So, many months after becoming a lifetime Plex member, and seeing that Plex seems to have no interest in making it’s live TV and EPG offering on Andriod TV a serviceable solution for customers, I feel I had no option but to migrate to Emby who have a much better live TV & EPG, in fact everything seems to be faster and more configurable in Emby.
Things like:
1.Plex EPG does not update itself after you drop out of watching a programme
2. Try to tune to a programme and it only gives you a record option, despite the prog being live
3. Scheduled recordings, work, fail, work, fail, work, work, fail
4. Easy to get lost in the EPG if you scroll too far, it all gets messy
5. Search icon in the EPG does nothing, nothing at all
Nothing has changed in EPG for many many months despite numerous Plex updates to the app. I’ve had enough now.
Very disappointed in Plex using the pretence of it being a ‘Cable cutting’ solution, yet offering such a poor and seemingly unsupported live TV EPG.
Over to Emby then for me.
To be sure they’ve allocated their resources to all the new revenue generating updates to their clients. Things like Tidal, web shows, etc. have been prioritized over things actually being requested, dare I say ‘begged’ for, by their customers.
Exactly, ‘Tidal’, which is pointless and useless to me, but of course a ‘customer / client revenue generator’ in their eyes.
The problem they will have is… they will lose customer base, gain a bad reputation and hence lose their clients too eventually.
Corporate suicide to ignore your customer base and the feedback they provide.
No doubt these decisions are being made in a corporate head office boardroom silo’d away from the real world
I think without a doubt that’s the focus. That writing has been on the wall for awhile.
MacRumours is quoting a techcrunch article and in both places, the comments/sentiments about the direction is the same as it is here.
Fools gold perhaps, if they continue to ignore the concerns of their existing customer base, they will gain such a ‘bad rap’ that uptake of their new ‘bundle’ (with sub-standard EPG etc etc) will be limited and may see the decline of Plex.
Been using Emby now for about 5 days and love it, mush better, faster, even pic and sound quality seems superior than through Plex.
These issues are legitimate, but will get lost / be ignored in a thread like this. It would be more productive to start a thread outlining these issues and actually post logs, which DO get looked at by developers.
These things have been apparent for months on end. If Plex do not even realise the flaws in their product, it really is a concern they appear content with a very sub-standard product. Should not depend entirely on my or others posting logs to achieve a response.
Damage is done i’m afraid,… Emby is a superior product in my view, even has its own channels in Android TV for fast access. Their customer service appears excellent too with response and fixes to issues raised very fast indeed.
Personally I loved the classic look, then it got a bit nicer, but since the last major change it’s been awful. I hear a lot of talk that they have done this to make it work in a very similar way across devices but it’s a bit pants.
I use mostly the xbox one so bear that in mind as I describe my woes (same for my friends).
Searching is crap, not because it doesn’t work but because it’s so hard to get to. If I open Plex and intend to search why can’t I do it from the home screen? One of my friends told me last week he’d finally found the search, after a year of use!
Then the home screen has recently added and on deck for movies and tv shows but when I go to tv shows or movies section I get the same views near enough and have to click again to actually see the full list. Worst part is I have a couple of movie and tv show sections (kids and mine) and the one I use least is first. So to look through my movies I have to slide to movies, slide down, slide right and click in.
It used to be a couple of clicks up or down and click in.
Overall I down mind the look or styling but navigation is shocking, with all my family using Plex and about five friends households no on likes the navigation. I’d love the Plex team to send out an email survey to see how people feel about the UI, from my view no one I know likes it, not since the last major change, that goes double for iPhone app.
This UI seems to favour people who only have a bit of media, perhaps delete or don’t rewatch content they’ve watched and use the on deck and recently added from the home screen almost exclusively.
I’ve ripped nearly 3000 movies and a couple of hundred tv shows and I very much like to browse through the old movies to find something to rewatch, just much harder to do.
To end on a good note I bloody love the movie view, nice to see other movies by an actor or related movies.
I have a large Library and agree with your assessment, my resolve was to break up movies into Genres. Example: Action, Drama, Comedy, New etc . So I have a collection of different Libraries that can assist with the viewer mode. As for the UI, I tend to agree but this move has helped. To add an advanced setting for Libraries for Including in dashboard for “Deck” and “Recently added” can be set to your preference. In my case all Movie Libraries except “New Movies” are not included for dashboard.
For me breaking up the movies in to collections of genre based libraries would be annoying, as I said I hate having to go to the movies page/tab then go down a click to then look through libraries as it is, having kids/mine then a few friends libraries.
I don’t want to come across as combative, written word is not my forte and this conversation would be perfectly pleasant face to face, but I feel very frustrated with the current state of Plex apps, they seem to have so many people complaining but stick to their guns.
What you are suggesting is I take my movies and perhaps split them into genre libraries, which would cause more of what I don’t want and they is a genre filter you could use in the ‘all movies’ view. A lot of people, well meaning people and without any malice keep suggesting various workarounds to make this layout work but it just doesn’t. It’s crap and I don’t think it was even intended to be like this deep down in the Plex teams heart. If I’m not mistaken this style of UI is what has been used on smart TVs of various brands and in order to take the codebase and have the vast majority of it shared for the UI they based it on the one UI platform that they had the least control over, the smart TVs.
It’s frustrating, to have invested over a decade into Plex, adapt to the changes they put out, work through bugs fairly frequently, rely solely on user support, and none of which I minded at the time because I felt this was only going to get better only to be in a place where I feel let down by the direction but at the same time somewhat trapped in the eco system having amassed my watched data, folder set up, metadata just how I like it, collections etc. Currently I’m struggling to watch movies on the Xbox one, something many people are struggling with at the moment, bug after bug however frustrating haven’t dampened my enthusiasm but this UI is really pushing me to move on, I mean put a search icon on the home screen for pity’s sake
On Xbox it’s on the library page itself, so you have to move from home screen to open library page then into any library then you can search.
In your honest opinion do you like the UI and have you used any of the older ones?
Yes I don’t mind using Version 2, used version one for many years. Version one was very limited with the LG TV client. With a bit of effort and changing Library order in the new UI, I have warmed to Plex’s approach. The only Gripes compared to Emby.
Plex 12 seconds and Emby 5 seconds Initial load times.
Themes
On a OLED TV the start screen with Logo has a very grey background, is a bit of disappointment.
I would have expected it to pop "Black"obviously not designed that way as on any other non OLED TV’s it’s the same.
Emby has a better approach to Library array in clients. But Plex Library setup for management in Browser is superior.
Plex Media Server is king for easy setup of remote access. Emby is a nightmare in this regard.
Plex will work on clients when connected to VPN on Server, Emby will not…
Oh you are an emby user! Tell me more, this has popped up a lot as what everyone is jumping to. I think I’m at the point where I want to try something else and this looks good on the surface but you never know unless someone tries it first. Can you run it in parallel with Plex (no need to change naming or folders etc)?
Plex used to have themes, third party clients, library navigation was easy, now a decade on if I don’t swap I’ll continue being the bitter old man yelling at the Plex team to stay off my lawn
In what way? Plex has less options for you to use.
It can be way harder to setup remote with SSL but it’s not harder for non SSL connections. However, with the harder setup comes much more power such as setting up behind nginx and/or Cloudflare using your own domain. All connectivity is controlled directly by the admin and no third party servers are needed.
Sure it will, just as easily. Many people do this.
I just don’t know how I missed this, I don’t check the forums in a couple of months and BAM everyone is on the emby bandwagon. Looks like I’m heading over to check it out.
Far out request but has anyone yet written a script to apply to emby metadata from Plex. A bit like google when they had the iPhone to android switch so I can move across played, current position etc or will I be up all night annoying the wife but writing one?
Oh you are an emby user! Tell me more, this has popped up a lot as what everyone is jumping to. I think I’m at the point where I want to try something else and this looks good on the surface but you never know unless someone tries it first. Can you run it in parallel with Plex (no need to change naming or folders etc)?