Plex presents itself as a place that offers access to all "media" - from personal on its own server, to free movies and shows or live TV on demand, to streaming music. The app is available for Smart TV and a range of other devices including mobile phones, and the platform also works in a PC version.
The service says it is currently used by more than 25 million people worldwide, with over 50,000 on-demand titles and 300 programmes in the Live TV category. However, this figure is probably true globally. In the Czech Republic it offers more than a hundred, but at the same time less than two hundred such stations. Currently, there are more than 180 of them.
Music Streams Stingray and Genre Trace
The Live TV category is thus only one of several menu items. However, given our focus, it is the most important section, as it contains a number of FAST channels, i.e. free-to-air stations that are available to the viewer for the price of online advertising from individual advertisers. What stations are available in the offer? As in the case of Rakuten TV, one cannot expect the most attractive brands, but this does not mean that the Czech TV viewer cannot choose between them.
The Music category offers a universal language of music. At the time of writing, it offered twenty programme positions. We deliberately do not write about television programmes, because some of them are de facto only music streams, which are also represented by the well-known Stingray brand on the Czech market. Classic TV channels are for example Qwest TV, Vivaldi or the trio of Trace programmes with the brands Trace Latina, Trace Urban and Trace Brazuca. Fans of Latin American rhythms are also targeted by La Bocina Latina, and there are also classic hits performed by Music Legends.
Movie channels and sports offer
Plex placed seven stations in the movie channel category. Although most of them should be rather unfamiliar to viewers, FilmStream is an exception. This is a product of the former SPI International company, which was created together with others (unavailable on the Czech market) purely for the purpose of distribution on similar services. Now the owner of this programme is the French group Canal+. Plex also prepares various occasional channels. For example, Gravitas Movies with Christmas movies or the similarly oriented Christmas Chlassics regularly appear in the offer.
Plex brings a generous dose of free TV channels in the Sports category. At the time of writing, there were 26 stations in this category. We could argue about the attractiveness of some of the programmes for Czech viewers, but we can highlight, for example, World Poker Tour, Women's Sports Network, Sports Grid or Fight Network. Motoring fans should not miss the pair of Motorvision and Speedvision. It should be noted, however, that none of the available programs have Czech localization.
Voyo and O2 video library support
Plex has Czech support, Czech menus and sometimes even Czech labels, but the Czech market is undoubtedly a marginal issue for it. Therefore, the fact that it offers some local services operating on our market, namely Voyo or O2 Videotéka, should be seen as a positive. Of course, there are global players such as Disney+, HBO Max, Netflix, Prime Video or SkyShowtime.
However, services of this type should be taken with a grain of salt in the case of purely Czech video libraries. It cannot be 100% guaranteed that, for example, Plex does not overlay the entire catalogue that CME offers in all markets where the service operates. And there is no way of knowing from the online catalogue of JustWatch. Plex has also implemented the music streaming service Tidal into its environment, which is not one of the most important in the Czech Republic.
Source: mediaguru.cz
