Plex Rolls Out New Updates for Live TV After Making it Free for a Few Months

Last week, Plex decided to offer their Plex Live TV option free for 3 months during this COVID-19 mess and now they’ve rolled out some new improvements and features. The goal of all of the features is to make your live TV experience faster, more customizable, and easier to navigate. I’ve listed some of the highlights below, but you can dive deeper on Plex’s announcement post. I think the Chromecast support is a huge deal.

• Major program guide improvements, including a better overall aesthetic, faster scrolling, and picture-in-guide views (picture-in-guide is available on Android and Apple TV) so you never lose sight of what you're currently watching while looking at the channels guide, or setting a new recording

• Chromecast support is available now on iOS, and Android supportis expected in the next few weeks

• Easier recording and closed caption access, with new controls on the play screen, you can do more without missing a moment of your current program (note that this feature is currently available with the brand new Live TV player for Android TV and mobile, as well as Apple TV, with more platform support planned for the future)

• New hubs, gathering similar kinds of programming together so you can see what movies are coming on later or what your kids can watch. These hubs are available on Android, Apple, Roku, and the Plex web app

• General watching improvements include: Greatly reduced channel tuning time (from 12+ seconds to a few), fixes around “watch from start,” seeking while watching live, resuming in-progress recordings, improvements to genre-specific recommendations, and a new quick access to recently-watched channels across various platforms, most notable Android, Apple, Roku, and the Plex web app