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The difference is LAN v/s internet. Doing anything on LAN is a solved problem for pretty much all software. The experience deteriorates severely once you access

The difference is LAN v/s internet. Doing anything on LAN is a solved problem for pretty much all software. The experience deteriorates severely once you access over the internet. I continue to use plex behind nginx on a rented server, but the experience is nothing to write home about.

starttoaster 3y ago
There is some confusion about how accessing Plex outside your LAN works. There's direct server communication and then indirect through Plex's servers. You need to check your server configuration to determine which you're using, because a misconfiguration means you're accessing through one of Plex's relays which is going to be massively degraded performance. I still believe this to be a configuration issue, because things don't just magically get worse because you left your LAN. More information on that here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200931138-troubleshooting-remote-access/?utm_campaign=Plex%20Apps&utm_medium=Plex%20Web&utm_source=Plex%20Apps https://support.plex.tv/articles/200931138-troubleshooting-r... Your ISP's allowed upload speed also becomes a factor once you leave your LAN, and in America, most people's upload speeds are much slower. The hardware of your server, the hardware of your client, the supported codecs of your client, your WAN upload speed, your client's download speed all become factors here. And another thing YouTube does is re-encode videos that are uploaded to commonly supported types to allow for quick and direct playback on client devices. Most people just take whatever movie they downloaded from ThePirateBay and act shocked when they need to transcode the video.
- bubblethink 3y ago
  I rent a gigabit server and have a gigabit connection at home; the client is a shield tv that running android. Videos are h264 and audio is either AC3 or occasionally flac. In other words, all pretty bog standard stuff that doesn't even need transcoding except for bitrate, but my connection is fast enough to not need that. It's not a bandwidth, latency, or HW specs issue. The streams work fine when they work, even with blu ray remuxes at 20+GB per movie. There are just too many annoyances and it's mostly a software issue on the plex side. A lot of times, plex will just show a spinning wheel, not resume, and take really long to seek. I do run plex behind nginx, so it is still possible that there is some config issue, but I doubt it.
  - starttoaster 3y ago
    Check out the server remote access settings some time and make sure direct access is available, like I mentioned above. But I’m willing to just digress as we have apparently wildly different experiences.

starttoaster 3y ago

There is some confusion about how accessing Plex outside your LAN works. There's direct server communication and then indirect through Plex's servers. You need to check your server configuration to determine which you're using, because a misconfiguration means you're accessing through one of Plex's relays which is going to be massively degraded performance. I still believe this to be a configuration issue, because things don't just magically get worse because you left your LAN. More information on that here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200931138-troubleshooting-remote-access/?utm_campaign=Plex%20Apps&utm_medium=Plex%20Web&utm_source=Plex%20Apps https://support.plex.tv/articles/200931138-troubleshooting-r... Your ISP's allowed upload speed also becomes a factor once you leave your LAN, and in America, most people's upload speeds are much slower. The hardware of your server, the hardware of your client, the supported codecs of your client, your WAN upload speed, your client's download speed all become factors here. And another thing YouTube does is re-encode videos that are uploaded to commonly supported types to allow for quick and direct playback on client devices. Most people just take whatever movie they downloaded from ThePirateBay and act shocked when they need to transcode the video.

bubblethink 3y ago
I rent a gigabit server and have a gigabit connection at home; the client is a shield tv that running android. Videos are h264 and audio is either AC3 or occasionally flac. In other words, all pretty bog standard stuff that doesn't even need transcoding except for bitrate, but my connection is fast enough to not need that. It's not a bandwidth, latency, or HW specs issue. The streams work fine when they work, even with blu ray remuxes at 20+GB per movie. There are just too many annoyances and it's mostly a software issue on the plex side. A lot of times, plex will just show a spinning wheel, not resume, and take really long to seek. I do run plex behind nginx, so it is still possible that there is some config issue, but I doubt it.
- starttoaster 3y ago
  Check out the server remote access settings some time and make sure direct access is available, like I mentioned above. But I’m willing to just digress as we have apparently wildly different experiences.