Our immediate goal was to be on the platform at launch, which means we didn’t have much time. The instant the fourth generation Apple TV was announced with an app store, we here at Plex pumped our fists in the air with excitement, as we raced to download the new Xcode and read the developer documentation. Roku, Google TV, Android TV (essentially every other top streaming device) had them. That being said, an app store on the device seemed an inevitability. Every single WWDC the rumors heated up, we got excited (along with half the Internet), and then our hopes ended up dashed on some fairly sharp rocks. Now over the years, we heard numerous rumors that Apple was going to open up their platform, and add a real app store. Over the years, Plex Connect was heavily developed, with a large user base. Enter three smart guys (and a surprising dearth of Frankincense) and all of a sudden it was possible to run a Plex app on a device without any jailbreaking.

Coupled with a rather silly DNS trick, you could run the Trailers app on the Apple TV and have it run your custom channel. Channels were the official way content partners added apps to the device, written in a custom markup language and Javascript. Three years later, people discovered a way to run custom Apple TV “channels” on the device.

It was by no means easy to install, but it was technically impressive, and we ended up hiring both of the main people involved with the project. Three years later, in 2010, the second generation of the device was released and subsequently jailbroken, and a barebones third party Plex app was written.

The app is free in the app store for everyone, and requires the latest media server (note: you may need to download and install the very latest server manually for now on certain NAS devices).įirst released way back in 2007 (the same year Plex started), the original Apple TV didn’t support any apps beyond the ones Apple provided. There truly isn’t any other platform we’ve wanted to be on for as long as we have the Apple TV. Note: The Plex app requires the new fourth generation Apple TV, as Apple does not make the app store available on older models of the device.

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