My ISP recently had an issue, and my internet connection was down for two days. Attempting to connect to my server locally and play content stopped working shortly after. Even attempting to open a web browser on the server machine itself and attempting to connect to Plex told me that it was unavailable and to check my internet connection and firewall and try again.
For the period that it did work, a movie would play for a minute or two and then say that the content was unavailable. After restarting a movie about ten times, it finally played without bringing up the dialogue. (I use the new Apple TVs in my home)
I don’t believe Plex should stop working when there is no internet connection. This is one of the reasons that I got Plex in the first place. If the internet doesn’t work and my family can’t get to Netflix/Hulu/etc. I could still play the movies that I have locally.
Could anyone give me any insight into this? Is there a way to keep this from happening in the future? If not, I’d like to request a feature that makes it possible for the Plex server to go ‘offline’ and just play content locally.
Unfortunately Plex is tied pretty tightly to the Internet these days. If you search the forums you can find ways to setup your plex server without the home managed users and by making sure to use clients that don’t need Internet. For many it’s not worth the trouble however.
I understand Emby works quite well without the internet.
More people every day are discovering these things as Plex continues to refuse to address user concerns… and users are leaping from the burning fuselage before the plane careens into the terrain…
That articles doesn’t begin to cover the changes you might have to make. Doesn’t cover HOME setting changes, the clients that may work vs those that flat out won’t and the fact you can’t change login user names etc while internet isn’t connected.
Plus some features in the Plex server flat out won’t work when not connected for more than a brief outage.
I will give this a try later this evening and see if it works.
Too much effort. I’ve setup Emby in the meanwhile and I’m quite happy with it.
Did you read the article? It is literally checking a box and hitting save. Thank you for attempting to peddle Emby, though.
In response to the peddled half-solution? I think that’s actually a fair response.
Plex is far too reliant on an active internet connection, toggling that check box enables offline operation for some clients in some instances. Or we can use DLNA (ie: what’s the point of all the Plex niceties then).
Whatever the alternate product is, if it’s a product that doesn’t disrupt the user experience to provide offline content consumption then it’s doing better than Plex. It’s not the fault of the competition that they’re doing better.
I run Plex, Emby and Kodi on my ShieldTV boxes so I’m covered in all cases.
If you have a device that can run Kodi like an Android box it’s worth setting up your movies and shows at a minimum to have just in case you loose internet.
I’m going to do some testing to see how Plex handles the offline issues that I’ve experienced. I’ll look into Emby as well. I hate having to manage more than one installation and library. I’m all for the ‘one solution to rule them all’ sort of thing.
Yea, I was quite disappointed a couple of years back when it started to rely on the Internet so much. The beauty of Plex to me was it could be used in offline situations when Internet streaming wasn’t available. Plex used to be perfect for RV, Car, Airplane, cabin use but is longer my choice for these situations. There are work arounds but you loose to much functionality by doing it.
Hopefully Plex will see the light and allow some type of local caching of credentials so it can run a week or so offline. Sooner or later the Plex server needs to connect to the Internet of course in order to refresh libraries and pull down meta data so it’s not like it would be able to fully run offline. But a week to 10 days should be able to be done.
I find it funny (not really) that my paid PlexPass makes my content more reliant on the internet connection. I hate chromecast for the same reason - unable to use my device just because my internet is down makes no sense.
Come’on, man…
