Plex is akin to coming home to a private multiplex that somehow just knows your seat, snack, and what kind of movie you want to watch before you do. When you arrive, there is an instant feeling that this is home base; tuned to your preferred frequencies but subtly seasoned with the algorithm who knows when its time for friends and when three-hour long subtitles are okay.

Plex is primarily a media hoarders dream, but what sets it far and apart from its peers is that in the blink of an eye, it can also serve as your very accessible media binge buddy. Drop any file, be it an AVI relic or a pristine 4K HDR rip, into a monitored folder and Plex will quickly fetch cover art, cast bios, Rotten Tomatoes scores and even theme music will automatically protagonist raw data in to your personal cinematic museum. In its place, a swipe once to the left uncovers numerous free films and reveals separated into smart mini-genres. It feels like passing between your own vault and the public feeding.

And it goes even deeper with its streaming engine. Transcoding is hidden away quietly in the background, meaning that the same file can send a silky-smooth 1080p stream to your aging parent's iPad while it is at the same time broadcasting lossless 4K of your new OLED TV screen. Pause on one device, and hit play on another—Plex will pick up right where you left off when pausing or moving to a new device, exactly in the right spot with frame-by-frame precision.

Offline mode needs a round of applause on its own. Just a one-tap sync and you get entire seasons downloaded to your phone before that long flight, subtitles and all, with working surround-sound tracks. A mobile cinema night inside a long car ride, the joy of unrestricted binge-watching after check-in to a windowless hotel room at 2 am with none of that dear cable box's accompanying expense or DRM, complete with live TV and DVR capabilities enabling cord-cutters to have their jeopardy. A cable box, and Plex quietly shifts from media player to entertainment ecosystem.

Finally, as we tread upon the infinite, fractured expanse of the streaming wars and proprietary silos, Plex exits stage right turning towards us one more time with a gentle shrug: If it is something you love to watch, then enjoy—just press play.