Plex moves towards version 1.0 with new features added

My favorite platform for shuffling media around my home and, most importantly, getting it to my Google TV, today gets a bit better. Okay, actually a lot better. Plex announces updates rolling out to its Media Server platform, bringing it to version 0.9.8 -- one step closer to the fabled 1.0 release.

While the software has not yet reached that 1.0 threshold, do not get the impression it is not ready for your home. The service has been full-featured for sometime now.

Today the company announces several new features, starting with multi-user support. Every user now gets their very own view state. This applies to people inside of the home too. For instance, you can create a myPlex account for your kids, and only give them access to certain sections, which is the first baby step towards the company's vision of parental controls. This feature is only enabled for servers run by PlexPass holders.

Also rolling out is, according to Plex, "the ability to see who is playing what from a server. This is especially important when multiple users are accessing the server". When your server begins streaming, you will immediately get a notification in your Plex/Web dashboard which will tell you what is playing, and if it is from a shared user, along with who is playing it. IT-type control here.

Finally, the company points out that "when we add files to your library, we do sophisticated media analysis, in order to optimize transcoding and other such things". You will be able to optionally index the entire video file, creating an index file which contains little frame grabs across the entire video.

Plex version 0.9.8 is certainly the best yet. and provides many more options and features for slinging media over to my Google TV. What will 1.0 hold? The future is wide open!