Plex brings thousands of movies free (with ads,) to you.
Plex has added a library of free to stream movies from several studios including MGM, Lionsgate, Warner Brothers, and more. The movies appear to be primarily what I’d expect on TV on a formet UHF channel with some notable exceptions.
TL;DR – Plex has a new streaming service, said streaming service will probably have you wanting to set up parental controls if you have kids.
One of the first things I spotted on the new Plex Movies and TV tab was a 2010 remake of I Spit on Your Grave, complete with all the parts that would never be aired.
In other news, they appear to have created a trilogy of I Spit on Your Grave, and all are available for streaming through this new media streaming service. Two are rated, one is not.
If you’re not familiar with I Spit on Your Grave, and why I might be mentioning it, it’s a notoriously famous 70’s movie containing about 30 minutes of rape, 30 minutes of complete nudity and beating, followed by the person getting revenge against the several men involved, which involves sexually torturing the the guys who did it to her followed by killing them and if I recall, dismemberment.
So yeah, rape torture porn updated for modern audiences, probably no close up of bits to not get an NC-17 (although one of them wasn’t rated.) I started streaming, skipped a bit around in the 2010 version thinking there’s no way they’d have … nope… If you’ve got kids and have been managing your own content library make sure to set up parental controls.
The streaming is supported by minimal ads. I watched all of Spinal Tap and was not interrupted by one advertisement. This as well as jumping around various movies and documentaries and never saw an ad.
Each category seems to have about 10-20 entries, and there are 19 categories showing, some with movies that are in other categories, so I think the claim of thousands of movies and shows may be a little premature (but they may be counting podcasts as TV shows.) TV has 12 shows currently with a total of 107 episodes if I counted right. Still looks like it’s in the 500 or so range.
Or maybe I haven’t found the category with a lot of movies because I keep getting the following:
Also premature might be Plex announcing this today as there seems to be a fairly high rate of errors showing attempting to view categories. Oh well, launch issues.
Overall, good offering, my guess is the advertising will kick in at some point soon and we’re seeing unmonetized content for a bit until they get things in order. Hopefully the advertising won’t be as jarring as Pluto.TV’s random placement ads.
But seriously, parental controls. If you don’t have a user account for your younguns disable from the Online Media Sources:
It does not appear that you can restrict it from the libraries shared tab:
If you do have an account for your kids, go to users and sharing, select them, and there should be a Shared Libraries and a restrictions tab. You should be able to select your restrictions there.
This way when your kiddos are searching for Grave of the Fireflies, I Spit on Your Grave shouldn’t appear in search results, or at least not be playable.
So I spent a lot of time talking about parental controls because, well, not really wanting my six year old watching a rape horror flick (one of which wasn’t rated,) but let’s talk about some of the content there.
These titles pop out to my nerd heart: Hellboy, Street Fighter, Next Avengers, Ghost in the Shell, American Ultra, Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Bubba Ho-Tep, Django, Battle Royale, Dead Rising, and a series of movies and shows I just realized if I list out will probably be gone by the time people read this.
The streams seem to be consistent, allow quick jumping around, and feel a bit like a well backed service. Picking the streams can be a bit of a pain just due to the content not available messages today. But that’ll get better.
You can search for movies, they’ll appear in the search bar and be selectable and playable even if you can’t open the category they’re in.
[Plex]
