Plex Launches Movie Rental Service; Prices Start at $3.99 per Film
Plex customers can now find a new movie with the service’s universal search feature, then rent it directly though Plex to start watching.
Move over Amazon and Apple! There’s a new digital movie rental platform in town, and it goes by the name of Plex. The service has intended to launch a movie rental store for its customers for over a year, but it’s finally ready to launch. Plex subscribers can head to Plex now and browse a huge array of movies from top studios for rental.
- Plex now offers movies like “Barbie,” “Wonka” and many more for rental.
- Prices start at $3.99 per rental, and Plex offers some films that are still in theaters.
- Plex’s universal search feature will tell customers where they can stream a movie if it isn’t available to rent.
How Can You Rent Movies on Plex?
It’s incredibly simple to rent movies on the Plex platform. Simply navigate to Plex and search for the title you want to see if Plex has it in its digital rental store, and click the “Rent” button. Customers can rent movies with Plex using a variety of streaming devices, including Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, as well as smart TVs, including LG, Hisense, Samsung, Sony, VIZIO, plus Apple and Android phones and tablets, game consoles, and more.
Once you have made the choice of which movie to rent, it will automatically show up in the “Continue Watching” content row on your Plex interface. Best yet, if for some reason your smart TV or streaming device doesn’t support Plex’s new rental service, you can log into Plex on your mobile phone or laptop and make your rental, then watch it on any device that supports the Plex app. Prices for Plex movie rentals start at $3.99. Once customers rent a movie, they’ve got 30 days to begin watching it. After starting the movie, renters have 48 hours to finish watching it (or rewatch it as many times as they want).
“Our goal has always been to bring consumers a less chaotic and more fun experience when they sit down together to watch a movie or show,” said Plex CEO Keith Valory. “Let’s face it: people don’t know what to watch and, worse yet, where to watch it. With the addition of rentals, we are staying focused on our goal to be the first place people go to find any streaming movie and show, watch them, rate them, talk about them, and recommend them to friends and family.”
What Movies Can You Rent on Plex?
Plex offers titles from big-name studios like Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery on its platform. Top titles now available for rental include “Barbie,” “Wonka” (which is still available in some theaters), “The Color Purple” and many more.
One of the reasons Plex’s rental platform took so long to bring to market is that it had to get approval from these studios to offer its films for rent. Plex’s co-founder and chief product officer Scott Olechowski said last year that Plex underestimated the difficulty in signing studios up for its rental store.
“It was a lot harder than we thought,” Olechowski said. “Getting all the DRM [digital rights management] stuff working everywhere — we switched DRM providers. And we had to get approval from all the studios.”
As of now, it does appear some studios’ movies (like Disney) are not available for rent on Plex. The good news, however, is that Plex still offers a universal search feature to show browsers where they can stream a movie that isn’t in their digital store. If Plex doesn’t have it, it will at least let you know where to find it!
Plex also offers more than 50,000 on-demand titles that viewers can stream absolutely free. In addition, the service offers more than 500 live-streaming channels which are available 24 hours per day. Plex customers can even upload their own media onto private servers for anytime-watching. In short, there are myriad ways to access video with Plex, and now the service’s subscribers have a new method: Plex’s digital rental store, which is available now.
Plex
Plex is a free streaming service that includes on-demand access to 50,000+ movies and TV shows. The service also offers 1,100+ free-to-stream live TV channels in 193 countries. Users can also connect Plex to their computers to stream and share any media they have on their hard drives.