After years of delay, Plex replaces its desktop media player client

Mediaphiles have had years to cope with the imminent demise of the Plex Media Player. Plans were first announced in August of 2019, right when the Plex had also released its intended replacement, the Home Theater PC app. Outrage from the crowd stopped everything in its tracks for three years, but at last, Plex is now calling time of death for PMP. Long live HTPC.

The biggest reason why fans complained about losing PMP was the loss of a TV-style interface, but a lot of people had issues with legacy compatibility, button mapping, and other things.

In attempting to develop a replacement app for both PMP, which was languishing on old code from the days of Windows' Metro interface, and the then-lamented HTPC, Plex eventually came back to implement a whole bunch of high-demand features into HTPC and call it the new boss (same as the old “new” boss).

As the company says on its blog, HTPC is meant for computers hooked up to home theater equipment and features support for audio passthrough, adjustable refresh rate, controller support, input map configuration, and, yes, a half-decent large-screen browsing format.

The Plex HTPC app, which supports Linux in addition to Windows, is available to download from Snapcraft. The Plex Desktop app has also been updated with Linux support.