Hi community,
I need a hint on how to organise my plex setup, I can’t get my head around the different possibilities.
So, I bought a lifetime plex pass for this account (essentially for the download feature and LiveTV). I connect to my own plex-server, as well as being invited to a plex-server of a friend. I mostly use the desktop player.
Now, I want my family (including kids) to also have access to it, but with restricted access (think of content not appropriate to children). Everyone should have access to different libraries on the friends server and my local server as well as LiveTV. How could this be achieved?
I tried the home users, but they can not access the remote libraries. I thought about creating more “real” plex users, but then they probably can’t watch LiveTV (wife) or download stuff (absolute necessity for kids on road ). Am I stuck now? Was plex the wrong decision?
Thanks for the feedback and the link. Do you know of any sources that also talk about the reasons for that decision? It can’t be a technical one.
So to sum up: If I link a Plex Home user to a “real” Plex account this user/account/home can accept library invitations from my friend and watch LiveTV without switching users? (With the downside of not being able to download/sync stuff?)
Hmmm… but if I do that linking, what happens if my “real” Plex account with Plex Pass is logged in and switches to the mentioned Plex Home user? Is the friends shared stuff invisible again, but downloading works?
Oh, and is it possible for a Plex Home user to have their own library? (Not visible to anyone else?)
So, I can’t speak to the LiveTV stuff, but I’d imagine it’s so you don’t go running a free TV service… I can tell you, most likely anyways, why the decision was made to not allow your home users access to your friends account.
Think about it like this, if you have your server, for your family, and you invite your friend over to view, would you want possibly 15 other users having access to your media without your knowledge? What kind of situation would this create for your family if they all of a sudden just started streaming content from your server?
As an admin, you should be the one who controls who accesses your server so that you can maintain practices that fit within the limitations of your own system, allow other invited users to have that power invites all kinds of trouble for you as the system administrator.
Good points, haven’t thought about it that way. I doubt the “Free TV Service” would actually be a problem, since you can’t provide it to the public and are always limited to your network, but that’s another story, I am fine with only sharing that with Plex Home users.
The second point, the friend-to-home-sharing, makes absolute sense with the current state of the software, but imagine my friend could decide that I am trustworthy and allows re-sharing with my Home users, like she can decide if I am allowed to sync.
I stream my tv outside of my home all the time, it’s not limited by network, but it is limited by the 15 accounts you can have as a part of your plex home and the number of tuners you have… But I would still suspect it probably has something to do with it, I could be wrong though, it’s been known to happen hehe…
And I get it, but trust has very little to do with what I was talking about… It’s more-so people’s server specs… I’d say on average regular home plex servers can only handle 2-3 transcodes at a time, you toss 15 other people into the mix, and suddenly users are fighting for CPU cycles to transcode their content, bandwidth becomes an issue, people get upset that their shows and movies are buffering, etc… You will naturally prioritize your users over your friends, but if he/she has the ability to add users at will by simply making them a part of their Plex home, then you may just have to remove your friend, and who wants that? hehe…
I wrote “network” but actually meant bandwith, that would be a natural limitation for the “Free” TV Service , as well as the mentioned tuners.
The sharing is true, but wouldn’t that always be an issue? One could could always get around the limitation by just using the invited account for all family members.
After all the thinking about this topic the feeling manifests that all discussed restrictions are explictily wanted, meaning: it cost extra to develop those restrictions, instead of them being a feature that wasn’t implemented.
Do you know if a Plex Home user has access to remote libraries if they are linked to Plex Accounts? (Don’t want to create extra accounts if useless)
Well, bandwidth here is Gigabit Up and Down, soon to be 10 Gigabit, so bandwidth isn’t that much of an issue for me, though it would be for others, for sure.
Yes, they could though they’re not really supposed to. Public devices aside, people shouldn’t really be sharing their login info with their wife, brother, uncle, sister, cousin, etc.
They do not, each Home user that doesn’t have an e-mail address will be limited to just the server(s) that are owned by the account that they are under. If your home users wish to be able to use your friends plex server, then you need to create an account for them, and have your friend invite them at that e-mail address.
). Am I stuck now? Was plex the wrong decision?
, as well as the mentioned tuners.
