Need Something Else to Watch? Plex Now Offers Free Web Shows

Media streaming service Plex is beefing up its service today with the launch of Web Shows.

Available now in beta, the feature lets you access "high-quality episodic video content" from publishers such as Condé Nast, Bonnier Corp., Fandor, Future, TWiT, Jukin, and Studio 71 inside Plex. This content—which covers categories like food, home and garden, science and technology, pop culture, and more—is available on-demand, for free. You will, however, encounter ads when watching it.

"We've seeded our catalog with lovely, curated shows from only the highest quality creators; no robotic 'top ten life hacks' or sparkly slime spam, and we're looking forward to growing our catalog with your help," Plex wrote in a blog post.

Plex says the new Web Shows feature "learns what you like the more you watch" to deliver personalized recommendations.

Plex, for the uninitiated, organizes your personal media library of TV shows, movies, music, photos, podcasts, and videos and lets you stream that content to most devices. The launch of this new Web Shows feature comes after Plex added free podcasts to its platform in May and news content last year. The company also offers support for live TV (a premium feature that requires a Plex Pass subscription) and recently embraced virtual reality with a feature that lets you stream content in virtual environments.

Last month, however, it announced plans to shut down its cloud service on Nov. 30. "After a lot of investigation and thought, we haven't found a solution capable of delivering a truly first class Plex experience to Plex Cloud users at a reasonable cost," the company said at the time.

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Plex earned an "excellent" rating in PCMag's 2015 review and our coveted Editors' Choice award.

"Unlike most media servers, Plex is actually user-friendly and lets you easily stream content to several devices on your home network without having to overcome significant technical hurdles," we wrote.