Is internet and authentication required?

[michaelprescott 0]

I'm very tired of Plex and am looking for something better that isn't so unstable and invasive.  

 

I've had at least two big problems with Plex lately.  The first was when I discovered that ALL of our content was being relayed OUT of our LAN to their company's servers and then back IN to our LAN just to get it to our iOS devices. I disabled remote access and believe I may have that under control now.  Our internet usage has gone down significantly, but I still see a lot of chatter and calling home, but hopefully it is just to pull metadata and not streaming our content to/through their servers.   The second problem I had with Plex was and still is, the iOS apps want to authenticate or login through the Plex company's services.  Even with our server configured to not require authentication for local IPs, the iOS apps have all sorts of problems with accessing our library.  It's all become very unstable, unreliable, unfriendly, invasive, and just unbearable to use.

 

So, what I'm looking for is a simple media server to run on our Synology NAS, and complementary apps for iOS devices so that we can easily access all of our content, just our content, directly, within our LAN.  Ideally, the server and apps would respect people's privacy, not require authentication when running within a LAN, and stream our content directly from the internal server to our devices.  I think this boils down to a couple questions.

 

Does Emby require an internet connection to deliver content from an Emby server within our LAN on a DiskStation to iOS Emby clients also within our LAN?

Do Emby clients (or the server) perform or require any authentication with external servers?

 

[Luke 36992]

Hi, welcome ! 

 

 

 

Does Emby require an internet connection to deliver content from an Emby server within our LAN on a DiskStation to iOS Emby clients also within our LAN?

 

Emby does not require an internet connection.

 

 

 

Do Emby clients (or the server) perform or require any authentication with external servers?

Only if you opt into the Emby Connect feature, and this will never relay your media information.

[Scott D 62]

Unless things have changed in the past few months, my experience is that there is a need for authentication for paid versions of Emby. 

I may be incorrect, but my understanding is that the server premiere key provides for the unlocking of features on the apps that attach to the server.  If a premiere feature is used by the app, that app will be authorized by the premiere key.  You can adjust the number of devices that will be authorized by the plan chosen at the time of purchase of the server key (or upgraded as needed).  If an app hasn’t been used in an unspecified period of time, the authorization will be released, and made available for other apps.

In the past I have experienced issues when an internet connection wasn’t available, but LAN connectivity was up.  Specifically, the app installed on a Samsung TV could not be loaded without an internet connection being available.  I believe the problem is with the Samsung SmartHub and not the Emby app, but nonetheless, the app could not be loaded.

Since internet uptime has not been an issue for me for many years, the problem has not been apparent lately.  But, based on the licensing and premiere feature unlocking, I would imagine that an internet connection would be required.

I do have a cabin in the woods with limited/no internet connectivity.  I have experienced problems in the past, but have gotten around them by providing a hot spot to the internet when there.  Since this has eliminated problems in the past, I have not tested without internet in several months.

Hope this helps.

[Luke 36992]

For Emby Premiere, there is an occasional validation check of Premiere status, but this information is cached and therefore doesn't' require internet access each time. The apps are resilient to loss of internet access for quite a bit of time before you'll have to validate again. Thanks.

[EdBarnes 2]

Is this still true?  I seem to be having issues with validation and app authorization when my internet link dies.

[Luke 36992]

On 4/4/2023 at 9:50 AM, EdBarnes said:

Is this still true?  I seem to be having issues with validation and app authorization when my internet link dies.

Hi, how long is your internet out?