The Multi-user / sharing feature is awsome but i find it a bit troublesome to go through the internet (myplex website) to handle the permissions, etc.
I personally would much much prefer to handle this locally on my PMS and hence also won't have the need to publish my PMS to the internet / keep a port open.
Surely, the solution through the myplex website has advantages but IMHO most of the people only (seriously) share within the family / own network hence keeping everything "within the own walls" would be quite nice.
Surely, the solution through the myplex website has advantages but IMHO most of the people only (seriously) share within the family / own network hence keeping everything "within the own walls" would be quite nice.
I can understand your point of view - but I think you'll find your last statement to be highly untrue. Many, many Plex users share their Libraries with friends far and wide.
But the "local only" discussion has been happening for quite awhile. It will play out one way or another.
I can understand your point of view - but I think you'll find your last statement to be highly untrue. Many, many Plex users share their Libraries with friends far and wide.
But the "local only" discussion has been happening for quite awhile. It will play out one way or another.
No doubt, the sharing feature is awsome and very popular (between those who have enough upload bandwidth). I'm definetely not argueing to stop that:) It is also awsome that Plex offers such a "Proxy-Server". So, the devs already implemented the 2.0 solution skipping 1.0 :)
In pre-multi-user times I actually went with a laptop with PMS, a small Wlan router and a ATV to a friend and watched some episodes. Will that still be working (without internet access) properly with multi-user activated?
Sure that will still work. In fact the "no internet access" issue was resolved some time ago - discovered by a user who setup a Plex environment on a private jet when he discovered PMS stopped working without an internet connection. We're a lucky community to have so many users using Plex in so many environments :-)
You know for your "visit to a friends house" scenario you could also sync some items to an iOS device and then use that device as a server. If you have an iOS device. I think that works on Android as well. (Not sure if it will work with an ATV as the client.) Anyhow I'm just thinking out loud.
I understand what you're saying though ... the "parental control" "user account" solution would have been imagined as a local solution first - I think it turns out it was easier to implement this way at first. Baby steps I guess.
:) sweet, ya, a private jet is a good way to create a isolated scenario... :)
ya, sure, using iOS devices as server is great and absolutely the way to go if you visit a friend's house to watch the latest two episodes of breaking bad but I use the Laptop-PMS, router n ATV/iOS device when travelling say when staying in a hotel or places for a week or so and carry a small 500GB HDD.
Streaming is an option but my upload is not very good and the download in some places is dodgy to non-existent or simply rediculously expensive. Plugging in a external HDD and switching on the PMS and router takes 30sec and is less troublesome than fighting with hotel login, firewalls, proxies and speed :) Not a fancy jet but I got my own, working network can but does not need to be connected to the internet.
Anyway, this only shows how versatile Plex already become. IMHO Plex already solve the difficult problems and with central proxy server, sync, mobile server and share there are already amazing features one could hardly believe.
Having control of the (own) proxy server would just make it perfect for some who like to keep it local (with all the drawbacks this also brings with it).
In a perfect world the two can be combined and PMS acts as local proxy (with local users) and if a user want to share beyond the local walls, he needs to register with myplex and the local proxy simply connects to the plex central proxy and things work as they should. Sort of reengineering a 1.0 solution into the 2.0 :)
edit: actually, I'm no expert but wouldn't be also an advantage for Plex if the local "traffic" / permission requests, etc. would go through a local server and not through myplex? I would imagine if millions of Plex users are going trough the myplex server, that would cause (expensive) traffic?
