That’s great to hear. I will hold off on pulling the trigger on a full migration to Emby for a few more weeks to see if the problems get fixed. Hopefully you fix this, and I can avoid the hassle of migrating the family,
Sorry to be pedantic, but there is one aspect of this that I really want to clarify. When you say “a library focused model” do you mean “a server and library focused model”? The lack of ability to pick a server, and only see/search content/libraries related to that server, as well as the absence of libraries that seems to generate most of the complaints.
It’s imperative to get libraries back. But also to ensure that when the wife/kids/guests are browsing they only get the libraries on my main media server, not my (small and underpowered) test server, or my separate (ahem) adult content server.
If the new version just got libraries back, without a top-line server picker as well, then this wouldn’t really work for me.
I appreciate your explanation as to how the Roku makes a decision to play an audio track. I’m going to assume that the Plex Media Player makes some sort of similar decision, because it too automatically (or dynamically) selects the best audio track.
In any event, there is some sort of communication between the server and the app, and I find it difficult to understand or believe that PMP or the Roku ignores or over-rides that decision and use the audio track it feels is the best. Even if that is true, than there must be some sort of equivalent code that can be implemented in other apps that achieves the same result.
Hardware acceleration, automatic bitrate adjustment and the possibility of choosing a “Directors Comments” track seem to be somewhat irrelevant in PMP or Roku. Why would an Android or other device need to make decisions on those factors to a higher degree? After all, it is the same file, with the same choices for video, audio, and subtitles.
As mentioned, this is not the thread for this discussion, so I would appreciate if it can be continued in one of the other threads regarding the matter. There are several, the most recent being
I think I spoke to soon, it doesn’t appear to be working correctly, although I now get sound for a DTS encoded film, the server isn’t transcoding it, so all I get is “stereo”. I could have sworn it was working last night, but it’s definitely not now, double checked that it’s set to optical and that only AC3 is selected.
Put a post up in the beta forum.
So close, I just want my DTS to transcode to AC3 on the server!
No, but I don’t think that’s appropriate in this particular situation, I don’t want the video changed at all, all I need is the server to see that the client only accepts AC3 (or PCM stereo for stereo only movies) and transcode the audio on the fly server side from DTS/EAC/TRUEHD to AC3.
This new option is much better in that now I no longer get silence, but I’m still in a similar position that if I want surround and the file only has DTS then I have to remux in a conversion of the DTS track as AC3 (and then select that one as the audio source)
You can download the beta version of Emby and reap the benefits already. You will need Emby Premiere though.
I’ve got one server installation with the stable version and one with the latest beta. I have to say that the current beta is in excellent shape. I have not had any issues with it.
Weren’t there some complaints already in these forums about search results mixing own with shared content, as well as mixing Tidal, Web Shows and Pod Casts when searching for their own stuff?
I don’t spend a lot of time in these forums but I don’t ever recall seeing anything like that. I’d still love to have Elan chime in with his thoughts on the following scenario:
“I can’t envision any reality where Disney/HBO/Fox/etc (if they partner up with Plex) would be fine with a TV show/movie I have… that can be streamed by my friends for FREE… being listed along side a paid version of the same, exact media file.”
Eventually, like what they did to plug-ins, streaming of local media to remote people will have to come to an end for the reason I laid out in my hypothetical situation. Plex will lay more people off and put out a statement saying, “Due to popular demand from our user base, we’ll be concentrating more and more effort into serving up media from all the studios that crank out the greatest Hollywood hits! No longer will you be limited by the amount of media from server admins like in the past. Today, we’re opening the door to a limitless supply of movies and TV shows for a low, low monthly fee which will be a small price to pay considering the wealth of stuff you’ll now have access to!”
Plex, like Kodi, will have to show they won’t tolerate piracy of any kind so they can get in the good graces of Hollywood. Kodi is an amazing media player and Plex (based on XBMC) took that same mentality to a higher level which let you share your library with friends over the internet.
They have to start generating massive returns for the Vulture Capitalist investment firm that bought them.
Not into beta installs I am at a stage in life where you have to pay others to do the groundbreaking and pioneering. Have installed Emby server and EMC on an i-5 NUC for local network usage. Now waiting to update to the stable 3.6.* version as well as changing my QNAP NAS to latest QTS firmware plus another server install for the friends that I share my small content with.
I have Emby Premier have been supporting the product ever since Media Browser 2.* and love it. Only installed Plex for a handful of friends in 4 different time zones.
I have the HDHomerun Extend tuners that do on the fly transcoding so that it elementary streams can be used with a Roku. I am hanging out and contributing to the Emby forums these Plex forums will soon become for me history. They got my lifetime membership contribution and I consider this a paid education.
Just FYI but Plex is based on XBMC because it was originally the Mac OSX port of XBMC while Kodi is not just based on XBMC it is XBMC. XBMC 14 got renamed to Kodi 14 in 2014
Plex was based on xbmc. Not anymore, since Plex Home Theatre was replaced with Plex Media Player (and, technically, since they introduced the server part).
It’s the name of the game. Make it big then sell. I glad I don’t care what plex plans on doing with other companies. Plex was the first HTPC software I used and I’ll keep until it no longer streams my stuff. There will be dozens of Plex to choose from now until the day humans don’t have a desire for this kind of entertainment.
Any chance of poking the android tv guys, this is so nearly working, it’s better than it was but DTS now comes out stereo, very low volume…although this is 100% better than silence.
I’d offer bribes for a further audio mode (even if it’s temporary while you guys figure out the best was of handling this) called “Sonos” (in addition to disabled, HDMI and optical) which tells the server that the android tv client only supports AC3 so the serve transcodes the audio.
Please, pretty please, you’d make a LOT of Sonos Playbar owners very happy, I can’t imagine this is a difficult or lengthy thing to implement.
Offering beer, pizza, low fat soya based products, hopes, dreams, photos of dogs if this can be done.
I’m just musing that an (even temporary as Ian said they were considering options) “Sonos” mode (additional passthrough mode) as an override of the player capabilities that the shield reports to allow only AC3.
I know I’m being repetitive, but this is the first time I can remember in years that something is actively happening with this problem, given you have a partnership with Sonos is makes sense to make the playbar function as it should?
It’s so tantalisingly close here, search both here and on the Sonos community for Plex and you’ll find a lot of people with the same issue.
I even bought an EDID emulator in the hope that I could trick the shield into thinking that there was only support for AC3, but sadly it didn’t work, my emulator does support ARC as well so that’s another option I can try, but I haven’t got around to trying that, I’m not hopeful of that either though.
And I really do appreciate you taking the time to talk about this with me and bring it up with the team.
@elan In my time over at Emby, I have found that the Emby software is much more responsive than Plex. This really has been an issue with the Plex software for as long as I’ve been using it (which is somewhere around 3 years now). When I select a video or music in Plex, it takes 15 real-time seconds or more to start playing. In Emby, it starts up almost immediately. I recently posted somewhere (either here or at the Emby forums) about how, over the holidays, I played Christmas music in the car on the way to my in-laws, and how Plex took significantly longer to start playing than Emby did.
I’m not trying to hate on Plex by pointing this out. Emby certainly does have many flaws. I just realize how slow Plex is and think it’s something worth serious consideration in improving the experience.
I have pointed this out quite a few times but Plex has actually become slower and Emby faster.
This has driven me to use Emby a LOT more than Plex over the last few weeks. In fact the only thing I am currently using Plex for is audiobooks that I have renamed from mp3 to m4v and I am only using Plex for that because I have a Plex server running on my Shield keeping my computer servers free for Emby and Emby does not currently support video files with no video part.
Plex has become so slow that I can order a pizza and start a video in Plex and the pizza will arrive during the opening credits. OK, that is an exaggeration but it often has felt nearly that bad.
With the Emby Server v4.0 update, I’m experimenting with using Emby for (multi-file mp3) audiobooks, but otherwise have been using Voice Audiobook Player for Android, which only plays on-device stored files.
The slowness, instability and bugginess of Plex for Android (regardless of UI) really has pushed me away.
