I want to enable access to a library for family member going to University,
Is Remote Access required for this?
Server Version#:1
Player Version#:1
<If providing server logs please do NOT turn on verbose logging, only debug logging should be enabled>
Unless they’re staying with you for their university courses… yes, for anyone to access your libraries from outside your home network, you’ll need to enable remote access.
Is this new?
Some years ago I was on a contract in USA for 3 months and I just created a “client” account for myself to use while away and did not have to do this.
While there I told my host all about Plex, they bought a dedicated PC and they gave their son access while he was travelling around Germany.
Again, none of this was necessary.
At that time all I had to do was have a separate account that I gave access to, now it seems far more complex.
Yes, it is. Or rather: it will be in 1 month’s time:
https://www.plex.tv/blog/important-2025-plex-updates/
In general: it has always been the case that accessing your Plex server from outside of your home network constitutes “remote access”.
If the technical requirements of your router, your ISP and your computer align perfectly, that will work automatically.
But if for instance your ISP has put you behind a Carrier-Grade NAT, then you must make a greater effort in order to get a working remote access.
Wow, I guess this is what happens when something is migrated from a free open source community to a commercial product.
I used to just watch my media on my laptop which was attached to a TV, when my nephew introduced me to Plex it was superb.
I wanted Plex to somehow earn some income so I put up with the onerous changes that integrated streaming apps, I had to lock down my security and make sure I did not accidentally allow PPV by selecting something on AppleTV for example.
I hated the discover and live options because they were just “in the way” and also because if I watch any form of “live” TV then I have to pay for a TV License which is expensive.
The main benefits of Plex was just that I could set and forget, I did use the sharing of library while I was away but avoided sharing it to family because I did not think the server was up to it and I wanted the option to turn it off with Alexa without checking if anyone was using it.
However, now having someone able to share my library without messing with my router would be a benefit. I am fairly sure my ISP does use CGNAT as I remember abandoning something because of it. I think it was a connection of Lan to Lan via a VPN for a particular project. That is why I split my network into VLANS so that my home was only for my home and anything else had to be explicitly given permission.
So it seems that Plex loses another USP, allowing access to my home network just for Plex seems dodgy and complex. I am not clear how it will work, what is the point of doing things via a simple Plex login I now have to add technical layers, would it not be easier to just have them use a URL to the server?
However if I did that I would lose the granular aspect of being able to provide access just to certain libraries and if that is done via Plex corporation then surely they would have the same overheads that they claim to be saving on the page that was provided above.
It really seems that I should start taking contingency measures in case Plex stops working for some other reason. I have put off migrating to another platform, mainly because they were linux based and that would be more work and a learning curve. However, maybe now I should do so, maybe I can get my head around virtual machine and have windows only load when I need it, so for the rest I have a headless Linux box. It is complex for me but my nephew is hot on these things.
Alternatively I roll back to a version of Plex that is very very old, the ones before we had all this discover and live stuff?
Plex was never an open source project.
Well I remember at the time it was called an open community project, I was advised by my nephew who would only use open source
In Wiki it says
Plex began as a freeware hobby project in December 2007 when developer Elan Feingold created a media center application for his Mac computer by porting the media player XBMC (since renamed Kodi) to Mac OS X.[3] Around the same time, Cayce Ullman and Scott Olechowski—software executives who had recently sold their previous company to Cisco—were also looking to port XBMC to Mac OS X, and noticed Feingold’s progress in the XBMC online forums. They contacted him and offered support and funding, and they formed a three-person team in January 2008.[4][5]
And the definition of Freeware is described as
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines freeware unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification, redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others.[1][2][3] Unlike with free and open-source software, which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available.[1][3][4][5] Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models.[6]
So I see the effective difference is that with Freeware it is a “I’ll decide later”
The problem is that if the developer keep ripping the guts out of the software and the only way to get around it is to pay for a license then it really stops being freeware or any other community project.
I do not begrudge them earning money, in fact I have tried to reward them in ways that encourage others to buy a lifetime pass.
I am considering buying a lifetime pass to get around this issue but I have two issues.
If an organisation keeps moving the goal posts (removing features) how long will it be before the definition of “liftime” is changed, I have seen this in commercial products where lifetime is not our lifetime but a typical lifetime of a cloth or bulb or whatever. How many other features have been removed but left in for accounts with lifetime pass. Also where is the lifetime pass, on the server account and does it apply to all of the people I allow to use my server?
Privacy is huge for me, I hate to see the language used and the regular hassle of having to DECLINE to accept the privacy policy on each of my devices, this should be a once only setting per account until explicitly changed by me. Elsewhere in the market we have companies using privacy widgets that hide “well even if you decline we are going to decide that we have a “legitimate interest” and share your data with our 400 partners who will in turn share it with their 10 million clients, you have the right to object to that and we will even provide a tick box for that objection, but we will ignore it anyway.” So for this reason TRUST is lost, the only way I might pay for plex is anonymously using bitcoin if that were available or if Plex sold lifetime passes on sites like Paxful.
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