Plex News offers free, customizable streaming news built around your interests

By Caleb Denison Published September 26, 2017

Popular media management app maker Plex now has a free streaming news service. Plex News, available to anyone — no subscription and no Plex media server required — is designed to give so-called cord cutters and cord nevers custom video news feeds, accessible through a multitude of devices, with ongoing topics refinement thanks to artificial intelligence.

“There’s so much amazing media available today that you’d be forgiven for taking in an entire season of Game of Thrones or the whole Marvel cinematic universe (once you figure out the order) without coming up for air. But it turns out some pretty crazy stuff is happening every day in the real universe, too, and we think it’s more important than ever to provide balanced news coverage from a variety of trusted and reliable sources,” Plex stated in a blog post.

Recommended Videos

Toward the end of January 2017, Plex acquired Watchup, a company that launched in 2012 with an iPad app for watching video news. In four years, Watchup grew the number of its video news sources to 160, and implemented machine learning to help customize its news feeds for viewers. Since its acquisition of Watchup, Plex has grown its news sources to 190, which includes international news from outlets like CNN, CBS, Financial Times, and Euronews, as well as local news for 80 percent of markets in the U.S.

Plex News logos — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Here’s how it works: Users will need to sign up for a free Plex account and download the Plex app for their device of choice. For now, Plex News is limited to Android TV, Nvidea Shield, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku, Android Mobile, and iOS devices, though Plex promises it will become available for other platforms in the near future. From there, users select which news outlets they wish to access. As users stream news, Plex News will gather information on which topics users enjoy and will provide more of that type of content.

For those who do use Plex media center, Plex News will sit right alongside TV shows, movies, photos, and videos.

Plex News launched Tuesday and will first be available to Plex Pass users, with full deployment slated to be completed within 48 hours.

Former Editor at Large

Caleb Denison is a sought-after writer, speaker, and television correspondent with unmatched expertise in AV and…

Topics

Audio / Video

Stop joining group projects with a blurry laptop webcam and buy one of these instead

Your laptop webcam is sabotaging your first impression. These five can fix it

I'm holding my Logitech C920 1080p webcam in my hands.

The webcam built into your laptop might be good enough for a quick call with friends and family. But its shortcomings become much harder to ignore when you are presenting a semester project, interviewing for an internship, or maybe if you're planning to stream for fun.

Laptop cameras also tend to sit far too low, especially when the computer is placed directly on a desk. Meanwhile, a dedicated webcam lets you position the camera closer to eye level. This improves the framing and brings larger sensors, better microphones, and more effective low-light processing.

Audio / Video

I desperately want a new classic Walkman, but Sony probably can’t give me one

Tech minimalism is begging for a new Walkman. Though rebuilding it may be close to impossible

Sony Walkman WM2011

Every few months, another piece of tech that seems obsolete crawls out of a drawer and becomes cool again. The age of minimalism has revived the popularity of iPods among younger buyers. Dumbphones have become an escape hatch from endless notifications. Similarly, digital cameras are dangling from bags again. Physical media keeps attracting people who want something they can actually hold instead of another frustrating subscription.

All of this makes it the perfect time for Sony to bring back the classic Walkman, which was a phenomenon during the 80s and 90s. I would love one. Give me a compact cassette player, physical buttons, and wired headphones. Keep the apps, notifications, and algorithms that shape your taste of music. No more AI assistants or personalzied feeds, just you and your Walkman. There is only one problem though. Recreating the Walkman that people love and remember, would be far harder than putting an old design back into production.

Audio / Video

Proton reveals how smart TVs track you and the escape situation is pretty grim

Modern smart TVs fingerprint your screen content at the chipset level.

Google TV applications on the Sony A95K TV.

Your smart TV may know far more about your viewing habits than you realize, even if you rarely use its smart features. In a new privacy explainer, Proton warns that many modern TVs quietly collect data about everything displayed on the screen and share it with manufacturers, advertisers, and analytics companies.

The worrying part is that escaping this tracking is becoming increasingly difficult because many privacy controls are buried deep in settings or enabled by default. Proton argues that buying a smart TV today often means accepting a level of surveillance that most people never knowingly signed up for.