Emby clients are much more powerful than most Plex clients and support direct play a lot more of the time. That alone makes it win in my books.
Now, Plex is introducing mpv on iOS so that might become moot eventually.
Genuine question, what do you mean by the client is “more powerful”? Do you mean that it has more features/capabilities?
For the same platform, emby can usually decode more formats at the client level, so the server doesn’t have to transcode nearly as often. That’s because historically Plex has been using the players supplied per platform while emby embedded their own player, which supports more. Plex might be going in the direction though, as it seems they’re doing on iOS beta.
Ah, OK. That’s interesting. Thanks!
MrMC provides at low cost an alternative Plex (& Emby) client on Android, iOS & tvOS that is able to Direct Play most formats.
MrMC is a fork of Kodi with all the naughty add-ons removed. You get the best of both worlds with all the advantages & flexibility of the Kodi player with the Plex server b
Really appreciate the thoughts.
I do! We all do! It’s still the same core group who started this thing ten years later and controlling the destiny of the company (not investors).
Let’s not read too much into this—all businesses strive for growth. And there are no emperors behind the curtain pulling the strings.
A bit hyperbolic, no? The main point is to bring your own local in-home media. Plugins were only about cloud media to begin with, were never used by a lot of people, and were always unreliable because they mostly relied on scraping sites.
I’m not sure what you saw coming, but bolding and italicizing it doesn’t make it true.
This…doesn’t make a lot of sense. There are tons of third party things around the server (e.g. Tautilli) and ways to integrate with it (e.g. Webhooks). We’ll be doing more of this in the future.
That’s not actually true, there was a shitload of documentation around plugins (more than for our existing internal APIs 
) It was incredibly easy to build them, and it was fun. I built lots of 'em! But again, per above, their achilles heel was the fact that scraping websites is just not a reliable way to expose internet content.
This happened like 9 years ago, it’s not new; ever since the media server existed, we’ve been a company with proprietary software. Once we started selling Plex Passes (~7-8 years ago?) we had a Freemium model.
Again with the conspiracies! The reason we have an Amazon app is not because they gave us a penny (they didn’t), it’s because we thought the interesting integration there was for on-device playback (I use it every night!). Google Home doesn’t allow us to do that.
I love you too, man, but please stop smoking crack. That day will never ever come, it’s a ridiculous idea.
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That is actually what a lot of us are worried about after you changed the privacy policy, dumped news and other web content on us and are continuing to strip Plex of functionality that is vital for local media consumption.
It has been said a thousand times here in this forum: we the users don’t like where Plex is heading to!
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I disagree. Community is one small thing but it’s the feature set for me. Emby will run online or offline. I the admin fully control the usernames on my system. “Fred” is Fred and not "PoppaBear689 which tells me nothing. 
Passwords are on my system. No cloud needed for login control. I can authenticate against my domain controller or RADIUS server if I choose using LDAP.
I can easily use Emby in my RV or boat without concern for Internet access. I of course need this access on occasion for updates, meta-data but not for day to day use or off-grid applications.
I control who get’s access to Live TV, who can record/DVR things regardless if they live in my house or not (my daughter and son do not).
I can have multiple “tuner” types such as Cable, OTA, Premium TV (SD), IPTV and any number of different tuners. I can setup how ever many EPG sources I need to support those tuners. Emby can share the network tuners with other apps or devices without it causing a problem (short of not having enough tuners for recording). This allows me to use LiveChannels or HDHomeRun software for watching DRM content if needed like HBO. Heck I can even use a plugin and use a different DVR solution such as NextPVR, DVBlink, Media Portal, TVHeadEnd, TVMosiac, or Vu+ if I want instead of or in combination with what’s built in. Can be a great way to support capture boards or tuners not generally supported.
I can set an overall bit rate to an account of say 5 Mb if I want. That can be used by one stream or X but that account only gets 5 Mb to use at any one time outside my LAN. No one will share their account with others when it hurts their own viewing experience. I can lock accounts to specific devices so Fred can only use his living room Roku or Shield TV. While this might not sound like a big deal it can be useful at times for those who “share” an account and you want to go “big brother” on them. It’s also quite useful for creating a guest or “baby sitter” account (with quick login) that only works from say the child’s room or living room Shield TV. The babysitter can’t use her iPad or any other device you didn’t authorize her to use.
I can turn off transcoding on a per user basis if I want to force that user to use my media as provided. My personal media should be playable on any device because I’ve created them this way (short of limited bandwidth).
I can set access schedules on any account. Want to restrict your child to only allow use from 3pm to 6pm or similar during the week and a few hours on the weekend, easy. Want to share with a few additional friends but not allow them to impact your family viewing experience then you can blackout your family prime time hours. Anything you can think of with access schedules can be done.
I can BLACK LIST tags vs Plex’s only WHITE LIST of tags. This way you can add a tag such as “clown” or “remove” to any kids shows that have content that scares them but would have otherwise shown up as G or PG using rating filters. Got a few movies or series that are a bit too “edgy” or close to soft porn that you don’t want shared with mom, dad or a young adult? Just add a tag “soft porn” or similar and black list it for that person when sharing. This is so USEFUL!
I can make use of STRM files which are just stub files that point to external content. I can use this to create content like a learning library that uses content on outside websites. This can be as simple as needed or as advanced as you want. Anyone could write an external scraper that creates the STRM files which Emby then scans in and uses just like local content. You could use this if you wanted to create your own NEWS, WEB SHOWS type content or to pull in videos from ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, etc without a “plugin”. Plex used to support STRM files but removed this functionality a few years back. Many users use this functionality to host files on Google Drive but to access them from Emby. There are scripts to automate this as well.
I can setup one TV Show library with several different top parent folders such as News, Anime, Reality TV, Cartoons, Late Night, etc and grant access to “TV Shows” or only certain parent folder mount points. So if I don’t want to see News programs or Reality TV I don’t have to. The wife can have access to Reality TV but not Anime, Late Night or News, etc. It allows for more flexible library setups and keeps you from having to setup multiple TV Show libraries just to control access.
I can grant delete permissions to specific users so my daughter can delete shows under Reality TV but not touch other mount points in the TV Show library.
I can grant download to any user I want. This way my daughter can download movies on her laptop for offline viewing while flying to Florida or to have with her while on vacation. It’s my media and my decision who gets to do what!
I the admin can setup libraries and hide them from myself. I still get to administer them but don’t have to grant myself viewing privs to it! Also great for removing access to certain libraries during holidays when you have family staying over.
I get much finer grained control over hardware/GPU encoding/decoding and can pick/choose what GPUs are used and what codecs I want to use GPU for.
I can grant access to specific plugins to specific users and it’s not an all or nothing approach.
I’ve got far better collection support.
I have better “version” support and can easily have my 3D, 4K and normal 720/1080 files mixed together in the same library and folder. With Plex I really need to keep them in separate libraries due to the way they are shown or picked by the client or used for transcoding.
The cloud and mobile sync just work.
Everyone of these has a request in the Plex forums I believe, some for years.
I agree the Emby clients are more powerful. They also offer more configuration if needed. For example on my main client the Shield TV I can choose from several skins, I can choose the size of my posters and how many posters per row I get (small, medium, large) so I can use different settings on my 45" vs my 75" TVs. I can choose to use Vertical or Horizontal layout grids for the main content (I like vertical).
I can fully adjust what “hubs” displays on my home screen and change the order of most things to my liking.
I can set “favorites” on my shows and flip the view from favorites to all shows quickly. This allows me to have 30 shows I’m currently interested in vs seeing all 500 shows all the time. Great for binge watching. Each user has their own favorites that are usable across clients.
I can see “plugins from the server” look like regular libraries on the client (same with playlists). If for example I use the PodCast plugin I can add the content they get to pick from and it looks like any other library. Same with tunein that adds all kinds of “radio stations” or IPTV links. They can all be their own “library”.
The content that shows up in the client is ONLY what I authorize and what I’ve specifically provided via local content or plugins I control. No “extras” show up like PodCasts, News, Web Shows, 3rd party music servers, etc.
Codec detection also seems to be better as well which is important for audio especially.
Most important, I find the “defaults” on Emby to match my needs far better. “Auto” is the default and will try and use the best available media so the server doesn’t need to transcode (unlike Plex). If I want/need the client to transcode I can set a max bitrate on the server for the user and this “caps” what “auto” can use and force transcoding if I want that. Alternately I can remove “transcode” access from a user to force them to use my media AS IS. I the server owner control this, not the end user.
Everything I mentioned (there is more) is stuff I’ve advocated for with Plex. Often many of these features was/is seen as “advanced” and not needed by the average admin, but to me they are “normal” features that make running the system as a whole a lot easier and keep me the admin in control of my system and my users.
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Of course, Emby still doesn’t have a Mac client so is a bit of a non-starter for many of us.
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
Absolutely true, no native client but all is not lost as there are several workarounds.
Emulation/vm to run windows and Emby Theater
Web interface
Kodi with Emby plugin - what I’d suggest if you don’t have the ability to run Windows.
(same for Linux as well)
It was recently reported a couple of weeks ago in the forums that Emby Theater for Mac is planned for the future.
They do currently support iOS and Apple TV with native apps, so they don’t have anything against Apple. 
And you think that is a good thing?
Now that is a good thing! Sync on desktop clients.
But aren’t there a lot of workarounds for most things you mentioned before? Not even hard one as several times you mentioned it is “easier”.
Not trying to start a fight here. But there are so many different kind of Users.
I am the essential kind of users. I want slim stuff, with all the things that are needed. Anything that bloats it, is my enemy. I don’t want to chose codec, I want an App that choses it for me and does it right.
I don’t want to work 2 hours before I get something a certain way.
We can take an example where Emby did it better than Plex (Not sure if it still is the same). Emby didn’t need full transcoding for added subtitles from the start. In plex you had to chose to render them alongside the Video in the settings and not with the video. I am the kind of Guy who wants a setting like this to be right from the start (That setting should even disappear, not sure if Emby has it).
They gave us more feedback regarding the users and to be fair with you, I already think we are in a critical thing there. I don’t want to tell them that I have access to their viewing history. How much bandwith they use? Sure. What they watch? I am a sucker for privacy…
I think it was a good choice to make stuff easier. Also they even offer tunneling.
Privacy statement most likely got updated because of new laws in EU. I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
Also I admit, it be great if they offered an “Island” solution.
Absolutely as it’s powerful what you can do with it to get a lot better performance. For example DXVA2 might be faster for Mpeg2 decoding then NVDEC while the opposite is true for H.264. You can pick and choose and set the options that work best on your specific server.
You can mix and match GPUs or use multiple. You can set the throttling or not. So for example if using a consumer nvidia card that only supports 2 streams you can have it process the whole file right away so when it finishes in a few minutes the stream is available for another use. I may want to use a different quality level for CPU vs GPU, etc.
In any case you have the choice for GPU use and it’s YES (uses defaults) NO and ADVANCED which is what I’m referring to. What’s nice about the advanced settings is that advanced users can test and contribute back the best settings for different GPUs which then can be used as new defaults in the next release! A lone developer or two just can’t test all the different combinations. Also if you find a bug for example that only affects H.265 decoding in hardware you can turn that off to get by vs being at the mercy of a bug fix and not being able to decode H.265!
No not sync. Just regular old download is what I was referring to. For example my daughter could download the Harry Potter series to take with her or maybe Star Wars series or whet ever she wants. Sync is available in the mobile apps like Plex. What I was referring to is the same thing the ADMIN can do in Plex and download files via the web interface. In Emby you can grant this permission (off by default) to any user you want. So same feature, but you can delegate it to users.
No, there are no workarounds in Plex for many of these things. Some things can be done with multiple libraries, but that’s the point I’m making that Emby makes this much simpler. I’d rather have one TV Show library with News, Reality, Anime, Late Night stuff in in and remove access for those that don’t want News or Anime then have to create 5 different TV Libraries and manage them separately. I can use 1 Movies library and it can function perfectly with normal movies, 3D and 4K which requires 3 different libraries in Plex to function well.
In Plex I can’t make another user an Admin or give users download access or even allow the wife or kids to record/DVR stuff. There are NO WORKAROUNDS for these in Plex short of sharing the admin account. 
Some things like mixing cable and OTA with IPTV can be done using xTeVe but it’s not simple and you’re going to struggle with EPG data. It’s just a lot easier when it’s built in and just works.
Most of the things I mentioned can’t be done in Plex. I’ve got a big “Cayars tips and tricks” thread here in the forums with lots and lots and lots of work a rounds to get things done in Plex. I know my way around both system very well.
I’ve got a lot of libraries dedicated to sports like NFL games going back to 2012 nicely organized by season/week/game that Plex makes a huge mess of while they just work in Emby as I can assign a “folder view” to the library so it navigates by the season, the week, then the game (just like the layout on disc). There USED TO BE a nice meta-data plugin you could use for things like this but it’s long broke. None of the built in types really work well for this type of content. TV Shows is probably the closest but doesn’t quite fit.
Agreed and if you use the defaults you get what you WANT. For me I can choose ADVANCED and then custom it more for my likely. We can both win this way.
Let me spin this a bit to give you another idea. Say you or a friend installs the Plex client for Ruko. It’s going to default to 720/x Mb as the default. Nothing you do on the server (in your control) can change this. Thus all of your 1080p files are going to transcode to this client. You want EASY and got it for the client BUT you get inferior quality due to transcoding and you put a hurting on your server that you didn’t need to. Now as the server admin you have to start watching for excessive transcodes to figure out why it’s happening. You use Tautulli, look at logs or Dashboard to monitor and figure it out. Now you have to contact the person and have them change their client settings. You’ll actually have to do this for almost every client installed that works outside your home network. It’s ongoing with Plex and an update to the client may wipe out the settings and you get to do it again and again. With Emby a change in settings to the server and problem is taken care of. That is far easier and less frustrating!
I like to think that I’m ADVANCED as the server operator so my users can be dumb and not need to configure the clients or understand this stuff. I can fix issues for them from the server to make it more like using Netflix. “just install app, login and use”.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking with this one. Both Plex and Emby can render TEXT based subtitles like SRT without having to transcode the video. Bipmap based subtitles are a different story and both will need to transcode them. Nature of the beast. Both can support internal and external subs.
Emby supports subtitles in HLS which allow them to only send the subs that match the video portion that is currently being delivered. This speeds up the video starting as the whole sub doesn’t need to get extracted upfront. If the sub is being downloaded then it can start to be used as well while being retrieved. This also allows you to switch subs without the full extraction or starting over. Don’t know if that’s what you were referring to or not. If you clarify what you were asking I can try and answer but roughly speaking they both handle subs roughly the same.
What does being able to put a cap on bandwidth or not allow a user to transcode have to do with privacy? With Emby you aren’t collecting user client data per say (can’t say that with the Plex clients) but with either system you as the admin can collect all kinds of statistics on what YOUR USERS are doing by parsing the logs or getting the info from the DB or APIs. Emby Stats plugin or Tautulli (top notch) both give you a world of information on nearly everything your users do when connected to your server.
Both systems can be setup to give you the admin notifications of nearly any event you want from when a user starts playing something to how many hours a day they use your system to only when something bad happens like a certain media fail to play.
How, or if you use this information is of course up to you the system admin but both system EASILY allow you the admin to have this info.
Don’t get me wrong, Emby doesn’t do everything better. I would never say that. For me right now, it does far more things the way I want and allow me to admin my server they way I want. I don’t want Emby to be “better” but want Plex to catch up on many of these things as they have been asked for by a lot of people. I’d love nothing more than to have two complete solutions that do things well and allow each of my users to pick which one they prefer to use (and have the other as a backup).
I like competition and think it helps to make both better!
I get all that, what i have never heard anyone attest to is what makes the Kodi playback better?
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It’s more about the navigability of the client than the playback engine.
Their Ariana skin is pretty clean and user friendly.
Instead of relying on the native player of the Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV (like Plex does) Kodi has its own player. This has a lot more controls & flexibility e.g. adjust audio delay to fix AV sync issues.
Kodi it can play back things that other systems will require transcoding or direct streaming. Keep in mind Kodi needs direct access to the local files to do this but in a home environment this is pretty common. Because it has direct access to the files it can allow RW/FF or skip to so much faster!
It’s fully skinable and there are more plugins for Kodi then pretty much any other app. The sky is the limit in what you can do with Kodi and some time invested.
What sucks about it generally speaking is that it’s a SOLE client solution. By that I mean if you need this on 4 different TVs in the house you have 4 “systems” to maintain. Want a new addon, then you get to install it 4 times, etc
You can setup Kodi with a central DB but that’s pretty advanced and has it’s own set of problems. For what most people around here would use it for is clean playback and for the incredible range of content you can get with it.
Want to integrate your HDHomeRuns, Pluto TV, some IPTV channels, Tubi TV & Plex you can along with a 1000+ other addins.
Kodi seems to run well on Android TV devices which allows easy control with a remote without having to dedicate a computer and get remotes working etc which makes the whole process much easier. Of course Kodi won’t run on lots of devices like Roku as they just don’t have the resources or flexibility to do so.
It’s not for everyone, but it’s always nice to have as a backup on at least one device around the house. This way no matter what you always have access to local content even if you are without Internet for a month.
If you have a device that can run it, it’s worth playing with to have as a backup or for additional content even if it’s not going to be your main app of choice to use.
Think of it as the “complete toolbox” vs the hammer and screwdriver apps. LOL
I gotcha, I know i have seen the ffmpeg stuff on the windows side but with content being what it is today i don’t think it’s needed anymore so i was wondering if there was something else i was missing.
I really wish they would allow native resolution with media while also doing pass-through audio.
Would rather my TV upscale 1080 than the shield, although it looks just fine as is.
Either way i probably am going back to Emby because i can’t get past the Plex way of doing remote access where you have to have FW rules to account for their cloud checks which i hate.
Emby allows you to just port forward manually to those who need it and you don’t have to have it open to the world.
MrMC is a fork of Kodi with the naughty addons removed. It’s available at modest cost for Android, iOS & tvOS & provides an excellent alternative Plex (& Emby) client.
Or use SPMC which is an Android TV version of Kodi with the naughty bits included and it’s free. It allows you to bypass the Shield TV upscaler and allow your TV to do the scaling.
The lead dev of SPMC recently joined the MrMC team but SPMC is still better IMHO for now. Maybe a new team will take it over.
I play with all 3 of these Kodi forks but still go back to SPMC for best picture, features and functionality.
Regardless, it’s nice to have choices!
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Nice! I need to check this out.
