Image: Plex
Streamer’s fatigue—in which you jump endlessly from one streaming app to another, trying to figure out what to watch—is real. Or you come across something online you know you want to watch, but you don’t know where to stream it. This is a problem that companies like Apple and Google have tried, but failed, to solve. But now Plex, the little media server that could, may have solved this problem.
Rolling out now to the service’s public beta is the new Discover section that helps you search, add, and stream any movie or TV show across multiple services. You can finally maintain a single universal watchlist in the Plex app (which is synced across all your Plex apps, on all popular platforms), and when you choose a title, you’ll see all the available places to stream it. When you choose to watch it on Hulu, it will open the Hulu app, and will directly start the media playback (thanks to some deep-linking magic).
After updating the Plex app, you’ll see a new welcome screen that will ask you if you want to customize your preferences. Then, you can choose the streaming services you subscribe to.
Image: Plex
That’s it: Next time you search for something, you’ll see a new pane called “Watch from these locations.” Choose a streaming service to start playback. And, of course, you can use the “Add to Watchlist” button to add the title to your watchlist in the Plex app. You can access your watchlist any time from the “Watchlist” tab on the home screen.
There’s another advantage to using Plex’s universal watchlist: Plex will keep track of where a movie or TV show is streaming currently. So even if a TV show leaves HBO Max and moves to Hulu, it won’t suddenly disappear from your watch list.
If you skipped the initial setup, you can go to Settings > Streaming Services to choose the streaming apps you subscribe to. At the time of this writing, the feature is in public beta, so if you don’t have access to it, you’ll get it soon enough. You should keep in mind though, that because it’s a public beta, there are going to be some initial bugs and hiccups.
[Plex]
