Plex is going to the cloud by hooking up with Dropbox
**Plex's new CloudSync service lets users stream media straight from Dropbox**
*Plex is going to the cloud by hooking up with Dropbox: The media center app maker will soon enable its users to sync their personal media collection with their Dropbox account, and then stream everything straight from Dropbox on iPads, phones and connected devices.*
Media center app maker Plex will soon give its users a way to sync their media to Dropbox to access it from anywhere: Plex launched a new feature dubbed cloudSync at CES Tuesday evening, which makes it possible to upload copies of movies, songs or pictures to Dropbox and then access them from any Plex client.
CloudSync is built on top of the wireless device syncing capabilities that Plex introduced back in November, and will be available to paying users of the PlexPass subscription service later this month. Plex has said that it wants to add the ability to sync to other cloud storage service over time.
The ability to easily upload media to a Dropbox account is a good way for Plex to deal with one of its key weaknesses: The Plex client is now available on a number of mobile and connected devices, but the app has traditionally relied on a separate server application to get access to media.
That works fine if you do have a powerful NAS or an always-on PC at home to send you streams of your movies amd music. But more and more people rely on a laptop for all their computing needs – and chances are, that machine is turned off and tucked away in a bag when you’re using your iPad on the go to watch a movie. With the new feature, users can stream that movie straight from their Dropbox account.
I have been using Bitcasa's "Infinite Storage" as a network drive and had success streaming as well as resuming videos. If you curious, you better hurry up since Bitcasa's free trial period ends soon.
I'm invested in Plex and it's development in order to attain full freedom from cable tv which usually tallies up north of $50USD each month.
The way I see it, every penny that goes into other services (such as Netflix for $7.99 p/m), unlimited storage for $10 p/m still leave me $30+ USD in saving. I'm tempted of trying out Hulu+, Amazon Instant Video and a VPN service and still spend less than the $50USD I would spend on cable.
And that's $50 for channels I don't want with shows I don't watch.
Are we any closer to finding out when this functionality will be available? If all media is stored in the cloud (Dropbox etc) and we can access it via a Plex client or App (Android/iPhone etc), where and/or how does the transcoding take place? If I've understood correctly from the original post, Cloud Sync does away with the box in the middle (PMS). I may be way off.....can someone clarify please?.... :)
I can see how a service like Cloudsync would be handy for very small collections, ie mostly music, photos and some home movies.
But for anyone with a proper collection, ie all their boxsets, blurays and dvds, are going to need crazy amounts of online storage, even with transcoding. Will cloudsync attempt to intelligently "guess" the media the user is currently watching and pre-emptively upload related media to the cloud for potential viewing later?
I'm happy right now with the myplex functionality that allows me to access my media outside the home as my server is turned on 24 / 7. The only trouble is my current broadband upload speed at 1mb which restricts the quality I can enjoy remotely quite a bit. This is due to be upgraded to fibre later in the year though (5mb+ upload) so I can't wait. I'll be able to share my library with my parents as well!
I don’t know. My current library just hit 11 terabytes… I don’t see this sort of storage coming from Dropbox any time soon for anything close to affordable… Then again, the six 4TB drives I just purchased where not exactly affordable either… >_<
I don't know. My current library just hit 11 terabytes... I don't see this sort of storage coming from Dropbox any time soon for anything close to affordable... Then again, the six 4TB drives I just purchased where not exactly affordable either... >_<
Again... this is not meant to be a replacement for your local content. It's an easy way to sync some content to the cloud so that it's quickly available:
- no matter where you are, as long as the Plex player has internet connection.
- no matter your upload speed at home
- no matter if you even have your PMS on at the time you want to stream.
For me, since I have less than 1Mbps (and very unstable) upload at home, I would define "sync rules" to store on dropbox, 1 or 2 unwatched episodes from my favourite shows.
