Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Plex launches more than 80 free, ad-supported livestreaming TV channels

Simon Cohen
By

In its ongoing bid to be the most inclusive media platform on the planet, Plex has announced the addition of more than 80 free, ad-supported livestreaming TV channels that cover categories such as news, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, and kids.

The live TV channels can be accessed through the regular Plex interface under the label “Live TV” on all of Plex’s many client apps, including Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and gaming consoles, as well as on the web via www.plex.tv. No Plex account is needed to watch the live TV service.

Plex Live TV
Plex

The lineup of channels includes content providers such as Reuters, Yahoo Finance, Toon Goggles, Tastemade, fubo Sports Network, IGN1, The Bob Ross Channel, Comedy Dynamics, and entertainment and news LGBTQ+ channels from Revry. Among the selection are also 19 channels dedicated to different genres of music videos, like Hot R&B, Latin x Pop, and Only ’90s Kids Will Understand.

Recommended Videos

Most of the channels are available globally, but some, like Tastemade and fubo Sports Network, are U.S.-only.

Each channel will appear in a new on-screen guide, which looks much like other electronic program guides — a grid that features a vertical scrolling list of channels, paired with a 3-hour window featuring the currently playing and upcoming shows.

You can customize the guide to suit your tastes by selecting which channels appear, and how those channels are ordered in the guide.

1 of 2
Plex Live TV customize
Plex
Plex Live TV grid
Plex

More content to navigate

The addition of Live TV to Plex makes the media platform more interesting in terms of the sheer amount of content available, but at least in the short term, it could also make it harder to navigate.

Plex already has a feature called Live TV + DVR, which lets folks who receive free over-the-air HD channels via an antenna watch and record those channels from within Plex.

There is also a feature called Plex Movies + TV, a free collection of ad-supported video-on-demand titles. All three features will now be present in the main Plex interface, but for now, they will remain separate entities.

For the moment, the free live TV channels will not be indexed by Plex’s built-in search feature, so you’ll have to browse the EPG to find something to watch.

In the future, Plex plans to integrate its new ad-supported live TV channels with the electronic program guide used by the Live TV + DVR feature, however, the ability to record programs will be limited to the channels that people receive over-the-air from their local broadcasters.

The Plex platform can also be used to organize and view private collections of photos, video, and music, as well as listen to podcasts, and it can integrate with streaming music services such as Tidal, for a one-stop media shop.

Recently, the company introduced a “watch together” feature that lets two or more Plex users select a movie or TV show from a private library and watch it, fully synced, regardless of where the users are located.

Earlier in 2020, there were rumors that Plex would be dipping its toes into subscription-based video content, much as other platforms like Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV have done, but so far the company hasn’t shared any plans to do so.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like…
YouTube TV increases its monthly prices by $8 – is now the time to switch?
YouTube TV on Roku.

YouTube TV has raised the price of its monthly subscription by $8, from $65 to $73. The move comes on the heels of its announcement that it will be adding a multiview feature for sports channels. The change in price will hit current subscribers on April 18, however, the streaming service, which is owned by Google, has already started charging new customers the higher price.

It's been a while since YouTube TV last raised its prices. That was in 2020, when the streaming service increased subscriptions from $50 to $65. When the service first launched in 2017, it only cost $35 per month.

Read more
YouTube TV rolls out multiview: watch up to 4 NCAA games at once
An example of YouTube TV's multiview feature.

If you love college basketball and can process more than one game at a time, you're going to go bananas for YouTube TV's new multiview feature, which will be rolling out on a limited, early access basis starting March 14.  With multiview, you'll be able to pick up to four channels and see them all simultaneously, with the ability to easily flip the active audio from one to another. The new feature is compatible with any TV-based YouTube TV installations (streaming media players, smart TVs, and game consoles), but it doesn't yet work on mobile devices or computers.

Initially, multiview will only be available to select YouTube TV users, who will be chosen at random. But Google says the goal is to include every subscriber by the time NFL football season starts in the fall. Another limitation, at least for now, is that YouTube TV will preselect the multiview channels you can choose. At launch, only channels that carry NCAA tournament games will be included in that preselected list.
How to use YouTube TV multiview
If you're one of the lucky, randomly chosen users, you'll see an option to watch up to four preselected, different streams at once in your “Top Picks for You” section. After selecting multiview, you can switch audio and captions between streams, and jump in and out of a full-screen view of a game.
It's all about sports
At the moment, YouTube TV sees multiview as an enhancement of the sports viewing experience, so only sports content will be eligible. YouTube TV has had some big sports wins in 2022, including 4K coverage of the Soccer World Cup, and that trend will continue in 2023 thanks to its acquisition of the NFL Sunday Ticket games. However, YouTube TV recently lost access to MLB Network and the MLB.tv add-on, which reduces the amount of sports content available for multiview in 2023.

Read more
Plex now lets you skip the credits on movies and TV shows
A mid-credits scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off showing Plex's Skip Credits option.

In a move that is sure to enrage the thousands of people whose names appear at the end of our favorite movies and TV shows, Plex has introduced a new feature that lets you skip the end credits on the content in your personal library.

The feature works similarly to its Skip Intro option -- a far less controversial feature given that most subscription streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video already let you do this. With Skip Credits, the Plex Media Server uses an algorithm to detect the difference between a screen full of rolling text and a screen that has a full image of, well, not text.

Read more