Hey all. Will plexconnect work if I take Apple TV outside my network. From what I understand, plexconnect is a DNS server and a web server? we point the Apple TV to use this DNS server which will return the Apple TV trailer host ip as my local ip therefore now using the local web server process to serve out plex. Is this correct? (I’m now thinking there might not actually be a true DNS server process that plexconnect kicks off now)
Well I guess without knowing how this truly works, I can’t get my head around how to make this work outside my home network. (If there’s a post on this, I couldn’t find it). Thanks for the help everyone.
In theory, if you had a computer running PlexConnect and pointing Settings.py to an external IP address where a machine running PMS can be reached (with all necessary port forwarding and other networking taken care of) should (albeit with bad performance due to the latency and bandwidth) allow an Apple TV on the same network to view the remote files.
The performance would be very poor at least at this time as there is no way to set the Transcode Quality therefore you will be trying to play very high bitrate files over the internet and there may not be enough bandwidth to make that possible.
Using just an Apple TV at a remote location without PlexConnect running on the same network may be possible (same as above except you point the DNS address to the remote network where you have opened port 80 and forwarded its traffic to the machine running PlexConnect) but until you are able to select transcoding quality, you are probably better served by using the Plex iOS app and airplaying to the Apple TV.
`cc
I actually got this to work quite well.
I had to port forward the following
DNS : UDP port 53 to the machine running plexconnect
HTTP: TCP port 80 to the machine running plexconnect
PMS: TCP port of your pms to the machine running the PMS (This is probably setup for most people)
There was also some code problems in the DNSServer.py file. For some reason it was set to use the local IP of the machine running plexconnect even if I disabled the GDM PMS server lookup. So I had to make some coding changes to use param['IP_PMS'] instead of param['IP_Self'] in the appropriate places.
As far as transcoding and WAN lag, that is proving to be a non-issue. I'm not sure what the default transcode bitrate is, but quality is great and I experience no lag. Now I do have a 20mbps Upstream rate and in my remote location about 40mbps down so your mileage might very depending on what you have.
There is also the caveat that because I don't have a static IP, I would have to constantly change the DNS server used in the ATV to my new IP assigned from my ISP when I get a new one. With the current state of the settings.py I would have to update it as well to use this new IP address for my PMS. Although this could be coded to do a DNS lookup on my dynDNS hostname, and it would then have to dynamically update the DNS server to use it.
I also have another problem with none of the images loading correctly, but I think that's another problem related to PMS xml repackaging.
Or you could just be patient and wait for MyPlex support ;)
Interesting results though.
I got the images to work now. Go to the PMS settings and click Show Advanced Settings, and then select Network. Here you are able to set IP/Netmask of addresses that are allowed to remote in without authorization. I had to add in the following.
your-remote-Ip-that-needs-access/255.255.255.0,ip-of-machine-running-pms/255.255.255.0,127.0.0.1/255.255.255.0
Well this is was a fun exercise, but myplex support should be coming soon and none of this will be necessary (although I don't think theres away to get around the static IP problem, unless they roll this in with some myplex dns service) but this is all you should need if you can't wait.
Or you could just be patient and wait for MyPlex support ;)
How long? :rolleyes:
can anyone comment on steps on how to get this to work.. I have it working internally... and the external appletv does connect as I see the DNS intercept. But I cant get it working with the remote Apple TV....
I am going to guess that 90% of the people out there wont be able to get this to work remotely as most home ISP's block external DNS hosting and if they dont those that are left will almost always block http, still great find that it works though.
I know that I have the DNS looks ups working I see them coming in .. in the logs... anyone know what I need to change?
There are a couple of threads with the answers you are looking for if you have a look in this forum.
Interesting!
Looking forward when the myplex feature is added.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
