Streaming service Plex is getting more social with public profiles and reviews

Streaming service Plex Plex has long since grown from its original focus of being a home for personal media to offer a more comprehensive solution for discovering, streaming and sharing content across services, including ad-supported free TV and movies. The company recently added social networking featureswhich is today expands with its spread new functionality. Note that this includes a way to share your Plex profile publicly and tools that allow others to read your TV and movie reviews and comment in return.

Plex first introduced the social network in November 2023 when it launched a feature called ‘Discover Together’, which allows users to create profiles on the service and then find and follow friends to see what they’ve been watching. (The feature initially received some backlash from some Plex users they were unhappy about the character of his refusal. Plex now notes that content is marked as adult will not appear in users’ Activity fees, which is one of the users’ concerns.)

While this is a change for the company, offering a more social experience on Plex allows it to better compete not only with other free, ad-supported streamers, but also with dedicated social networks for movie and TV reviews. letter box and TV timeamong others.

With today’s release, Plex says users will now be able to share a public URL pointing to their profile on the service. watch.plex.tv. By default, users will be discoverable by others on Plex through the app’s search unless they disable it in their settings.

People who view your user profile can see what you’re following, who’s on your Watchlist, and more. they will be able to see. This doesn’t change any of your existing privacy settings, Plex notes.

Additionally, Plex users will be able to make their Ratings and Reviews visible to other users on Plex through a new setting. Here you can choose between allowing everyone to see these reviews or only those logged into Plex. You can also choose to make your reviews visible only to Friends or Friends of Friends, or you can make all your Ratings and Reviews private if you prefer.

In addition to its social networking features, Plex is also introducing a new user interface first on Apple TV. The redesign includes updated navigation, more personal media customization, easier access to features, a richer experience with more artwork, and Plex’s various social networking features, the company says in its report. announcement.

For power users, Plex Pass subscribers (paid users) will get access to HEVC hardware encoding for better video quality while saving bandwidth. This option was previously in preview mode for select users, but is now available to all subscribers.