Streaming Media East: Plex Keynote Will Highlight Media Access
Streaming Media East keynotes are where insiders go to learn about trends that will impact the industry for the coming year. At last year's Streaming Media East, attendees were fascinated by a Twitch keynote that revealed how immense video game streaming had become. Three months later, they weren't surprised when Amazon acquired Twitch for $970 million in cash.
This year, attendees will get the inside story on Plex when Scott Olechowski, co-founder and chief product officer, delivers the conference's second day keynote. While many know the basics on Plex, they'll be surprised at how successful the company has become.
Plex lets people free their media collections, bringing the videos and other media stored on their home computers to any device inside or outside the home. That content could be home videos, premium movies ripped or DVR'ed, or music libraries. With Plex, people can stream that media to their living room TV or phone.
"A lot of people don't know what Plex is," Olechowski says. "They may have heard of it, but they probably haven't used it or maybe they tried it years ago and it just wasn't for them. Today, we have a really powerful personal media suite of software to help you manage, to help you organize, to help you augment and make it beautiful with other metadata and maybe even other content like trailers and extras."
Besides giving a tour of Plex, Olechowski will help Streaming Media East attendees understand what's possible with their media collections. He'll also highlight how current trends—such as the move to mobile devices and the fact that laptops hard drives are getting smaller—further the need for flexible media access solutions.
"What I really want to do is help people understand what's possible, what they can do with their media collections, where they can access this, and how all the pieces come together to really make this media that might be sitting on an old hard drive somewhere or sitting stuck in your computer or on your NAS and really make it come to life across all your different screens," Olechowski says.
The keynote will look at some of Plex's recent offerings, including a new Roku app that Olechowski says is one of the most beautiful apps on the platform. He'll also show the company's new music subscription service that uses audio fingerprinting to fill in missing metadata, and perhaps break the news on a new product offering. And because everyone loves a givwaway, he'll have plenty of lifetime Plex Pass codes and other swag for Streaming Media East attendees.
At the end, attendees will understand how they can better connect with their media, and that many customers are already doing so. Plex is a top performer for every platform its on.
"People that use it can be fanatical about Plex," Olechowski says. "Not everyone's using it for sure, but those that do, it's kind of a way of life for many folks."
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