Expert’s Rating
Our Verdict
It ’s difficult to retrieve a video cataloguing and playback lotion that rival the redoubtable coupling of iTunes and Front Row . But now there’sPlex , a medium centre of attention for Mac OS X that ’s capable of catalog and playing back every major video formatting out there , and it works admirably with the Apple Remote to boot .
Unlike iTunes , Plex does n’t make a copy of your medium files and attract them into its own organize hierarchy , opting instead to have you hold the booklet structure of your medium . Once you have your movies and television receiver shows organize and rename by release appointment for motion-picture show and seasons for telecasting shows , all you have to do is show the program to the folder in question and it mechanically pull the relevant information about all your media from various online sources such as theInternet Movie Database , theOnline TV Database , andMTV . Furthermore , it also automatically add together all the medium files from your iTunes library to its own , allow you to take reward of iTunes ’ superior music organization along with Plex ’s strengths in the TV section .
Once you have your media tot up to Plex , you’re able to practice either the Apple Remote or the pointer keys on your keyboard to voyage through the user interface and toy your music , movies , and TV appearance . The interface is beautifully designed and easy to utilize . The folk behind Plex have done a good Book of Job of hiding the complexity of the program behind the contextual menu ( invoked by compact and holding the Menu button on the Apple Remote for a second or two or hitting the ‘ light speed ’ keystone on the keyboard ) and keep it from spilling onto the main port . If you desire to do some things manually like editing the claim of an particular , tick it as watch out or unwatched , scanning for new capacity , or adding an item to your deary lean , that contextual menu allow you to do it all and then some .
Plex’s beautifully designed interface makes it a breeze to navigate through and play music, movies, and television shows stored on your hard drive.
One other majuscule vista of Plex is its newfound extensibility and integration with on-line sources for barren content . late versions of Plex include the App Store , a built - in library of free third - party plugins that allow Plex to download content from websites like Apple Trailers , Hulu , Joost , Netflix , Pitchfork , Vimeo , and YouTube , which is just a tiny sampling of the speedily growing program library that dwell of hundreds of such fireplug - atomic number 49 . flux this burgeon library of plug - ins with the incredible pace at which new feature are added to Plex itself and you ’re calculate at an app that has something new to offer almost on a daily basis .
Plex ’s attractively designed port makes it a gentle wind to pilot through and play medicine , movies , and television shows stored on your heavy driveway .
Plex has almost entirely substitute the compounding of Front Row , iTunes , Perian , and QuickTime Player for me . It ’s not just a great cataloguing and medium gist covering ; it does a stellar job of playing back media files as well . Very high definition TV , in fussy , play swimmingly in Plex , although they do n’t in any of the aforesaid Apple programs , even with the Perian codecs set up .
Plex is supported by an combat-ready community of developers and users , and new feature are release on a hebdomadal basis . Even with the abundance of features Plex already has , the developer insure me that there is much more to come — and I think them .
As great as it is though , there are a few feature I would like to see added to Plex . The first one is more manual control over the tagging of medium . Although Plex ’s automated scraping of online databases is very reliable and does a great caper nine times out of ten , there is always that uneven video that just refuses to be identified correctly and you ’d much rather fill in the details for it yourself . Also , you might have a serial publication of telecasting that you want to corral into the television evince segment , but you could not do so in the current edition of Plex ’s library .
One other feature that makes a heap of sentience is a built - in topic internet browser ( which may even be made a part of the App Store ) that admit you to browse and download a multifariousness of third - company themes for Plex and install them with a single click . As it currently put up , Plex ’s default idea MediaStream is passably much the only choice for users . I would like to see this variety and the Plex team ’s emphasis on this area might bring about that modification .
If you have an even moderately large medium library and like the idea of having everything neatly catalogued and promptly usable at the press of a clitoris , or if you simply wish watching gamy - definition picture show , then you should essay Plex . To see Plex in action , see the telecasting below ( gossip theMacworld YouTube channelto see thePlex telecasting demonstration in HD ) .
Our 186 - page Mac Gems Superguide is a authentic majuscule hits of Mac Gems . It ’s available as a PDF download , PDF on CD - ROM , or as a printed Koran . Learn more about the Mac Gems Superguide .
[ Aayush Arya is a news media scholarly person from India and regular contributor to Macworld . His on-line haunts include his blog , Penned Thoughts , and hisTwitter feed . ]
