After announcing in 2020 plans to launch a movie and TV show rental marketplace, media streaming platform Plex is finally taking the plunge. Following what has been described as “false starts,” including delays due to COVID-19, news broke at CES 2024 that the company will go public with its rental offering in February. The streaming media software maker has confirmed it will enter the TVOD (transactional video on demand) market to augment the ad-supported streaming that is its primary revenue source. Plex reportedly has “most studios” onboard, though it has yet to specify which ones.

Plex plans to set up a storefront that lets users search and browse content. “The idea is that the storefront will allow Plex users to find movies and TV shows for on-demand viewing, allowing Plex to become more of a one-stop shop for media content,” reports TechCrunch.

The online portal “will also integrate with Plex features like its watchlists for movies,” according to The Verge.

TechCrunch, which has documented Plex’s road to rental since inception, writes that its delays were “often technical,” with “issues around getting the DRM to work, resulting in Plex switching providers.” Onboarding the studios was another holdup, “as was a move from one third-party partner to another for its AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) service,” TechCrunch writes.

Additionally, a “technical bug that was causing streams to stop randomly on Android TV, Fire TV, and Android mobile platforms” also presented a hurdle, according to TechCrunch. “With those headaches behind it, the rentals service is finally nearing launch — for real this time, Plex says.”

The new rental store is intended to set Plex on a growth trajectory “following the company’s layoff of 20 percent of its staff in June 2023,” notes The Verge. “At the time, the company’s CEO told staffers that Plex’s ad business had been ‘significantly impacted’ by a downturn in global advertising markets.”

The Verge cites Plex Chief Product Officer Scott Olechowski saying the company’s ad business is now growing, pointing to “a ‘pretty major UX refresh’ in the works to help support the many people using Plex to watch ad-supported movies and TV shows and FAST (free, ad-supported streaming) channels.”

Founded in 2010, Plex currently offers a FAST service “in 193 countries,” featuring a lineup that “includes over 300 channels airing classic TV series and game shows, reality series and news, along with some live TV offerings such as sports,” according to The Wrap, which says it “also offers a $4.99 per month ‘premium’ subscription service, which enables programming downloads and other features.”