Edit: I have reacted prematurely when raising this topic. I have clarification now that the specific use of plex.tv that i picked on is actually additional and not instead of local checks. So I take back what I said - but may be change this request to ask for documentation of features and functionality and players that should work without internet and also the set that can work without plex.tv and of course the sets that need them
The Title of this Topic has now been changed to reflect that
Please can you try and stop the reliance on internet access 24x7 for Plex functionality. A user should be able to use plex in the local network environment without need for the internet.
I am stumbling on implementation where the internet is assumed to be available - eg recent thread on Plex on Windows Phone where the list of available players was fetched from plex.tv pms resources rather than the local server clients list
I think it is wrong to move in this direction - not now. May be in 10 years time when internet access will be mandatory and is available in every dot on this earth and in every household and every village and will be at utility prices like electricity and water.
However I am a little unsure which features actually require plex.tv / internet access - so I feel unprepared to make a solid statement on what is okay and what should be improved apart from a general "less dependency" notion.
Another thing is that the whole subject is - for me - loaded with a bunch of things like:
"Connectivity can be wonky sometimes"
"Plex had a couple of problems with their servers - remember christmas? - that affected my infrastructure directl"
"I want to be able to control what goes on in my infrastructure"
So perhaps I am lacking the proper objectivity here....
Also I think there is a difference for me between general internet access and plex.tv availability.
I would really like to know which features are unavailable if you have no internet at all and which features will stop working if plex.tv is unreachable.
From what I know the agents & metadata in general need internet as they fetch data from external services.
Will they work if plex.tv is down but internet works?
What about sharing the server via myplex? I would guess that would need plex.tv.
What about sharing the server via dyndns/domain and port forwarding
Would you be able to get to the Plex/Web without plex.tv availability? What about user authentication?
Yes it opens up a lot of questions and there is a need for a list of features and functions that we as users should expect to work without internet and those to be available without plex.tv
I am aware that there were changes made to allow some functions needing plex.tv to work with cached information eg use of cached tokens / information
And very obvious one would not expect sharing to work without internet
But for me with all my existing metadata and my operation confined to my local network and where I do not use myPlex/plex.tv authentication locally then I expect to be fully operational locally including use of Remote/Companion features on my locally connected mobile devices and players without having plex.tv or the internet - especially when I will not use a Samsung Smart TV Plex App as that is internet dependent
Ok - i have clarification now that the use of plex.tv/pms/resources.xml by the windows 8 phone plex app is supplementary and not instead of local discovery
I’ve “liked” the original post in this thread but I’ll just put this here to be clear:
I’d love very much to be able to use Plex within my household when I don’t have access to an internet connection. Our connection is fairly unstable here and when it goes down is when we’d like to be able to use our local media library on our internal WiFi network the most.
