Major Plex for iOS update brings AirPlay, TV out, universal search and more

9to5 Staff | Apr 8 2011 - 5:17 am PT

Cross-platform media center Plex is one of those programs that you’d expect from Apple. Sure, Mac OS X has FrontRow, but seriously – when was the last time you enjoyed your media in FrontRow? It’s a lousy media center replacement that most people avoid so no wonder it’s lingering in a state of limbo. I’ve been using Plex for years to manage and enjoy my media collections on my desktop. Their awesome iOS app that lets me stream my media effortlessly to iPhones, iPods and iPads was the only missing link.

They just updated the Plex for iOS app with a bunch of new features such as AirPlay and TV out. You can also search your device, media server and online media repositories. This lets you, say, use your iPhone to search your home media server miles away, find a movie in your collection, stream it to your device over 3G while beaming it to a friend’s big screen TV via AirPlay.

It’s a major upgrade with lots of new functionalities so hop over to the App Store and download the new Plex for iOS app version 1.1. You may also want to read a handy guide at MacStories.net or check out the full features list plus some screenies right after the break.

• greatly improved look and feel, enhancements for iPad, beautiful grid views
• subtitle and audio stream selection
• support for SSA, SRT, and SMI subtitles
• direct Streaming and Direct Play support (your media starts playing faster and looks better)
• TV out support – watch your media on the big screen
• unified channels view for plug-in management
• multi-part media playback
• universal search, for finding media across all your media servers and on the Internet
• extended quality settings for transcoding up to 8Mbps

• AirPlay (experimental). NOTE: There are known issues with AirPlay, especially when resuming videos over AirPlay. If you’d still like to use it, please enable in the Advanced Settings area
• local image caching, for faster browsing, especially over 3G
• enhanced iPad remote control with volume buttons, and landscape support
• headphone button can be used to play/pause
• disable autocorrect and use number keyboard for host entry
• much faster startup
• photo browser displays thumb instead of default image
• Helvetica!
• even more cowbell, in the form of lots of crashes, memory leaks and other minor issues fixed