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