I’m a new to Plex and big fan…but why does Plex require an Internet connection to watch content on the same network? I’m considering retirement to an area with spotty internet…I was hoping too use Plex to while away my time when the 'net is down. Apparently not possible.
Thoughts? Workarounds?
Note I use the Plex App via Roku to watch content.
Your Plex Pass is a subscription. To fulfill the subscription’s extras, it needs the connection.
Because a subscription can lapse at any point in time (cancellation, etc), it always checks because in the general sense, the software doesn’t know the details of your account.
There are a few ways to disconnect temporarily but doing so does disable all Plex Pass extras.
The fact is that the only part of Plex locally that really “requires” internet is the fluff of “Plex Home.” My Plex works fine when my internet goes out.
Of course if you have the features of “Plex Home” turned on then internet is required else Plex has no way to verify the status of a Plex Pass.
My recommendation is to look closely at the features unique to “Plex Home” and if your internet is spotty and you do not really need those features then turn “Plex Home” completely off. You can even have multiple users without using “Home” they just need their own free Plex account and then you invite them as “friends” rather than as part of your home.
The other piece is you may have to allow insecure connections on the same network for some clients to work correctly without internet.
Thanks, but as a newb to plex much of that was lost. Not even sure what Plex Home is nor how to disable it in my player. I tried watching a movie tonight (720p, not that challenging of a stream) and the Roku suddenly crawled so slow that the movie “Loading” was stuck at 39%. I just tonight added another external hard drive to my Mac (Plex Server), wondering if that’s the case…
@Rossdillon said:
Thanks, but as a newb to plex much of that was lost. Not even sure what Plex Home is nor how to disable it in my player.
Try reading here and see if this helps
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203815766-What-is-Plex-Home-
I don’t have the Roku client, does it allow for manually specifying the connection details. I know I’ve seen some of my clients in the past connect to the external address of my router, I don’t know if this is because it has to do this for the HTTPS to work or not. In the iPhone you can manually specify a server connection in the settings under advanced and server connections, if the Roku has this can you put the internal address of your Plex server in there?
The Roku app supports setting two manual connections by IP. If you wish to turn off HTTPS on your LAN, it will support it. Typical operation is to allow fallback to HTTP (Settngs - Server - Network)
Here is how the Roku client looks.
