What gets me is how they never stop harassing me to use streaming services I don't want to use. That plus the server often being slow to seek has me looking for an alternative.

You can turn off all their streaming options in the settings.

On web:

- Screwdriver/wrench icon top-right

- In the left panel look for the "<your username>" heading, underneath it, click "online sources"

- Click "Edit" and change "Enabled" to "Disabled"

You won't see those sources again.

As for seeking, I never see delays when using direct play (which is near 100% of my usage). I tried seeking with a transcode just now and it takes ~1s from interaction to the video playing again, which isn't too bad and I don't think is avoidable.

If you watch transcodes a lot and this bothers you though, consider whether "Optimized Versions" (transcoding ahead of time) would be good for you. Aside from that, I don't think a solution exists, it's a problem inherent to seeking while transcoding.

Not a Plex employee or anything, I've just been using it for what feels like close to a decade now.

EDIT: I just watched some stuff through Plex on my Apple TV and seeking is actually instant. On the Apple TV, each button click jumps forward ten seconds or so and as far as I can tell, each jump is instantaneous, no buffering or delays whatsoever.

What annoys me is that it insists on transcoding when streaming remotely. I have plenty of bandwidth and everything is set to maximum quality but it still tries to transcode and breaks more often than not. It works fine when I'm on a ssh tunnel and it thinks I'm on the same network.

Have you had a look at Server Settings -> Remote Access -> "Limit remote stream bitrate"?

And on the client, make sure Settings -> Quality -> (Internet|Remote) Streaming is set to the highest setting.

Which those settings, my phone defaults to Original quality (no transcoding) even on cellular.

Just for the record, setting all the client quality settings to the maximum solved it for me as well. No more transcoding. Thanks again!

Thanks for the pointers! That's good to hear that it's not a fundamental problem. I have checked all settings on the server side and there is no limit to the remote streaming bitrate.

I'll double-check the settings on the mobile client when I have a chance.

What gets me is their servers have to be up in order for your Plex server to work, even locally within your own Network (or on the device hosting the server).

It happens occasionally that their servers go down and nobody is able to stream anything. I don't know why their servers are a dependancy in that chain at all, I probably looked it up before but I don't recall it being a good reason.

I don't believe this is true, do you have more details?

It's needed for authentication but locally, it should be nearly fully functional. At worst, you should need to set up a subnet that's allowed without auth in the server's network settings.

Aside from that, internet is mostly needed for downloading metadata and the server can work just fine without an internet connection.

How bout' this: later tonight, I'll unplug my modem and try to play some Plex on my LAN. Stand by for a few hours, and I'll have an answer. :-)

While you're experimenting, try to set up the authless subnet in your settings. Settings -> Network -> "List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth".

My local Plex server to AppleTV client has always worked fine on the rare occasions my internet has been down.

Since I started using Plex near 10 years ago I’ve never experienced any sort of service unavailability.

You do need to be online though to set up a client for the first time to your local server, which is annoying, but has never been a problem for me.

When my internet went down a few weeks ago, I couldn't stream from my Plex server (Windows 10) to my Xbox One X on the same network. Not sure if that's due to Plex not having an online connection or because most everything Xbox dies when the internet goes out or Xbox Live goes down.

Not even with the DLNA server that is included?