Every so often I come across something that just works, and it makes me happy and I feel like all this tech crap we all do on a daily basis is actually worth it.

Even better, sometimes I come across something that was rough around the edges last time I tried it, but now I discover that it’s clean, refined, and super useful. I’m happy to report that this is one of those times. I’ve recently come back to Plex after a few years of ignoring it, and it works amazingly.

For those of you who don’t know, the Plex moniker actually refers to a myriad of products that work together. The cornerstone of the lineup is Plex Server, which resides on whatever computer is (or computers are) storing all of your recorded movies/television shows/audio files/etc. As you would expect, it serves up your media to any of your Plex Clients, which are available on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. etc. The clients are pretty great at finding a server on the local network (or on the local box, if you’re running your client and server on the same machine), but Plex has a better trick up it’s sleeve.

If you choose to set up a MyPlex account it acts as a middle man for helping your servers and clients find each other anywhere on the internet. Basically, if you sign in to MyPlex from all your servers and all your clients it will take care of all your connectivity and you’re golden.

But there are still times and places that don’t work so well. My day job has a very restrictive firewall on their network, which blocks pretty much every port other than 80 and 443. So even with MyPlex’s magic, I can’t connect to my home servers to stream things on my lunch breaks. Now what?

Well, now you purchase a PlexPass and get access to their sync feature. Most of the Plex software is free or fairly cheap (the server and desktop clients are free, the iOS and Android clients are $5). PlexPass is a bit more ($30/year) but it gives you access features that aren’t yet available for free, including beta versions of the clients. Anyway, back to syncing.

Plex Sync is not creatively named, but it’s awesome. When your device is able to connect to your server tell it what media you want to have synced. If you choose a TV series you can tell it “keep the next X unwatched episodes on my device” and it’ll have your server transcode those episodes into a format your device understands and ship them on over. When you watch one (if you’re still connected) it’ll prep a new one while you’re watching and keep you up to date. If you’re actually disconnected then the episodes you’ve synced are all your Plex client will show.

All the usual awesomeness you’d expect from an app like this is built in as well. The iOS client app acts as a remote for any other client connected to your server. If you are a big fan of XBMC then your XBMC installation can read Plex files and the two work together perfectly. If you have a Roku player you’re also taken care of. Plex and Roku work just great together.