Do you have plans for a member area function?
yes, admin panel still in development 
I thought that was only for site admins. It would be great to have a private member area function, too.
with admin plugin coming the user session feature, i can implement a single plugin with this, but for now it’s useless for me.
Yes, you will be able to restrict pages based on user and group when our auth/login plugin is released.
Do you think it will be days, weeks, or months until we see that? Just trying to plan a timeline for a site that will need it.
It really is part of the admin. It’s mostly in place, but realistically, it’s a couple of months away.
any news on this? I would like to be able to give rights on videos and other content for registered users
You can add access: site.login to the header of the pages you want to be limited to registered users
Great! Is there also a way to do this automatically if someone paid for access with paypal like in s2member and similar for wordpress?
That would need a plugin that sets up a subscription checkout page and when done sets an access level on the user. It’s not available yet, but it’s a good idea for a future plugin.