I want to unlock the ability to view content on my mobile device. I can do that with a one-time purchase (payed with google opinion rewards) or with a subscription. I want to unlock the ability for my entire family though, across multiple devices. Do I have to pay the “one-time payment” for every device? If so, the plex subscription might be worth it. Is there any other major benefit to having a plex subscription?
You create logins on your server which is authenticated through them. I don’t think it routes traffic, just sends login tokens.
Yeah, the login makes sense. But media is usually streamed directly to clients.
This is problematic because if Plex suffers an outage (which has happened before) users are suddenly unable to sign in. Even if your media server is running fine, through no fault of your own your content becomes inaccessible.
Jellyfin does not have this issue because authentication is handled locally.
However, Plex has too many nice features so I’ll be staying with them for the time being. Credits/intro skipping and Plexamp are a godsend, and the UI is in my opinion way better than what Jellyfin has.
You can specify networks that don’t require authentication at Plex.tv. When our internet is down at home, we can still use Plex.
The catch is that you need to set this up ahead of time as it can’t be done while in the middle of an outage. Also you’ll only be able to access the main server owner account.
Outages don’t happen too often these days, but I run Emby alongside Plex and it comes in handy in situations like this.