Stop breaking things.

General Discussions
21

I can think of a few reasons why they require log into plex.tv instead of local. Many of them do center around plex pass though. With as volatile as that subscription can be it makes sense to me to use that access.

I have a feeling your largest complaint about managing users locally is really a lack of knowledge on your part about how the app was designed to work. I doubt that could added easily if at all, and it is naive to state otherwise.

Another point to be made here is that your poor internet isn’t plex’s fault. You shouldn’t complain that a software solution designed to take advantage of the web doesn’t provide all of it’s features when you aren’t online. Personally if it wasn’t for the great web based features Plex offers i would never of started to use it. I already have several ways to stream content locally in my house. For that functionality there are allot of other options.

22

@mavrrick said:
I can think of a few reasons why they require log into plex.tv instead of local. Many of them do center around plex pass though. With as volatile as that subscription can be it makes sense to me to use that access.

I have a lifetime plex pass. They do not need to check if I still have a lifetime pass every time I log in.

@mavrrick said:
I have a feeling your largest complaint about managing users locally is really a lack of knowledge on your part about how the app was designed to work. I doubt that could added easily if at all, and it is naive to state otherwise.

The way local users have been implemented in Plex could be used as a schoolbook example of poor design. You add a slow and fragile external dependency for information that is only used locally. What would you think if e.g. Androids contact list didn’t work without internet? What about waiting for posters and metadata to download every time you browse your plex server, instead of keeping a copy locally? Local information, locally used, locally stored. If you keep a secondary copy online, great, but you shouldn’t depend on it.

And yes, it can be added easily. Instead of “fetch data from the internet” you do “do we have a usable copy of the data here? Let’s use that, and also see if we can fetch a fresher copy for next time.” A local cache for web content is trivial to implement, so this is a matter of choice, not of feasibility.

@mavrrick said:
Another point to be made here is that your poor internet isn’t plex’s fault. You shouldn’t complain that a software solution designed to take advantage of the web doesn’t provide all of it’s features when you aren’t online. Personally if it wasn’t for the great web based features Plex offers i would never of started to use it. I already have several ways to stream content locally in my house. For that functionality there are allot of other options.

I’m not blaming my poor internet on Plex. I’m stating that their choice to unconditionally require internet connectivity for local actions is a horrible design choice. As someone with a few decades in the IT field, I can guarantee you this: At some point, there will be an incident when something breaks with the Plex servers, there really is no such thing as 100% uptime. Every single customer will be denied access to their product while Plex fixes whatever broke. This is Plex’s choice, and completely unnecessary - the core features of Plex could easily function without internet access.

Plex advertises a solution that streams locally. I paid for a solution that streams locally. I expect that solution to keep streaming locally, not turn into an always-online-just-because-we-say-so solution. And it is “just because we say so”, there are no valid technical reason for downloading a codec lib on demand that could not also be handled by keeping a local copy and downloading updates to this file, when possible and needed.

23

Gotta say I’m right there with ya. Sitting on a ship out in the pacific right now trying to cast content I’ve previously synced with my iPad to my chromecast as I’ve done in the past. I even have a (very pathetic) internet connection, so the chromecast (obviously the wrong device for this kind of use, but it’s what I have) can talk to google – but find that now I can’t seek to any position when casting synced content. Any attempt to seek while casting synced content restarts the video to the beginning. F’ing annoying. Can’t resume watching a movie with my daughter. We have to watch it again from the beginning. (At this exact moment Plex can no longer see my chromecast, even though other apps on the same iPad work with it fine.)

Used to be a big fan of Plex. It had its imperfections, but you could see things improving. Even went as far as to personally donate my time to help improve transcoder quality and push to implement TLS. Now I’m loosing faith. Not sure you guys even eat your own dog food, or test features in the real world.

24

@danjames92 said:
Don’t press update then. No one forced you. You did that of your own fruition. Takes 5 minutes to google if it’s a beta release. I think it should be labelled better though.

I think it’s a bit harsh to say they should google. The support page states:

What is Plex Pass?
Plex Pass is a subscription service that gives you the best Plex experience available. Plex Pass gives you:
Early Access to new Plex features.
Access to preview release versions of the Plex Media Server and other Apps before they’re released generally.

Equally the download page where you press Plex Pass makes no reference to beta so why would you then google to see that it is. Plex Pass versions are very mis-leading with how plex is marketing them.

For me Plex Pass downloads are marketed more like User Acceptance Testing as opposed to Beta Testing. It’s clear of late that the plex pass versions are definitely beta and more like unit testing versions too at times.

Plex needs to change it’s roll out model. For me there should be Beta versions for Plex Pass users to be able to access via a Beta forum. There should then be Plex Pass as per the current model for UAT, before official public roll out.

I’ve learned to ignore plex pass versions and monitor the forums before I take the plunge

25

I think Plex should have a native app for the management of your own libraries and metadata that don’t require web, internet or any network to be connected to it. This is how PMS use to be way back then. I’ve said this before that the network or connection to internet shouldn’t matter when editing metadata or anything within your own library.

I to do a lot of traveling to places that have no network or internet connections so this has bugged me for a while. It should be like iTunes were you still have the option to make changes no matter if you have a network connection or not. I think this would be a great improvement overall.

26

@eriksperling said:
I’m not blaming my poor internet on Plex. I’m stating that their choice to unconditionally require internet connectivity for local actions is a horrible design choice. As someone with a few decades in the IT field, I can guarantee you this: At some point, there will be an incident when something breaks with the Plex servers, there really is no such thing as 100% uptime. Every single customer will be denied access to their product while Plex fixes whatever broke. This is Plex’s choice, and completely unnecessary - the core features of Plex could easily function without internet access.

Plex advertises a solution that streams locally. I paid for a solution that streams locally. I expect that solution to keep streaming locally, not turn into an always-online-just-because-we-say-so solution. And it is “just because we say so”, there are no valid technical reason for downloading a codec lib on demand that could not also be handled by keeping a local copy and downloading updates to this file, when possible and needed.

The plex login functionality has never been local to the server. Even before plex home it was either local uncontrolled access or use the plex account to share access. What you are asking for has never beein part of the solution and frankly there isn’t much need for it considering how the app functions. I don’t disagree with the fact it sucks you have to log into a website, but that is just the way it is. You could turn off plex home and disable any need for authentication. That would make it wide open on your local network. There is nothing preventing that. But if you want authentication you need to use there solutions. If you really work in IT you should also be familiar with how complicated SSO solutions can be. I wouldn’t presume this is a simple thing to change to what you want.

27

Wrong. You can implement all Plex Pass features without an Internet connection, Plex Inc need to have the will to make it happen.

Just saying it’s never been like that is irrelevant, we never had internal combustion engines but everybody uses them now, things change!

Regards

28

Just to be clear everyone, you do not need internet to use Plex. The internet is required for certain features:

  • user authentication / switching, yes authentication can be done locally but then there are issues of keeping the local information secure and synced back to plex.tv for remote access.
  • secured conenctions, this is also related to user authentication to check the certificates to make sure the connections are secure, even locally. This could be switched to local authentication if users provide their own certificate, which some users have done. So this could be possible but with most people not knowing how to do this, allowing local authentication would be an issue if people wanted a secure connection.
  • remote access, if you’ve set up you PMS for remote access you need internet anyways so there is little harm requiring it for tings like codecs
  • codecs, there are reasons Plex switch to the new codecs method which I cannot go into. This was not done on a whim. If you really don’t like this, make a feature request to go back to the old method.
  • Plex Pass Premium content (trailers, extras, music videos, lyircs) are all streamed from the internet

Internet is NOT required for these:

  • adding media to your libraries (you won’t get metadata but you can still add them)
  • editing existing metadata
  • streaming locally, if your internet goes out, the stream should continue to play as if nothing happened, if this isn’t working for you check to make sure your app is connected locally and not remotely
  • playing back local trailers, extras, music videos, and lyrics

If any of the above is not working for you without an interent connection, please let me know so we can investigate.

To summarize, (excluding the codec issue) an internet connection is not required if you just want to host your files and stream them locally. If you want to use any of the features that makes Plex what it is, internet is required. We can try to tweak a few things to minimize issues if there is no internet, but the internet is a big part of Plex and always will be.

29

They need the will and a reason to make the change. Considering this app is about bringing your content with you and functioning over the internet i don’t see the later being made easy. Frankly if your diver for usage is simply local playback then plex is considerable overkill. Ontop of that if your playback is local why do you need user id controls to begin with. The functionality that is present is completely sufficient for local playback, and it is a fully functional solution without plexpass for local playback.

The fact also remains that for a simple local playback solution there are much easier systems to use.

30

@mavrrick said:
The fact also remains that for a simple local playback solution there are much easier systems to use.

This is really not a helpful position to take. You are basically saying “Use something else because Plex sucks.” Well, some aspects may indeed suck, but they are part of the product and need to be improved. Excuses should not be made for lackluster performance of a commercial product. Demand excellence, and that’s what you’ll get. Accept mediocrity and … …

You also seem to forget that Plex was, from the start, a local playback solution. It wasn’t until Plex improved its trancoder that it was really viable for quality remote playback, and it wasn’t until Elan and team implemented TLS that Plex was viable for secure remote playback. (Before TLS/https, any remote use risked exposing your Plex server to public access. Please read the long threads about this.) Both of these things happened only in the last two years, and only as a result of demanding change.

And for remote playback — here I am out in the Pacific ocean on a satellite internet connection, and guess what my opinion is of Plex sync right now? hint: it’s not positive.

31

@MovieFan.Plex said:

  • streaming locally, if your internet goes out, the stream should continue to play as if nothing happened, if this isn’t working for you check to make sure your app is connected locally and not remotely

If any of the above is not working for you without an interent connection, please let me know so we can investigate.

I cannot stream locally without an internet connection. You can’t download codecs.

32

@MovieBuff44 said: I think Plex should have a native app for the management of your own libraries and metadata that don’t require web, internet or any network to be connected to it. This is how PMS use to be way back then.

@jkiel said:You also seem to forget that Plex was, from the start, a local playback solution.

+1,000,000…

33

@MovieFan.Plex said:

  • user authentication / switching, yes authentication can be done locally but then there are issues of keeping the local information secure and synced back to plex.tv for remote access.

My use case: Me and my wife have access to 4 libraries. My daughter should have access to two of these. My wife is posted in a country with poor internet, and we’re there with her. We do not use remote access.

Why can’t I have local playback and local restriction of content? Securing local passwords isn’t very hard, hashing’s been around for seven decades now. Also, if you’re worried that intruders already inside my network might retrieve my local Plex passwords, don’t be. If they get that far, media access is the least of my problems.

  • remote access, if you’ve set up you PMS for remote access you need internet anyways so there is little harm requiring it for tings like codecs

Yes there is. It’s acceptable to not have remote access when internet is down. It is not acceptable to not have local access when internet is down.

  • codecs, there are reasons Plex switch to the new codecs method which I cannot go into. This was not done on a whim. If you really don’t like this, make a feature request to go back to the old method.

If these reasons are technical, I’d like to hear why an additional local copy is so difficult. If they’re legal, provide information on how we can download, build and install local copies ourselves if needed. But please don’t say “Because I say so”, I’m your customer not your child.

To summarize, (excluding the codec issue) an internet connection is not required if you just want to host your files and stream them locally. If you want to use any of the features that makes Plex what it is, internet is required. We can try to tweak a few things to minimize issues if there is no internet, but the internet is a big part of Plex and always will be.

The thing you’re excluding is the actual problem.

34

@mavrrick said:
They need the will and a reason to make the change. Considering this app is about bringing your content with you and functioning over the internet i don’t see the later being made easy. Frankly if your diver for usage is simply local playback then plex is considerable overkill. Ontop of that if your playback is local why do you need user id controls to begin with. The functionality that is present is completely sufficient for local playback, and it is a fully functional solution without plexpass for local playback.

The fact also remains that for a simple local playback solution there are much easier systems to use.

Reason: Provide a reliable product, not a fragile one. Quality matters.

I want to bring my content with me. Also to locations where I cannot be online. Plex claims “anytime, anywhere” but this just does not work with the recent change.

I need local user id controls because I have kids.

Plex is a great product. It does pretty much everything I could want, and I’m not even using all of its features. The quality still isn’t the greatest though, there’s a lot of minor annoyances (will you ever fix subtitles properly Plex?), but I can deal with those. What gets me annoyed is that they remove the ability to continue using the product I’ve paid for in the way I intended to, and could, use it when I paid.

35

@eriksperling said:
Why can’t I have local playback and local restriction of content? Securing local passwords isn’t very hard, hashing’s been around for seven decades now. Also, if you’re worried that intruders already inside my network might retrieve my local Plex passwords, don’t be. If they get that far, media access is the least of my problems.
Correct. In this use case, it would be simple to hash your user and passwords and store them locally. The problem is that this would only work in this specific use case. So there would have to be multiple solutions for multiple use cases. It’s possible something like this may happen in the future, but for now Plex wants to focus on broader solutions.
Yes there is. It’s acceptable to not have remote access when internet is down. It is not acceptable to not have local access when internet is down.
All devices should cache the last user that is logged in and continue to work. If this is not working for you, please let me know specifics so we can look into it.
If these reasons are technical, I’d like to hear why an additional local copy is so difficult. If they’re legal, provide information on how we can download, build and install local copies ourselves if needed. But please don’t say “Because I say so”, I’m your customer not your child.
See my answer below. I think you are misunderstanding the new codec feature.

Let me clarify the new codecs feature. PMS previously came installed with many codecs. Now PMS will only download the codecs when they are needed. The codecs are installed locally onto your PMS machine, so once they are installed, you don’t need an internet connection to use them. So the limitation is that you need internet if you want to play a new codec. If it is a codec you’ve already used, they should work just fine.

36

@MovieFan.Plex said:
So the limitation is that you need internet if you want to play a new codec. If it is a codec you’ve already used, they should work just fine.

A perfect example of not thinking a new feature through. If you do something like this, you need to have options of “Download codecs on demand” and “Download all codecs when available”.

37

@MovieFan.Plex said:

@eriksperling said:
Why can’t I have local playback and local restriction of content? Securing local passwords isn’t very hard, hashing’s been around for seven decades now. Also, if you’re worried that intruders already inside my network might retrieve my local Plex passwords, don’t be. If they get that far, media access is the least of my problems.
Correct. In this use case, it would be simple to hash your user and passwords and store them locally. The problem is that this would only work in this specific use case. So there would have to be multiple solutions for multiple use cases. It’s possible something like this may happen in the future, but for now Plex wants to focus on broader solutions.
Yes there is. It’s acceptable to not have remote access when internet is down. It is not acceptable to not have local access when internet is down.
All devices should cache the last user that is logged in and continue to work. If this is not working for you, please let me know specifics so we can look into it.
If these reasons are technical, I’d like to hear why an additional local copy is so difficult. If they’re legal, provide information on how we can download, build and install local copies ourselves if needed. But please don’t say “Because I say so”, I’m your customer not your child.
See my answer below. I think you are misunderstanding the new codec feature.

Let me clarify the new codecs feature. PMS previously came installed with many codecs. Now PMS will only download the codecs when they are needed. The codecs are installed locally onto your PMS machine, so once they are installed, you don’t need an internet connection to use them. So the limitation is that you need internet if you want to play a new codec. If it is a codec you’ve already used, they should work just fine.

Can we get a little more detail into why we moved to downloading codec instead of shipping with the installer? If this is some part of a big new feature that can’t be announced then that’s fine. Say that. But if not can we get a little more insight into the rationale?

38

@jjross said:
Can we get a little more detail into why we moved to downloading codec instead of shipping with the installer?

My guess is DRM.

39

@jjross said:
Can we get a little more detail into why we moved to downloading codec instead of shipping with the installer? If this is some part of a big new feature that can’t be announced then that’s fine. Say that. But if not can we get a little more insight into the rationale?

The same reason Linux doesn’t ship with them and you have to manually install them there, too, most likely.

40

@jkiel
First don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say plex sucks in any way. What i was saying is that there may be other solutions that are limited to local playback that may be a better for his use case. There are many apps that do local playback well and have 10 ft interfaces. Some of them could be a better fit if access he really needs this level of playback. I have been running plex for about 3 years now on my home server and for the first 18 months It was never used for local playback. It is only being used now becuase of Chromecasts and the Samsung smart TV apps.

The part that really sets plex apart has always been the remote playback functionality. You may not think it was capeable before changes you mentioned, but i would like to ask what other solution was avaliable for the consumer that came close to it’s functionality. I have used several that were suppose to fill it and all were lacking in many ways. compatiablity was one of them. Plex has always led in that way.

Heck my solutions still uses media center and my movies as a portal for local access as well. I have been going back and forth on going all in with Plex for local playback. I haven’t done it yet, but that is from a plex reliablity concern, but a video file format concern. I will admit though internet connection quality isn’t my concern as it is generally not a problem. Thought the samsung app will fall on it’s face if internet isn’t avaliable.

@eriksperling
I am a bit confused by your comment stating “What gets me annoyed is that they remove the ability to continue using the product I’ve paid for in the way I intended to, and could, use it when I paid.”. This user id functionality has never worked this way. You have always needed to log in to use user authentication. All they changed was the ability to use plex home with users created essentially as subaccounts under the servers owners ID.

I understand the desire for Plex home for kids. I use it for my daughter as well. I was very pleased when it was announced since it also added managemnet for the sub accounts that made decideing what content she got to see very easy to manage. I am just not completely convinced this won’t open up the web app for a major rewrite, for a fairly specific use case. I am not saying it can’t be done, just there is a balance between rick vs reward.

As far as the comment “Anytime, Anywhere” i am sure that was directed at streaming remotely and not local playback. as I have said previously Local playback really shouldn’t be an issue.