I don’t agree with that. That could open the system up to abuse far to easily. It’s going to need to be online from time to time to fetch meta data, to update account (cache info) info, etc anyway so there is no reason not to check the status of PP at reasonable intervals.
I live in a rural area and all it takes is a thunderstorm or some drunk redneck to run into a telephone pole and the internet for an entire zip code goes down. I have a lifetime account but my kids not being able to watch PLEX, which is our only “streaming” service, is ridiculous and it drives me and my 4 kids nuts because some of their devices will work w/o internet and some won’t. We also homeschool so all our homeschooling DVDs are ripped to PLEX as well. No Internet, no schooling.
The main reason I bought a lifetime PLEX pass and built a dedicated “PLEX” server AND spent the last year ripping 300 movies, countless TV series, music CD collections and homeschool materials is so we could watch something, anything when our unreliable Comcast isp goes down.
I agree with most of what has been said in this thread. I am not against some sort of online requirement to activate the server when buying a lifetime pass (or that you have paid your subscription fee for the month) and to check for updates.
But… It all comes down to how reliable your home media server is. I use my server(s) for just this. Accessing my media when I want to access it. I don’t want to be limited because of something this stupid.
The “Home” feature is the main reason I switched to Plex in the first place. To be able to limit access to Saw and other adult movies, if you know what I mean, from my daughter.
I got the memo about this awhile back when the Plex authentication service was down.
No problem with my internet connection, just not able to access my Plex server with local IP or via plex.tv/web.
I am not able to tell you how disappointed I was. I thought the Plex would be the last personal media service I would need to look at.
I am quite new to the Plex scene moving from Kodi as my main “embedded” system. I had big plans creating a master DVR system to rule them all but now I have halted my plans, searching for a more reliable server (emby?).
It is not acceptable to lose all media services like Live TV, DVR, home videos/photos, music and movies only because the router breaks or your ISP’s technician decides to cut the wrong connection.
This all just tells me that there is something else behind the forced online requirement. Data mining or then the project is just not as mature as I thought.
Venting done.
It isn’t just about the reliability of your own Internet connection or your own Home Media Server though. When Plex have an outage, your own Plex Server is basically unusable.
It’s even more frustrating when this happens like it did a week or so ago and Plex refuse to acknowledge the issue, don’t update their status page and blatantly ignore any queries by social media.
@dj_chalky said:
It isn’t just about the reliability of your own Internet connection or your own Home Media Server though. When Plex have an outage, your own Plex Server is basically unusable.It’s even more frustrating when this happens like it did a week or so ago and Plex refuse to acknowledge the issue, don’t update their status page and blatantly ignore any queries by social media.
And today is a good example of this… 
I used this as a work around for a similar issue and it seems to have fixed it!
https://www.howtogeek.com/303282/how-to-use-plex-media-server-without-internet-access/
@stevenl1987 said:
I used this as a work around for a similar issue and it seems to have fixed it!https://www.howtogeek.com/303282/how-to-use-plex-media-server-without-internet-access/
Dude, that’s not even remotely related to this topic.
Regarding this “Plex Home DRM” , any closer to a offline mode or reasonable caching of credentials if you must keep this DRM stuff ?
It’s funny, that when Plex was starting up, @elan was so much against DRM this and that but once money started rolling in, you are okay locking out part of home users (if i used the feature) out of our LOCAL media everytime you do maintenance or my ISP acts up.
I’d love to use the feature as we have 2 kids in the house but will never sign up for any feature that requires always-on connection for LOCAL media playback (please dont repeat the same story again about “last user” being able to log in - this defeats the purpose of user switching)
@wally007 said:
@stevenl1987 said:
I used this as a work around for a similar issue and it seems to have fixed it!https://www.howtogeek.com/303282/how-to-use-plex-media-server-without-internet-access/
Dude, that’s not even remotely related to this topic.
Really? I thought the issue was that the authentication required internet connection. The link I provided was a work around so you didn’t need internet authentication for local users. Am I missing something?
PS - The rest of your comment is spot on and truly an annoyance.
@stevenl1987 said:
@wally007 said:
@stevenl1987 said:
I used this as a work around for a similar issue and it seems to have fixed it!https://www.howtogeek.com/303282/how-to-use-plex-media-server-without-internet-access/
Dude, that’s not even remotely related to this topic.
Really? I thought the issue was that the authentication required internet connection. The link I provided was a work around so you didn’t need internet authentication for local users. Am I missing something?
PS - The rest of your comment is spot on and truly an annoyance.
1, The reason why it’s not relevant is because most of us want our kids to use Plex Home. If I allow them (or even advise) to circumvent the Plex Home restrictions - whats the point of Plex Home ?
2, In order to use those workarounds, I’d have to whip up keyboard to setup Plex Server. Woldnt it be easier to just open VLC and play the eff’ing file ?
