Alternative to Plex

General Discussions
579

Over the past few years I’ve been going back and forth between Emby and Plex. I get why so many are frustrated with Plex. Performance is not up to snuff and I’m not a fan of all the new features or layout but I tried to put some of that to use. I currently run Plex and Emby side by side with a lifetime subscription to Emby as well. I mean I can go on and on about what bugs me when it comes to Plex but after 500+ posts, it’s all been said.

With that being said, there isn’t one positive post I have read about Tidal. Maybe I missed it but here goes. I’m a long time subscriber with Spotify but have been taking a hard look at Tidal. The other day I finally signed up for a 30 day trial. I figured let me give Plex a shot with Tidal so maybe I can have one cohesive app for all my media. Needless to say I’m very impressed. It’s not perfect but it’s not bad either. The standalone app for Tidal is still superior to what Plex offers but it should be. I enjoy the fact I can have one less app open in the background of my phone or tablet. The same thing goes for my Shield TVs. The service is good and sound quality is on par with what I’m used to with Spotify. I did not sign up for the Hi-Fi plan but I may at a later date. I do wish Plex integrated the music videos that Tidal offers into Plex. That would take things to another level as I love playing music videos on the big screen while cleaning or entertaining guests.

Now, I’ve never been a big remote access user but I leave on a business trip this Tuesday and will be gone for almost a month. This will give me the opportunity to test both Emby and Plex for media playback remotely.

580

@elan

Since none of the app programmers answered even one of the X questions, I hope that you will take a look at the question and tell me if there will be a solution soon?

I have installed a server for years and am actually very satisfied with it. Meanwhile 40 users are using my server from outside and with that came more and more problems. I have limited the server to 10 Mbps currently because of the Internet line, so about 50% of my database should be able to run Direct Play or Direct Stream. With my users I have adjusted everything to original, that works very well in each case, so far and now it comes, a new update from you comes.

After every update I have to change the settings for almost all 40 users. Only the Android and the Kodi-Add-On keeps the current settings. All others will be reset to 4 Mbps 720p with every update. Why is that so? I can’t go through everything with you every week with X users, most don’t even notice the difference, but for the server it’s important that it can use Direct Play or Direct Stream, because otherwise it runs from about 15-17 streams on 100% and it starts with the users with jitters and that although both connections are still far from exhausted.

Why is it so difficult to apply the settings to an App Update?

Either you let the server admin for each user make the settings on the respective server so that they can not change anything or you finally get this under control. It’s really no fun to get new people excited about Plex when such little things don’t work.

What good is it to set a global limit on the server, if after every app update the users are set to 4 Mbps again. This is simply a prank.

This problem has existed for years and has been mentioned by me several times without an answer. I hope that you take the thing now once, because I have seen that you give here again and again a feedback.

581

I also mentioned that we,the admin,need more stream control! Streaming Brain didn’t enlvolved since introducing. I wish bandwidth control for each user in the settings and automatic on each client by default.BUT the Server admin can override the setting. The best thing I think of would be that the server admin has 100% streaming control and the client settings would be deleted. For Tidal etc here can the client set up his own streaming settings!
Again:
Server admin (own media) bandwidth control for each user/client and on client side NONE!
For tidal etc on CLIENT OWN settings.

582

@Streamerx

Yes, that would be the wish scenario, definitely.

But just the fact that the settings are not always overwritten when the apps are updated would be nothing but normal. It really takes me endless hours to watch this over and over again with the people. That’s not customer friendly at all.

583

I hope that @elan can enlighten us. That would be awesome!

584

The same thing happens on my Samsung TVs. Maybe an option to save the settings on the server would be useful. Last time I had to set up the client sixteen times!!! Mostly hiding all the thing Plex is pushing now (I mean the things that have nothing to do with my media) and rearrange the order of the libraries. Got to love the new UI :wink:

585

@elan this probably won’t bother you or plex at all, you’ve already had my money for a plex pass lifetime subscription but I just cannot support plex any longer.

The direction that the product is taking, the forcing of what is a local media player at heart to have that online login system and the fact that you just don’t appear to listen all that much to customers, you plough on with the “next great thing”, how much resource, time and money was wasted on plex cloud and plex vr?

I don’t want a news channel, I don’t want tidal, I don’t want adverts, what I want is a media player that plays my content and plays it well.

You recently responded to a very longstanding issue that has been mentioned countless times on here, the DTS issue with SONOS. Without your interaction on this, I’m pretty sure that this would still be an outstanding issue, it took several weeks and a couple of releases to get this fixed. Compare this to emby, I’ve tried it a number of times over the past couple of years and it was never at the point at which it could replace plex (Clunky), but now it is. I had the same issue with DTS that I had with plex, I reported this and explained the situation and why I specifically get this problem and why I need to be able to disable DTS. A few hours later I had a beta in my hand which worked perfectly and had the option to disable DTS. I don’t understand how Emby with their limited resources are able to act so much faster on issues/bugs than what Plex are.

So I’ve (and the family) have had a good trial of Emby and I’ve got to say, it’s goodbye Plex. While they’ve created their own little hullabaloo with their change to closed source, the responsiveness and willingness of them to fix and add things is just so far removed from the experience of plex that it feels alien.

We’ve been reporting a bug with 172.X.X.X IP addresses on the Android platform for months and they’ve gone pretty much ignored or “we don’t know”, after several months you’ve finally admitted their is an issue and have finally fixed it, too late for me though.

Something drastically needs to change in the way Plex operates because it’s broken, I suspect the direction is nothing that can be changed as I think you’re funded by vulture capitalists, but bug reporting and fixing needs to be made a priority, Plex is riddled with them and nobody seems to care about them much.

586

They’ve never had a guide on Apple TV, Plex is actually ahead in this respect.

587

Correct, Apple TV is a new in progress client. It’s still on the more basic side feature wise but keep checking each new release. There really hasn’t been a lot of people asking for it btw.

Apple is so restrictive it almost isn’t worth dev time on that platform.

588

I’m very familiar with the lack of focus by Emby on Apple devices in general. This has been the case from the start where their server version was an afterthought and based on Mono ran like a dog. Their Mac server has eventually improved but still is way behind their windows sever. The iOS client is a web based app which is why it looks outdated and lacks the polish of native apps on that platform. I have created apps for Emby so know exactly the direction they are heading in. My point for responding to your claim that all of their clients have a TV guide is to give a balanced opinion. You may feel it is a waste of time/resources focusing on Apple products but many of us feel different. I have an Android Shield TV along with an Apple TV 4K and much prefer the user interface/performance on the Apple. Another point worth mentioning is Emby abandoned support for AirPlay/Picture in Picture when they moved to using the MPV player, Plex on the other hand embraced both with their new Enhanced Player. Plex was and always has been far better on Apple products…back in the day that’s where they started. Btw I do follow their release schedule and have (along with many others) been asking for at least a TV guide on Apple TV for more than two years.

589

Does Emby definatly work correctly with SONOS? transcoding DTS to DD 5.1? That’s now working with Plex but I’m still getting issues with the video transcoding as well, on larger 4K files.

Temped to give it a try.

590

Me thinks you haven’t tried them recently. Emby hasn’t used mono in quite a while. The iOS apps have been greatly enhanced likely since you tried them (not sure when you last tried them).

Apple TV is the only app without the same TV/DVR functionality in it at the moment to the best of my knowledge but still has basic stuff kind of like how Plex had limited EPG the first round. As I said earlier Apple makes a lot of this really difficult on that platform as it’s so restrictive feature wise compared to other platforms. They removed audio pass through on Gen 4 for example, so many audiophiles have abandoned that platform to a large extent. It’s not exactly stellar on Plex either as many people run 3rd party apps instead of the native Plex app on Apple TV (like Infuse or MrMC).

Anyone who has followed Emby development can guess why Apple support was lacking or behind other platforms and it’s simply the development language of choice they choose to use. C# which was native to PC and not Apple. Then MS came out with several versions of NET which were cross platform capable and the latest NET versions now run really well on Linux and it’s varieties. A couple versions back Emby switched over to using NET as the base so that Mono was no longer needed and the apps were “leveled” on these different platforms. The user base is highly MS/Android as you can guess.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it needs some TLC to bring it up to the “base feature set” other clients have. I have a sneaky feeling this will happen after the Android TV release as that has been used for the new UI designs which will get ported to other platforms as much as possible.

Honestly I’m not really a good source to get info on Apple products as I don’t use a single Apple product these days. I’m by no means an Apple hater but I try to purchase the best equipment for the job and just never find Apple filling that spot. I’ve got a ton of different equipment so I’m not against using different equipment or OS.

@b0ff yes, but you should ask support questions in their forum instead of here. I don’t use SONOS myself, so I’m of no help. :slight_smile:

591

Well why don’t you go to the Emby forum and ask? This is a Plex forum.

592

Yep as much as I loved the Apple TV 4K, that was the point where I sold mine.

593

Yes, certainly on android tv where I asked about the feature for disabling DTS and they implemented it, been happily running emby with Sonos and surround sound!

594

I was happy with Plex for over five years, got a lifetime PlexPass after the first year not really for the extra features but as way to thank and support them. I’m trying Emby for about a week now, bought Premiere for one month so I can test all the features of interest to me but so far I’m not better off with Emby. I love their fast response and it’s clear they pay more attention to their users than Plex does but in my case response with no action is not helping at all.

Point in case, the Samsung Tizen app. The Plex app is a festival of bugs, if you go to that forum section it’s full of complaints. I can use it only with transcoding and don’t even get me started on 4K. I see they’re trying to fix things but to no avail so I guess they’re not using enough/right resources. So I went over to Emby to see how is working on that part of the fence only to find out it’s not working at all because their app is released only in three countries and people are asking for a worldwide release for over two years. Luke is replying in that section of the forum but with no progress in such a long time I have a hard time believing it’s just Samsung’s fault, asking for money to publish the app. I mean, was it free for the ones where is already published?

So, I’m kinda stuck. Plex has a bad app and Emby has no app. I have four TV sets able to direct play almost anything I throw at them but I’m supposed to pay close to $1000 to get some streaming devices to do what the TV is already capable of doing? And I’d have to change the receiver in the process as well cause the current is a little older and cannot handle HDR.

Any other options besides Plex and Emby?

595

There are a couple of ways you can install the app if outside the US/UK/Ireland. Just read the pinned threads at the top of their support forum in the Samsung client section.

596

that is unlikely for anything other than perhaps video
subtitles are a notorious killer of direct play in smart tv apps
and no pre-hdmi 2.1 tv apps are ever going to support HD audio such as truehd/atmos.

in general smart tvs and their apps are really not that smart, nor capable, and people put far too much faith in them to solve all the problems.

597

I did. This is how I installed the old Orsay app on one older Samsung but for Tizen it involves changing the region which will kill my Netflix and HBO GO so it cannot be applied (most of the users are in the same boat).

Samsung is the biggest TV manufacturer so I’m really surprised that both Plex and Emby are treating this with low priority. I have all my streaming stuff right on the TV (even Eurosport has an app now) but for Plex/Emby I’d have to buy an extra box. I reject this on principle alone.

And this is not just Samsung. I have a friend who is connecting from an LG tv (the second largest manufacturer :grinning:) and the situation is even worse but fortunately for LG we have a third party app.

I understand that resources go mainly to the biggest user base and I’d be interested to see how many users are for each platform but I believe you cannot ignore the TV sets. They’re all coming with Netflix and such already installed, people expect to have everything else in the same way and I think it’s a reasonable expectation. I don’t mind complicated setups but I cannot push this to my family and most of my friends for whom I set up Plex servers or clients

598

No device is ever going to support everything, that’s for sure :wink:. Or at least not for long. I’m not new at this, playing with all kind of streaming devices for about 12 years now but I think the smart TVs from that last 3-4 years are a decent compromise for most users. Do you think I need Atmos in every room? Or that my parents sense a difference between DD and TrueHD? :laughing:

My direct play problem is indeed caused by subtitles which randomly makes the player switch to transcoding (reported by many users on the forum) and I was told that a fix is ready and will be released at some point.

The thing is that the TV with its player can direct play with subtitles via USB or DLNA from Plex everything in my collection. The Plex client can’t do it. Is this the TV not being capable or Plex not being able to do it properly? In the case of 4K I was told that Google’s Shaka and Samsung player are to blame but how can this be when it’s playing just fine by itself?