Over the summer I took a few roads trips and I brought along my WD MyPassport Wireless Pro which includes Plex as a media server. I’ve been using this setup for a few years but over the past while the experience has been getting worse and worse and over the Summer I found that in most instances I couldn’t get the Plex server to play anything.
I’ve tried lots of different methods to try and get the server to provide access to my users but none of them behave in a consistent manner and most of the issues I’ve had have centered around playing back music. Sometimes the system would work great and other times nothing would happen, the plex server would say it was playing but nothing would actually play back on my iOS devices.
Often I would have problems where the app couldn’t seem to “see” the Plex server and other times it would see things fine but wouldn’t play back.
When the PMS had a connection to the internet everything worked perfectly fine so all of this seems to be related to using the server offline.
Here is what I have tried to make things work (all with limited or inconsistent results):
-
Sign out of the server - When I sign out of the server I can manually add the server in the iOS app’s “Advanced Settings” but often times the app would show the server in the advanced section but would NOT show the server in the server selection panel (the slide out on the new iOS app). When songs and videos would play (assuming the app could see the server) they would play well.
-
Leave the server signed in - This seems to work, even without a connection, but again there were lots of times when the server’s libraries would just be grey and unselectable. The server was running fine but it was impossible to play anything and adding the server to the advanced settings didn’t work (the server STILL wouldn’t show up).
-
Using the web player to play content - this worked ok for movies when the server was signed out but worked poorly when the server was signed in. The web page would just hang when trying to load on a signed in server. Though if luck was on my side and things worked as expected the video would be reliable over the web interface.
-
Disable authentication on local networks - this seems to have no effect on anything. The server always seems to want me to authenticate.
I’m not really complaining (though I’m super sad that I can’t seem to get an “easy” portable server that works offline) but I’m writing this post in the hopes that SOMEONE at Plex will see it and give me their specific recommendations on how all of this SHOULD work. That way, if it’s not working as expected, I can report a bug and hope that it will be fixed.
So, for the plex devs, what is the suggested way to run a plex server that will go through periods of being online and periods of being offline? All of the users accessing the server are in my home though I am fine to sign out on the server if that means things work consistently (I’ll just be sad not to have my premium music libraries).
Should I stay signed in? Add trusted networks? Sign out?
Is there a way to get everything working and still have access to my premium music features (volume leveling and sweet fades)?
PLEASE Plex…give us a KB article on how to run with an inconsistent connection.
