Server Version#: 1.20.4.3517 (ubuntu linux)
Player Version#: Web & AppleTV ?
Im assuming this is caused by trade-offs in writing features.
One of the original reasons I setup plex years ago was to have access to media during internet outages. It always worked well for this. More recently I luckily havent had to deal with this. Until yesterday, I live outside nashville and due to the bombing we’ve been without internet.
The user experience I found accessing PMS on the Apple TV and iPad was terrible and only half working. It seems like every interaction has a call to the internet that has to timeout before it can complete. Click a title, wait 60-90s for it to try and load which it will fail 1/3 of the time.
The web player wont even open when the internet is down, which I find ridiculous.
I also was having buffering issues with certain titles, tried to sync them to the iPad and that failed with an error validating plex.tv address.
It sorta works if your patient, but overall the UX when on LAN only is quite horrid, which was very disappointing.
I have some limited connectivity now with a different ISP and my PMS is working fine. Which is good, but also disappointing.
First off, I hope you and yours are okay. I have a good friend whose daughter recently moved to Nashville to teach.
Of course there are obvious things that can’t work without internet access, but with a little preparation (while you have internet access), Plex works fine for me in an offline situation. Here’s a How-To that shows you what you need to do:
Also, quite some time ago I found this walk-through that I found easier to follow. It was updated recently, so it should be good for the current versions of Plex:
That guide seems helpful, I will work through that, thanks.
Several years ago my comcast internet would go down once or twice a month and PMS would continue working fine, so it really surprised me to have issues this time.
I can only echo the previous post - PMS has internet DRM baked in for the most features - user switching, live tv, new player - the list just goes on.
If you want to keep baby sitting Plex after each new release to find out what else they put behind the DRM internet only wall - good luck with that.
I’m running Emby in parallel because when offline → “it just works” - and once they get clients UI right, will jump the ship once and for all.
I have mine working fine without internet on my Android devices. The only issues is that it takes a bit longer to initially start, but after that it works normally with the exception that the Plex live and movie section are not available or profile changes which is fine since I normally do not use that.
