The devs may add a manual option, but until the myplex servers cause an issue I wouldn't worry about them being a point of failure. They're only contacted when signing in on servers and/or clients and when the server publishes every night. So if the servers go down for some reason you'll be fine until your IP address changes.
I’d very much like the option to not involve a third party to gain access to my private content. This is like requiring me to store a copy of my password with Apple before being able to login to my machine. I can see where it’s convenient for the drooling public but that doesn’t make it the right, or only, answer.
See here for previous discussions on the same matter http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/31487-missing-security-tab-from-pms-config
How about the rest of us that were (are) perfectly happy to connect our remote (iOS in my case) clients directly to our own servers without a middleman "granting" access? This Facebook like approach to sharing and security is distasteful to many.
You’re not storing your password with myplex, just the hashed and salted value same as any login implementation. This login generates authentication tokens which are used to authenticate with your server. I agree if apple required me to something similar to login to my local machine It’d be odd (not sure if I’d be really upset depending on the reasons for this requirement and the implementation) but then there are plenty of uses for a stand alone unnetworked computer. Myplex is rather useless without an internet connection so I don’t think it’s unreasonable. This isn’t some discussion board or comments section that has facebook as the only means to authenticate or anything like that. This is a service from plex for using a new plex feature. For now you’re free to continue using the old way with 9.3.4 (and 9.4 when it comes out) and if enough people feel this way the devs may add another option into future releases of 9.5.
I understand what I’m free to do, I’m just raising the point that just because you and/or the devs think it’s a good idea it’s not necessarily true. The freedom to choose who/what/where determines access to our resources is a big deal.
Well the devs are well aware of your concerns, no need to beat a dead horse.
Well myPlex killed my remote Samsung clients, so without an alternative way of connecting, this is a step in the wrong direction imo, even without security issues.
I have PMS 9.5 running on ubuntu 11.04. My google TV client can find it without a problem… My Xoom client can find it without a problem… but the only way my windows laika client can see it, is if I associate the server to myPlex & sign the laika client into myPlex as well.
There is no configuration option anywhere within the laika client to manually specify a server that isn’t automatically picked up, other than going through myPlex. I’m assuming that “MildlyConcerned” is having this issue as well, which is why he’s understandably concerned about why he’s being “required” to authenticate against the plex servers. If your usage never leaves your home, then there’s no need for myPlex… yet it’s the only way to get a local windows laika client to see the server, thus creating a requirement (intended or not) that we register our servers with the myPlex hub.
That being said, I fully understand that the Laika client is brand new, especially for windows platform, and that it will have some growing pains. If ‘Good Day Mate’ isn’t stable, perhaps we can have the other discovery protocols back until GDM becomes stable?
If you specified a username/password in 9.3.4 and upgraded to 9.5 you can continue to use that with PMS 9.5 so existing remote clients should work unless you never used secure server access. You can also go back to 9.3.4 until myplex is added to other 3rd party clients as this is a preview release. The fact that version 0.9.4 is planned suggests to me that the devs plan to support this branch for awhile.
Well security concerns aside if you have to use myplex to get the windows client to work locally that probably means it's going out over the internet and back to your PMS install so you'll likely run into bandwidth issues. The devs are certainly working on fixing GDM issues and I don't think they want to maintain both protocols in a preview release. It makes for dirty code that's harder to maintain. :)
Yea. I guess ill just revert to an older PMS. Rescanning isnt neccesary, is it?
You shouldn’t have to rescan or anything, no.
I would like to know what happens when a copyright troll decides to subpoena the information contained on MyPlex looking for a list of all videos being played on the Plex platform. The system is uploading a lot of information about files that potentially infringe copyright.
You have a username and password that is personally identifiable, a list of hashes and thumbnail content that identifies the content being played by the unique username/password, and it is provided to the MyPlex platform after being manually setup by the user.
No. Sorry, but myPlex has no idea what content outside of the myPlex Queue content is being played. If you remotely connect to your home PMS or connect to a Shared Content library, myPlex provides you information on how to initiate the connection (i.e. it tells you, "hey, you want to connect with that IP/port over there"), but once you establish the connection, myPlex isn't involved at all. Your connections isn't going "through" myPlex as if it were a proxy or something.
The only real thing that could identify your content that's sent to the myPlex service is the info that creates the thumbnails. But you know what? Even that doesn't mean anything. See, I create test files when I'm helping with stuff in the forum here all the time. I'll create a fake test file, name it, say, "Avatar (2009).mkv", and scan it into my library in a test section. It gets identified as the movie Avatar. It shows up in that test section on the myPlex site with the thumbnail for Avatar. It's just a fake file, though. So, even if a thumbnail for a movie appears on the myPlex site, that says **absolutely nothing** about whether you actually have that file on your hard drive at home. It's not proof of anything at all except that some file got identified a particular way by the scanner/metadata agent. Doesn't mean a thing.
And even if you **do** have a file for Avatar on your home computer (and, hey, it could be a completely-legal "digital copy" that came with your DVD/blu-ray disc), myPlex has no idea if that particular library item has been accessed by someone else (i.e. "shared") - remember, connections don't go *through* myPlex. Even if you choose to share the section in question with someone else via myPlex, there's no way for myPlex to know if that person you shared with ever took advantage of the share to play any of your content.
I can totally understand and respect that some people are just against the idea of any sort of "third party" being involved in a connection purely on principle. I don't agree with it, but I can understand that some people hold that view. But I think a lot of people just have some sort of gut reaction against this because they don't actually understand how it really works - they think things are going on that aren't or that info exists when it doesn't.
Just to clarify:
1) If you choose to submit anonymous information to Plex (General Tab of Preferences), then media match and media match fixes are sent to our servers, with filenames, hashes, etc. This information is stripped of IP and used to improve matches for all users. The information stored is completely anonymous (no IP, no myPlex linkage, etc.)
2) If you choose to use the myPlex service, then refer to [this post](http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/33194-can-plex-staff-and-potenially-big-brother-access-my-files-now/page__view__findpost__p__211171) where I go into details of what information is stored.
To summarize, your assertions about what information we have is incorrect.
Just a quick question, will Bonjour be added back into the mix as alternative to myPlex? G’Day Mate doesn’t seem to be a superior inclusion (at least, I don’t even know it’s there since my brother’s PMS only shows up when signed into myPlex, even though we have a transparantly bridged network).
Bonjour is on the way out, because of all the issues we've had with it on different platforms. GDM is the replacement for local networks, and myPlex is intended to be the simplest and easiest way to connect remotely.
Okay, thanks for the reply. I understand the switch to something more multi-platform. Is there some place for me to read up on GDM? Since my and my brother’s network are bridged (his Macs, shares, iTunes library et cetera show up in Finder and vice versa) shouldn’t his Plex Media Server show up in Plex, even without signing into myPlex? It did before with Bonjour. Maybe there’s something we need to tweak?
GDM is a simple broadcast/multicast protocol across a local network. When you say your networks are “bridged” I’m not 100% sure what this means. I know that Apple has wide-area Bonjour, but GDM is simpler and only works across a local private network.
Elan isnt that the reason the new client has the option to specify an IP for a local server? That should work in his case, no?
First of all I would like to say PLEX is an amazing media server and media center solution. I have been using PLEX for quite a while now and have just gotten around to trying out the remote access capability. While I have not used myPlex for anything else I decided to give it a try for sharing my media server address, since it was the only way to remotely access my media server (9.5.3) through iOS PLEX clients without jailbreaking them to enable SSH tunneling.
Annoyingly, my router (New Linksys E4200) did not allow the PMS to share my media server remotely to myPlex servers without me actually enabling port forwarding on port 32400. This was unfortunate because 1) it made the whole argument of one click easy to share media server moot and 2) after forwarding the port through my router anyone could connect to the web based media manager without any authentication.
At this point I was still OK with keeping these settings temporarily open just to test remote media playback. The good news was media played well and I could browse my media library remotely. The bad news is how myPlex just uploaded thumbnails of my recently added personal photos without any concern for privacy. I understand showing thumbnails of media content, but uploading thumbnails of personal photos to myPlex servers is taking it too far.
When I saw my personal photo thumbnails uploaded to myPLEX I promptly disabled the server sharing and deleted the server from my myPlex account. On the surface this ‘seemed’ to delete the thumbnails from the myPLEX website but they may still be somewhere on their servers.
Based on my experiences I would very strongly encourage the PLEX team to continue updating this amazing platform by allowing users to choose to enable server authentication for remote connections, also for the local network, and for the server html interface.
Thanks and keep up the great work!
