Media streaming service Plex is embracing virtual reality.
Plex, for the uninitiated, organizes all your media content — movies, TV shows, music, and photo collections — and streams it to your devices. Now you can stream that content in virtual environments. Imagine watching your favorite show in a fancy virtual apartment or a drive-in movie theater. That's now possible, with Plex VR, which is launching today on Google's Daydream platform.
To try it out, download the Plex VR app on a Daydream-ready Android phone and log in. Once you do that, you can choose your preferred virtual environment, customize your Plex VR avatar, and start watching. For a look at the experience, check out the video below.
With Plex VR, you can watch with up to three of your friends and gab about what's happening on screen.
"Once you gather up your friends, everyone's avatars will appear together in the selected scene (the sleek apartment or the drive-in theater)," Plex CTO and Cofounder Elan Feingold wrote in a blog post. "Head positions are updated in real-time, so you can see what everyone's looking at, and you can click the remote button to talk to the group. There is a ton of fancy technology behind the scenes, but to anyone using it, it's just an incredibly engaging and (dare we say?) intimate way to watch media together, regardless of where in the world everyone is."
The option to stream your media in VR is free, but you'll need a Plex Pass subscription ($4.99 a month, $39.99 a year, or $119.99 for a lifetime) to use the co-watching feature. You can, however, test out the co-watching feature free for a week when you start using Plex VR.
Meanwhile, with Plex Pass, you can also save your content to a third-party cloud storage service for safekeeping, connect your camera for automatic photo uploads, and view premium movie and music channels from partners like Vevo.