Local network functionality without account

General Discussions
1

First of all i am a new user to plex. I set up a local server because i only heard good stuff about plex for years. After installing the server i tried it out by using the webinterface on my pc. Worked great and all the hints to create an account could be turned off. Today i tried to use the plex app on my tv. It told me to enter a code to connect to my account. I created an account, entered the code and i still didnt work. I had to connect my server with my account. I did that. It enabled the encryption for connections (which is pretty useless in my LAN if i wouldnt have to use a account) and i got this error.

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First of all i got this error over and over again no matter which of these two buttons i pressed so i hat to restart the app every time. At some point (after repeating pressing buttons without changing anything) i was redirectet to my library and everything looked fine except no cover was loaded. So i tried switching the catagory and i got the error again. It happens every time i press anything. I wanted to try the android app which forced me to log in too. I logged myself in and was pressented with with a lot of stuff i do not have in my library. And this is what bugs me. Everything worked great until i had to create an account, which does not provied anything usefull to me because i just want to use my media on a local network. Thats the hole point of plex right? I understand u need to make money but is grabbing the userdata the best way for doing this? Or do you make no money with userdata? If this is the case the account is even more useless. Why cant i just enter the IP of my server and i am good to go? You can offer a account system because i am pretty sure a lot of people need featueres you can only provied with an account but streaming on my local network to my android smartphone is defenetly not one of them. I am probably going to search for a different solution since this is just totaly unfriendly to the user. If you wouldnt force me to use this account system plex would be one of my top 3 softwarerecomendations but now it is a big red flag. To be clear the userdata is not my problem. I got accounts a lot of websites but getting stuff in my library and having to create an account when it is clearly not nessesary is just stupid. On the webinterface it just shows you which features cant be used without an account but you can use the rest. Why isnt that an option on android or on a smart tv?

I hope some one can explain this to me or point out a way to cast to a chromecast without using an account.

Julius

2

A huge draw of Plex is the ability to stream the media remotely, and for the ability to have the server automatically convert the video into a format playable by your local device. If both of these are not necessary, then an alternative (Kodi) might be advisable. Kodi is a “play-it-all” video player that has no issue playing most videos (assuming your device is capable of decoding it fast enough). It can play videos over the local network as well, which sounds like a good fit.

That being said, I suspect you are running into an older-TV-certificate error. Plex relies on installed certificates in smart TV’s. Certificates expire (for some dumb reason). TV manufacturers need to push a software update to TV’s to update certificates. They stop doing this for older devices. See this article for info.

Edit: That-being-said that being said, I forgot to mention that it is possible to disable most authentication requirements for the server, following this guide.

3

Thanks for your reply. I looked into some alteratives and i think you are right and plex isnt the right choice for me. I think this functionality would still help plex being the right thing for more users. My TV is pretty “old” for a smart TV so this could totaly be the issue.

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