With both internet speeds and ticket prices on the rise, it’s no wonder that more movie-hungry cinephiles have turned to services like Netflix and PLEX to get their fill of video. Both of these services have delivered that cinema-in-home experience of watching your favorite movies at half the cost, but neither have delivered the actual movie theater … until now.
PLEX today announced a new app called PLEX VR that turns your living room into a theater with the help of a Google Daydream VR headset. Once you get situated in your new VR theater, you’ll not only be able to stream your entire PLEX library of shows, but you’ll even be able to invite friends in to partake in the movie experience remotely.
The app pulls in information from any PLEX server you have access to on your account and then displays all your content on a floating screen in front of you. From there you can either boot up a video from your remote server or invite your friends to a film screening.
Before you toss out your movie pass, though, it’s worth pointing out that the service still uses PLEX - a server-based streaming service where you supply the films on your home PC and then beam them back to yourself wherever you are in the world. PLEX is free to download on your PC at home as well as on every device under the sun, but you will have to stock up a home server before you get your Roger Ebert on.
Right now the app is only available to Android users, and is only compatible with Google Daydream headsets - which, unfortunately, leaves out Samsung Gear VR owners and anyone on an Oculus Rift. But that said, like PLEX on PC, the app is absolutely free to download and free to use.
A date at the virtual drive in
So what’s it like to do a virtual date at the movie theaters? If you can get over the fact that you’re a floating torso, it doesn’t look all that bad.
In some footage posted to YouTube, PLEX shows two people sitting in a virtual room together watching a show. While watching a movie, the two were able to interact with some of the set-pieces around them (this should look awfully familiar to anyone who’s used an Oculus Rift recently), change the environment and PLEX VR even supports voice chat while in the room together.
To that end, PLEX VR will support up to four people at a time - but in order to use the co-watching feature, you must be a PLEX Pass subscriber.
PLEX hasn’t quite figured out the whole making out in VR thing yet, but hey, that’s what software updates are for, right?
- Into VR? Don't miss our hands on review of the HTC Vive Pro
