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Comment by nih0 | Hacker News Reader

I like Plex except the authentication.

The constant Plex Pass reminders are very annoying also.

They're also designed to be confusing and to give a user the impression you have to sign up for Plex Pass to continue using Plex. Plex is awesome together with Chromecast anyway.

What authentication? If you just use it in your local subnet you don't need to log in. I've been using the free version for years and I do not have a Plex account.

Wrong. On Roku, at least, if you want to watch Plex you MUST have an online account now. And, you're not able to manually add your server if the Roku client can't auto-discover it. For some reason I have to do that, but they took that option away.

They've "streamlined" it to the point of unusability.

I guess it's system dependent then. I use a Windows machine as a media server and my client is an LG Smart TV which has Plex support.

It also works with a Raspberry Pi client without authentication.

For Roku, you want the "Plex Classic", instead of "Plex", channel if you don't want to be forced to sign in.

That version is open sourced (https://github.com/plexinc/roku-client-public). The Plex developers have abandoned it, for updating the newer client only; but it's still perfectly usable as the old-version.

Thanks for that. I'll take a look. It's just such a shame they're alienating LAN users and pushing their Plex Pass bloatware.

Skip sign-in, manual server entry will definitely be part of Plex Media Player, right now we don't support it since the app is gated with plexpass which means you _need to sign in_ so we can validate your subscription status. but signing in will not be required when the app leaves preview and plexpass requirement is dropped.

source: I wrote skip-sign in, manual server entry in the core platform.

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