Plex starts hooking into Dropbox for cloud media syncing

Media center app maker Plex will soon give its users a way to sync their media to Dropbox to access it from anywhere: Plex launched a new feature dubbed cloudSync at CES Tuesday evening, which makes it possible to upload copies of movies, songs or pictures to Dropbox and then access them from any Plex client.

CloudSync is built on top of the wireless device syncing capabilities that Plex introduced back in November, and will be available to paying users of the PlexPass subscription service later this month. Plex has said that it wants to add the ability to sync to other cloud storage service over time.

The ability to easily upload media to a Dropbox account is a good way for Plex to deal with one of its key weaknesses: The Plex client is now available on a number of mobile and connected devices, but the app has traditionally relied on a separate server application to get access to media.

That works fine if you do have a powerful NAS or an always-on PC at home to send you streams of your movies amd music. But more and more people rely on a laptop for all their computing needs – and chances are, that machine is turned off and tucked away in a bag when you’re using your iPad on the go to watch a movie. With the new feature, users can stream that movie straight from their Dropbox account.

Check out a few screenshots of Plex cloudSync below:


GigaOM