Considering my TV is connected directly to my router then why do i need internet in order to start Plex at all. an error message “Plex cannot start without internet”
thanks in advance
This has been addressed in the past and if you had completed a web search you would have found the answer. Plex services needs the internet to cross check ( This isn’t the right term ), provide and verify services. In other words, Plex will not work without internet connectivity on the client and Server side.
Perhaps you forgot that the second rule is “be kind to your fellow community members,” drslevy. I think we should all be asking why our software needs internet connectivity, especially smart TVs, which are known to leak data all over the place. Software that needs internet connectivity to establish local connections is not resilient, and I think Plex should endeavor to find another way to make this work.
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I don’t know what you’re talking about in regards to being kind to your fellow community members. The reason no one else responded is exactly because of what i stated, this question has been answered several times before. I wasn’t being sarcastic. I was just stating facts and not sugar coating anything ( Just the way I am).
In regards to Plex endeavoring to support local playback without the internet. This was never the case and has never been a part of Plex’s mission statement. From what i can understand. In order to provide the level of services and options that they have. Their platform requires an internet connection. If you feel that this isn’t to your liking then maybe start looking for a new solution. There’s tons out there ( Now I’m being sarcastic!!!).
I’m not going to respond to your tone, since I think it speaks for itself. Plex has worked locally, and without an internet connection, for years. Obviously not all features work, but back in the early PS3 days the only thing that worked was DLNA playback with limited metadata.
Also, there are lots of Plex alternatives; I’ve tried many of them and many do work locally. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think anything you’ve said is actually correct, so maybe you’re the one that should go back and search before posting?
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Tone it done, not cool.
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https://www.howtogeek.com/303282/how-to-use-plex-media-server-without-internet-access/
I’m really not trying to be an as*. I don’t have a personal filter. I did a quick search and found the above. In my opinion, Plex has always been geared to the ppl that wanted to access their media remotely and share it as well using the internet. My initial response still stands. I really was being Kind in my minds eye I guess. The fact was that if a search was done, the answer would have been found.
The internet connection is for the app to contact the Mothership to confirm the users credentials.
The forwarded link you provided is from a third party and should be used with care. Having said that it seemed to be ok.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200484903-internet-and-network-requirements/
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Most smart TV platforms don’t install the full Plex app. They only install a “loader”, which is fetching the actual Plex app from the internet when you open it.
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If you don’t want your tv to send whatever crap through the Internet, get a dns filter like pi-hole and stop it from doing so.
This is the real answer. The thing you installed from the app store for your TV that you thought was the Plex client is not. If you look at the size of the app it’s a dead giveaway.
One solution is to use an external streaming device that has a “full” Plex app installed on it. It would also be good if we could locally cache the apps for our authorized smart TVs on our Plex server and have the TV load from there instead of the Internet – the app would load faster then too since it could load at full local LAN speed instead of Internet connect speed.
Yep - Smart TVs are as dumb as a bag of hammers - and by the time they get it in the box in China, it’s components are compromised.
It’s hard to buy a Dumb TV (don’t worry, your Smart one is plenty dumb), but whatever you buy, also buy a capable device to plug into it. Everything you read - are lies. All the promises - are empty.
Smell that? That’s a reality fart. Breathe deep and acquire it’s knowledge…
I just ‘Re-Tooled’ the Juicetown Remote Plexiverse buying 3 Roku Ultras (for about $68 each). Guess what? All 3 of them Plugged into Smart TV’s that never did a smart thing in their lives - ALL OF THEM requiring an external Device - from DAY ONE.
Now, they’ve had 2 external devices plugged into them - the Rokus might last longer than those V1 FireTVs I’m still trying to live down…lol
You haven’t been using Plex very long. There was a time of plex before plex.tv and local playback worked fine without an internet connection. Tone aside, don’t spread misinformation.
@5stringdeath, you are 100% correct and I should have included that but that was a loooong time ago. I have been using Plex for that long. its been so long that I almost forgot that that was the case. That was just about 10 years ago give or take a year. I remember the local playback days. 
So here is my 2 cents which I am sure no one will care about but I am going to rant. I setup PLEX many many many many moons ago. I have moved from a old laptop dedicated through a server and about 6 years ago i switched to a dedicated NAS running QNAP. The reason I got plex was not to stream my movies and TV shows to my phone because it was back when phones couldn’t really play it. and the app was only available on ROKUs and some hacks on smart TVs. I set this up because I have a movie collection over 2000 movies and my DVDs were getting ruined playing them and having my kids touch them with PBandJ hands. so this belief that PLEX is for the internet is load of bull-crap sprinkled with dog feces.
This whole thing came about because people wanted to have their media backed up and accessible from anywhere in their home. Then the internet personal streaming was added later. And this requiring authentication with the plex.tv webserver to access a local licensed PLEX server is a load of over-controlling crap. I should only require a login to the authentication service if I need to access something through the service. If I am not accessing anything off my network it should not require any authentication. If i am accessing my brothers shared library in another state. Then yes authentication should be required. If I am trying to access one of the crap add-on’s like the free movies and TV from Crackle or some other site. Yes authentication required. But if its my Media on my server on my network then no authentication should be required. And this is new in the last 5 years this has changed. when they redid the whole interface they added this so it is not that long ago that this problem occurred.
Again only my 2 cents and what do the devs care about me they already got my money. But maybe just maybe someone somewhere will see this and realize hey we did make a change for ■■■■■■!
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Haha , love this line.
I won’t argue your rant, and its one other users have shared. However you also must accept its the way of the world now and that is that. There are alternatives you can use for purely local playback, including the original product Plex forked from, Kodi. Or Emby. Or Jellyfin. All will work.
If we all were to accept that is just the way of the world then we might as well just have stayed in caves wondering how fire worked. This can be fixed. I am not asking them to get rid of authentication. But it should only be needed when accessing non local resources. It’s not impossible to fix this and yes it is a problem. I dont live in a big city where they have millions sometimes billions invested in the internet infrastructure. So yeah I think it should be modified to handle both scenarios. Authenticate to plex.tv when accessing something off the internet or accessing my server remotely. But if I am connecting from the same network then plex.tv should have absolutely nothing to do with my connection.
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Then setup:
List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth
PMS / Settings / Network
Add your local subnet and you’ll be good.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authentication-for-local-network-access/
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So I set this up after your post. but today my network went down for about an hour and I thought hey great time to check that fix. Well it doesn’t work. The Rokus in the house and the Fire TV all were stuck on the local account and could not switch accounts because it could not talk to the authentication server. Again let me reiterate LOCAL account. So these accounts aren’t stored anywhere on the plex servers they only exist within the my PMS. so why can i not switch accounts. This is like a half assed fix at best it still does not let me access my own media without being connected to the internet. which cannot be guaranteed 100% of the time.
Still a bug and broken.
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This is the main reason I have switched (mostly) to Jellyfin, no reliance on any server other than the one I have control of.
Really only keeping Plex up for my music library on Plex Amp, it’s very cool in Apple Car Play.
