I don’t lose internet at home often. Like almost never. But today was the day.
I was quite surprised to find out that my Plex stream died. I was in the middle of watching a Live TV channel via the Live TV/DVR integration with an HDHomeRun that is in my house as well as my Plex Server and my TV that was the client. The stream just died as soon as my internet went out.
I also tried to load the app home screen to just watch a locally stored movie. No luck.
Why does Plex require internet for local content? Way back in the day, that was a huge draw for Plex was you could stream your content without internet access…?
This has also happened to me, it is super annoying when the internet goes out (oh the humanity!) and if you’re not set up ahead of time for the event it’s even more annoying. So I have 2 approaches -
a) have your local plex clients and server setup in the event this happens (it’s way more of a pain to set up without internet!) - lots of resources on setting this up properly out there but here’s a few to get you started:
just google “plex without internet” - there’s videos, etc etc etc
b) have plex alternatives set up - we use the roku media player app for roku clients to browse to our hdhomerun device (for tv’s without an antenna/cable line) and the VLC app for firetv and chromecast (android based) devices. In VLC go to “Browsing” and then “local network” and you should see your hdhomerun there, if you marked any of your channels as favorites (which is what we do), you’ll find them in the favorites folder. There is also a HDHomeRun apps for clients - but they seem to require internet access to use reliably (which is useless when there is no internet!)
I understand authentication needing connectivity, but I was mid stream of a local resource. It cut off instantly. Is the plex client on my Roku just checking the authentication service every single second?
Roku client tends to be pretty good about caching credentials so usually blips or even hours offline typically don’t disconnect you right away so that’s a little odd if it kicked you off stream immediately after losing internet access. It’s one reason I tend to like Roku as a Plex client. Maybe you just had bad luck on authentication timing.
Someone mentioned earlier the Roku Media Player and that’s a good alternative playback by using DLNA. Plex can feed to your Roku Media Player via Plex DLNA setup pretty well and doesn’t use authentication. It’s not as pretty but it still has some of the Plex organization to browse for titles easily. As long as the files can play natively on your Roku you can play it just fine. I use it for fallback and for testing direct play issues.
Another option is to setup Jellyfin or Kodi along with Plex as backup (you can run them together pointed at the same media folders without any conflict). They are both free open-source options.
