Hi, I’ve been a Plex user for a while now and been wandering through the forum when I needed insight but never really participated.
Here’s something I was thinking while organizing my library. It can be a tedious task when you’re a completionist like myself. For some of my favorite content I wish I could just pay for it and that it would fit right in my Plex library all automatically organised, optimized with extras and all. It got me thinking
Is there a version of the future where Plex incorporates a store selling DRM free movies and shows already packaged and optimized for your Plex library. I understand that it must be a challenge to tackle on multiple levels but is that a realistic idea? Is this something Plex has considered as a business model? What would be the implications of such a direction?
I understand services like iTunes and Netflix provide a similar service but there surely is a market for people like myself that want to own, collect and organize digitally without being tied to a platform like iTunes and such.
Plex does not own any rights to content and I don’t think they ever will. Plex is in business to allow a user to take any DRM free content and add it to their library. Only a few corporations own the content and therefore control the market and who can distribute it and sell it.
As a consumer you can utilize services which are not legal to accomplish what you are looking for.
Software such as sonarr or couch potato can monitor scene sources automatically and obtain new content based on user input which can get added to your library automatically as well.
But from a legal perspective I don’t see that ever happening and Plex I don’t see as being a content provider just a way to store and display it.
I was not aware of those softwares you mentionned and will definitely look them up.
I am although aware that Plex does not own the rights to any content just like iTunes or any video store doesn’t.
I’m just thinking that if you’re going to provide the platform, might as well provide the content. It would be a logical step in Plex’s growth.
I think the challenge would be to convince the movie giants to do away with DRMs or to come up with a different protection method that would be compatible with Plex’s architecture.
Torrents are fine but you don’t really have a control over quality of compression, optimisation and all that stuff plus they’re not legal. So if I’m not the only one who definitely would buy content directly from a Plex store then there must be a market. The question is how big is this market and is it viable for Plex to explore. Maybe test it out with indie studios?
