Laika Revealed – Plex Gets Official Windows Client, Cloud Sharing, Plus New OSX & Mobile Clients

 Our love affair with Plex continues – it’s the media centre that just keeps on giving!.  After another suspiciously quiet spell from the team, they have just revealed a huge raft of new features to the platform.  The highlights include an official Windows Client, MyPlex Cloud based media sharing plus all new desktop and 2nd generation mobile clients too.  Check out the videos after the jump…

In yesterday’s post, we unveiled myPlex, and today we want to talk about the other pieces of the software including in the release. This is, by far, the biggest release we’ve ever attempted. Besides the brand new cloud-based features, we have major new releases of the desktop client, the media server, the iOS client, and the Android client. So if we’ve been a bit quiet lately, it’s only been because we’ve been working so hard.

Without further ado, let’s explore the new releases. As many of you figured out from the initial teaser post, the word Laika was included. Laika is the codename for the next generation Plex desktop client. (For you collectors, another beautiful retro hint is here.) We chose the name as a homage to the Plex mascot Barkley (whose name roughly translates to Laika), and a tribute to the first dog in space.

The Plex desktop client has been largely rewritten, based on the latest stable release of XBMC. This means that it’ll benefit from all the great work that team has put in, and will have the updated skinning engine and player that Plex makes use of. This means that it’ll run smoother, and consume less CPU and memory. Media playback is also much better, with improved and more flexible A/V sync, support for optical media, and more. In addition, we’ve updated the core engine (the incredible ffmpeg) to the very latest code, which means there is support for 10-bit video (Hi10P), HTTP Live Streaming, and much more. We’ve also made it easier to keep abreast of future changes from both teams.

The Plex guys tell us the new apps will be available in the next 24 hours or so.  In the meantime you can tease youself with Elan’s Blog Post and Boots screencasts below…

 

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