The developers of the popular Plex media center software for computers have released an Android app that lets you stream media from your from your computer to a mobile device. The Android app follows an iOS app which was released about half a year ago.

While the iOS version lets you use your iPhone or iPad as a remote control for your Plex media center computer, the Android app lacks this feature for now. What it does offer though, is the ability to start watching a movie on your TV and then pick up where you left off on your mobile device. Since your Plex media server is doing the heavy lifting, you can even switch between Android device,s or continue viewing on an iPad.

The Plex app also lets you view your history on any device, and if you change metadata on one device it will show up on all of your Plex devices.

In other news, Plex is now available for Windows as well as Mac computers.

The Plex Android app is available from the Android Market for $4.99.

via Engadget

Plex's main menu on an iPad

Plex is a media center application for Mac based on XBMC. The latest version, called Plex/Nine for the Mac was released this week, and in addition to the desktop software there’s also a new iOS app. The mobile app promises to act as a remote control for your desktop as well as a way to watch your videos. Since all the organization is done on the Plex desktop software, the iOS app doesn’t have to do much other than stream content.

First, I ran the Plex/Nine software on a Mac Pro using a library of under 100GB. The Plex Media Manager, when first loaded, goes online to get metadata about your collection so you can find movies or TV shows by director, year, genre, and more. It took about an hour to grab all the data for the library.

While the desktop software for Plex is free, the Plex iPad app costs $4.99. The interface is very basic – there are no left and right panes here. There is just one list that lets you navigate your videos, music, and other plugins. You can connect to multiple Plex libraries – so if you have files on different machines, you can access them all via the Plex app. Unfortunately, the iOS app does not create a master library, but if you can remember where your files are, you ought to be fine. It would also have been nice to see more controls on the iPad’s larger screen, instead of a single pane, but that is a minor quibble.

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