on the playback you'll have uh only be a to access one minute if you uh try to watch look at photos they will be watermarked and the same goes for music if you try to stream the music from the client application and it's on one of the uh paid platforms there you will need a Plex pass otherwise it will be severely limited there so do bear that in mind another thing uh DVR tuners ultimately accessing live TV now this falls into two categories and I'm pleased to say that as long as you use one of the compatible tuners and the list is I wouldn't say that regularly updated you can use the free Plex version to stream live TV easily the thing you can't do is record it but more on that later on the same goes if you want to access it via a third party device such as using using Amazon Fire TV or um Google uh Google sorry um chrome tv if you try to use any of those services that have got that app it is a bit hit and miss which one of them or which ones will allow you to bypass through digital tuners connected to your server to access that streamable live TV and again regardless you cannot record it on the free version so bear that in mind that is pretty much it if you're using the free version it has to be said that in recent years Plex in order to fund its platform any new developments have been ER into the Plex pass subscription and therefore you have to pay to utilize them but at least you have access to the basic level features for example Al though we'll be talking about this more later on when you are accessing your Nas server via uh the graphical user interface here on a PC and in a few other devices you can still access Diagnostics dashboard information and configure some of the options internally using the free version now one of the things we'll touch on later on is transcoding when a file is shaped on the Fly U to be better suited to the device you're watching so if you own avatar in 4k and you want to access it from an island in the middle of nowhere on your mobile you don't really need that giant file and you may need the file transcoded or converted into a better suited version now on the free version of Plex Media Server I will say you can convert those files you'll be using a system known as software transcoding which means it utilizes the hardware resources of the server in question in this case a teram Nas that I'm running from here and use those Hardware resources to reshape the file but a lot of systems out there take advantage of graphics cards take advantage of integrated Graphics these systems have got Hardware components on board that are way way way better suited to reshaping that file that is known as as I mentioned as hardware transcoding and you cannot activate Hardware transcoding without a Plex pass but again more on that later on ultimately utilizing a Plex Media Server with just a free version as long as you don't want to reshape the files efficiently using the hardware at your disposal as long as you don't want to access the server with you know mainstream client devices outside of your home and as long as you don't want to access a lot of thirdparty streamed content the bulk of the free Plex um experience will suit a lot of those users but if you want to take advantage of reshaping those files if you want to take advantage of a wider spread of different client devices while accessing the media and have a greater degree of control and a improved user experience on your Plex Media Server device then chances are you're going to go for a Plex pass so let's go through some of those standout features and add-ons that spending that little bit of extra buns actually gets you with Plex pass now the cost of a Plex pass will differ slightly from region to region and currency to currency but $3.99 per month here in the UK $31.99 per year and for lifetime 94.99 then now that lifetime pass still currently right now allows you to have access to everything forever we did a whole video on this when Plex was talking about slight money troubles and laying people off and a lot of users myself included were debating whether the lifetime pass will still be in effect that was about 6 months ago and it is still in effect it gives you all of the features of the annual pass but forever so if you think you're going to be using some of the features I'm about to talk about for many many many years to come or at least 3 years then I would recommend going for the lifetime pass but what do you actually get well they this can be broken down I would argue into three different categories the first category is quality of life Improvement so when we look at Plex pass there's certain adult and features that arguably have been borrowed that's a nice way to put it from streaming services again your Disney plus your Netflix your whatever first and foremost skipping intros if you're using the free version you won't have the option during the beginning of any of your box sets or TV series seasons you know here I am in the UK I enjoy a bacon sandwich from time to time um the um you won't have the option to skip the introduction and some of you might like that option when you're going through box sets like an absolute mofo but I'll tell you some shows Parks and Recreation 30 Rock I absolutely love those intros I'm not skipping them any day of the week but if you like that it's good to have it as an option next up um credits um going through credit detection credit skipping all of that is built into the paid version and if you've got things back to back then you may want to include that option and some of these by the way can extend to some of the subtitles as well and some of the subtitle transcoding as well we've got a whole video on that coming up soon that are limited to um a Plex pass account next up Auto lyrics for your music if you want no scroll there's another add-on that I don't think gets anywhere near enough talk uh spoken about uh tidle that's included with the Plex pass and indeed the free version of Plex more than that later on but if you're someone that's utilizing Plex and Plex app and taking your music seriously on your Plex system you may well well want to dig into some of those extra add-ons for music lovers within Plex because unfortunately the free experience on Plex for audio is pretty darn weak and if you move away from conversions and transcoding auto um so audio transcoding which again we're going to be digging into because we've not really done enough on that um I would say as an audio lover Plex pass I would argue gives more on that than it does on video for a lot of taking a advant you in enjoying your own media across the network next up uh Cinema stuff like trailers add-ons and stuff like that some and again it is very much a case-by case basis on the media you enjoy but if you uh have a Plex pass you can take advantage of a lot of those quality of life extras you do get some of them on the free version uh because when they are crawling uh the Internet Movie Database uh the TV database. org when they're going through those websites clex didn't invent that media so when they're crawling it it makes it very difficult for them to monetize it so a lot of the extra stuff like trailers pulled from YouTube that sort of thing those are locked in to the paid version of Plex there but some of this stuff again the general surface level metadata scraping you know uh cover art stuff like that that's in the free version but the deeper stuff that may be comparable to when you're watching media on Netflix and you want to watch the trailer or more info they'll be locked behind that Plex pass wall um now if you are utilizing a DVR as mentioned earlier on you can use a TV tuner to access that live media but as discussed earlier if you are going to try and record some of that media and have it filtered onto your Plex Media Server for you to watch later you're going to need a Plex pass in order to record that multimedia and again it is locked or at least limited to different kinds of uh client device you're going to be utilizing there now uh next up accessing the me uh the nas outside of the home or just utilizing a local area networ on certain client devices I will say straight away that if you're using anything approaching a mainstream platform and I'm not just talking about Mobile by the way but definitely some of the proper mainstream uh platforms you will not have access to the full Plex streaming experience if you're going to be utilizing say an Amazon Fire TV you can use a standard downloadable Client app for that but the minute you move towards the mobile apps although as you can see you can download it you will be limited as discussed earlier to 1 minute of video 1 minute of audio all the photos will be watermarked there and if you are hosting your uh clex media server Nas device for family members for friends and more each of those individual users are either going to need to pay and upgrade their individual apps to access the nas in a fully fully formed fashion or you're going to have to ensure that the Plex pass account associated with the Plex Media Server Nas has those users added in otherwise they will not be able to access the full extent of the media in the smoothest most undiluted fashion which brings us I would argue to the second category of add-ons that you get with a Plex pass and these let's face it are for the Nerds these are extra controls extra user interfaces and basically another level of integrating and customizing your Plex Media Server system better suited to your needs and your broader multimedia family needs so all of these can be broken down into the Plex NS these are the developments I mentioned earlier on at the Plex Labs area where when Plex reinvest a lot of the money into improving their platform and to kind of close the gap between them and third party streaming services these are the ones that automatically end up on the Plex pass platform they need to fund that research and development for good or for bad whether you like it or not and Within These although there's lots of um differential or incremental improvements the standout on of course we've got the Plex dashboard which again if you access via the desktop on a basic non-plex pass system you can access this dashboard but if you want to utilize it on premium devices or more mainstream devices again your iPhones your Android devices a lot of the time the Plex Dash app will require a Plex pass account to access it there now again there's not much different from then us accessing our Plex n here and getting real time information about our system people accessing it more but it just happens to be on more mainstream devices next up Plex amp a greater degree of control customization and fluidity on the audio that you're going to be enjoying from your Plex Nas and again if you're using Plex because you are a serious audio junkie Plex amp is what you're going to be utilizing and although you can use it with the Plex 3 version you will be severely cut down in what it can do and remember that little word transcoding is going to come up later on it's not just about video now web hooks again for those that are going to be connecting thirdparty services from websites from different uh parts of business I would argue that want to access multimedia on this beautifully presented media platform web hooks is become an incredibly popular topic now because we've always been able to connect Media Services with internet related services but it's been about the security and although security protocols and AES uh encryption or in more recent fashion AES ni uh 256bit encryption has improved it's been about efficiency not so much keeping it even more secure but maintaining that level of security in the most efficient fashion so things aren't slowed down anyone that's ever used a free VPN will know that the cheaper the VPN not only you know not just the fact you may question its security but the performance dips horrifically web hooks have allowed much more efficient AES authentication to be established between devices and you can only utilize them with a paid Plex pass and then you've got things like tatoi I've never been out to pronounced that one as Subzero which are development tools that'll allow you to monitor the dashboard of your Plex Media Server and connect it with other services as well in order for you to get everything synced up but also manage the system its metadata and its primary data in the most intelligent and uh diagnostic level fashion possible and although there are third-party GitHub tools that allow you to do this without using a Plex pass the most streamlined easy way to do it is still with a Plex pass which brings us to the third one and arguably the most important one for those that want to take advantage of all of that Hardware if you're someone that has bought a network attached droids device and you are want to use it for Plex but you want to eat every single drop of potential power out of that system that you've paid for unfortunately you're going to need a Plex pass one of the most common examples people talk about myself included is to do with utilizing Hardware transcoding now I'm going to apply a file on screen this file Here is known as the beauty of Tai 1 and if we open up here at the bottom you can see this file is being converted right now on the Fly there on the bottom left we can see a dark orange here with a light orange that's playback versus buffering and ultimately the system is now using its own Hardware to convert this file this is doing on the Fly and this is utilizing Hardware trans coding so right now if we open up and minimize this window here we can see right here in the background we got the far plane there utilizing Hardware transcoding at HW now that means that when we're utilizing the hardware on this now as we can see resource utilization there the CPU is being used barely at all we can break down we can see that we're utilizing it at 20% dipping low even further as we use it there now had we not had Plex pass we would have had to utilize Raw CPU power what does that mean well the integrated Graphics of that CPU is designed to reshape that file on the flight it's designed to do graphical manipulation there whereas the rest of the CPU isn't now we were using a CPU that didn't have integrated Graphics at all we' have to use raw CPU power and that is that the CPU which won't be utilizing a component designed for reshaping will use way way way more power it will get hotter it will limit the utilization of of the rest of the system at the same time and ultimately it will get very very hot utilizing that extra power meaning increased electricity balls there now that's only if you're going to convert that file and there's going to be some of you watching this going well I'm just not going to down I'm not going to downscale it why do I need to now I talked about in other video so I'll keep it very brief transcoding isn't just about reshaping a file on the Fly because you want to watch Avatar on your phone on a ferry in the middle of nowhere it's also about compression techniques and codecs some devices such as a lot of mobile devices do not support certain codecs the you know there's a lot of modern ones Avi WMV even MKV to a point these um compr these formats are largely playable now but there's still devices out there that don't play them but the minut you start utilizing slightly more rarer comp um uh formats such as utilizing some of the um formats for audio there and particularly some of the ones for audio books or particularly high-end audio these MP4 a for example there uh flak Flac these won't be played on a lot of typical day-to-day devices but you still want to enjoy the media and you still want to keep the media in its original high quality format there that is another example of when compression is required or at the very least reshaping of that file so you can enjoy it on your M device on that Ferry but more on top on top of that what if you're utilizing a device like a smart TV a PlayStation 5 some of these devices do not support all of the compression techniques compression techniques are for example HC highly efficient video Codec or h.265 that is a more modern compression technique that allows that Avatar movie we just discussed which is presented huge for the cinema to be compressed right the way down into something small enough to go on a little USB stick or on your TV or whatever now the old one h.264 was completely open source free and everyone could use it but the new new version funded by U multimedia companies is private it is licensed and a lot of and it's per device by the way so there's a chance that one of the devices streaming that multimedia you're watching does not support HBC or h.265 some devices allow you to buy a license to play it but in a lot of cases there is no means to add the license onto that client device remember your phone your TV your whatever and the result is much like you're seeing here on screen that although I could watch this F it's an original quality if I was watching it on an hvvc uh supported device this as you can see on the bottom left is an HC file that means that this laptop which doesn't have an hvvc license is forced to convert the file and that's an example of when you may need transcoding and you didn't even know it now on top of that it's worth highlighting that when you do utilize let's close that down there and go back to the dashboard if you do go into uh your Nas system here let's go on the left and you go into the transcoder option you you're using the free version the number of options open to you for the transcoder quality and harnessing the hardware at your disposal will differ the free version will only allow you to use software transcoding again that's using raw system power to get the job done but the paid version not only will allow you to actually and often if you have multiple graphical adapters select which one you want to use but on top of that will allow you to what extent you want to utilize it or only use it for audio only use it for video again you have to have a Plex pass to do it and that extends by the way to if you want to utilize certain techniques to uh for this HDR to SDR uh tone mapping which maintains the color spectrum of the original media during the course of transcoding and reshaping of that media uh for converting it either for compression reasons or file format reasons and the same goes for subtitles same goes uh that's for hardcoded subtitles and of course if you want to take advantage of audio media which needs to be reshaped all of these are things that would allow you with the use of a Plex mask to better harness the hardware that your medeia is living on but again if you don't think you're going to need to reshape if you don't think you've got difficult file formats or compressions and you're going to be sticking pretty exclusively to video media that doesn't need subtitles because it's in your own language and your ears are great then none of that you're going to need and for you users a Plex pass is a waste of time and there you go this has been do you need a Plex pass yes or now do you need any more help well number one you can head over to NAS Compares anytime and on the right side of the screen we've got our free advice section genuinely free that you can utilize not only to be directed towards online uh sources for more free information but you can go ahead and contact myself and Eddy there or use our free premium FasTrack service there if you're in a rush but generally we get back to everyone in about 3 to 5 days now if you need help choosing the right Nas for Plex Media Server again on the right hand side of every page use the nas Builder that will take you to this system uh here which developed by Eddie and this will allow you to build the perfect Nas for your needs not just Plex but more so case in point if we go ahead and we wanted to use a four BAS system sorry we want to have um 20 terab of data we want to have in four Bays we want to have one disc of redundancy and we can put a budget in if we like of 2,000 which is a lot by the way but don't worry too much about that from here we can choose what we want the system to run so in this case we want Plex we want to be have to access Plex remotely and at least enjoy some high level 4K multimedia we then say how many users are going to access it so it's a small family we can choose the network bandwidth we can choose more Nas specific stuff or we can just go ahead and click find NZ and then immediately it will list nazes that fit our needs and you can see there even list up to what level of quality you can enjoy for your multimedia as well it's as simple as that but thank you so much for watching again all of those options to help you out I hope you found this helpful like subscribe all that usual YouTube nonsense and otherwise I will see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 7,199

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Id: 6u9uOL5hXKI

Length: 25min 2sec (1502 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2024