I have been running into a problem with Emby that is causing me to use it less than I thought I would and to use Plex for at least half of my media consumption.
That problem is that Emby will, on all my clients and even the web interface, become very slow to load and require several exits and restarts of a client to get into Emby. Also Emby wil, from time to time, fail to correctly advance to the next episode after watching a TV episode.
Both of those are not able to be reproduced by the Emby developers so they cannot āfixā them.
Emby also seems to require more frequent reboots of the server than Plex.
Because of these irritations I have had to reevaluate my total move to Emby.
I have concluded that it is better for me to deal with Plexās company irritations and use their software than to put up with the problems Emby is having in my environment.
So I am going to run the two, Plex and Emby, side by side for at least the next several months with Plex being used for TV shows most of the time.
I have Emby running on one computer and Plex on another as well as Plex running on my Shield Pro. I have decided that Plex on the shield will simply be a backup because Plex on the computer is much more flexible.
This does not mean that I believe Plexās business model is improved but it does mean that I have decided that my comfort viewing media overrides any problems I have with Plex or their customer disservice.
So I guess this means that I will be resuming my previous level of activity on these forums but I am quite sure that Plex, the company, will not really welcome me back with open arms but maybe my extra contributions will encourage Plex to improve their customer service or at least help a few users.
I am also sure that a few people (possibly a lot) may flame me for crayfishing but I am prepared for that and I find my comfort in media viewing is more important than my comfort on an internet forum.
I joined Plex over a year ago, and it seemed like it just worked. What it did, it did well.
As new features get introduced, and as the user experience changes, I find myself more and more dissatisfied with the product. If I could snapshot it in time to what it was last year as a server AND on all my clients (not possible in most cases), I might consider rolling back.
The DVR thoughā¦ If it were a little more rock solidā¦ that would be cool.
@AmazingRando24 said:
I joined Plex over a year ago, and it seemed like it just worked. What it did, it did well.
As new features get introduced, and as the user experience changes, I find myself more and more dissatisfied with the product. If I could snapshot it in time to what it was last year as a server AND on all my clients (not possible in most cases), I might consider rolling back.
The DVR thoughā¦ If it were a little more rock solidā¦ that would be cool.
I wish I could use the DVR functionality of either Plex or Emby but where I live I get virtually zero OTA signal and my ISP scrambled all their channels several years ago.
The one thing I wish Plex would do is place a hiatus on new features and fix the existing problems and finish the existing features before trying to expand the feature set. But wishes to Plex are like prayers to God, they always get answered but sometimes, more often than not, the answer is no.
@AmazingRando24 said:
I joined Plex over a year ago, and it seemed like it just worked. What it did, it did well.
As new features get introduced, and as the user experience changes, I find myself more and more dissatisfied with the product. If I could snapshot it in time to what it was last year as a server AND on all my clients (not possible in most cases), I might consider rolling back.
The DVR thoughā¦ If it were a little more rock solidā¦ that would be cool.
I wish I could use the DVR functionality of either Plex or Emby but where I live I get virtually zero OTA signal and my ISP scrambled all their channels several years ago.
The one thing I wish Plex would do is place a hiatus on new features and fix the existing problems and finish the existing features before trying to expand the feature set. But wishes to Plex are like prayers to God, they always get answered but sometimes, more often than not, the answer is no.
I remember when they introduced the Media Optimizer and said over time they would expand the options and make it more useful. Good times.
@KarlDag said:
I remember when they introduced the Media Optimizer and said over time they would expand the options and make it more useful. Good times.
They mostly made it irrelevant with the introduction of ABR.
@KarlDag said:
I remember when they introduced the Media Optimizer and said over time they would expand the options and make it more useful. Good times.
They mostly made it irrelevant with the introduction of ABR.
If you have the transcoding power required for it, sure. Though in my experience it doesnāt adapt quickly enough and I still get a bunch of buffering when trying to stream from work. My point is, they often introduce half baked features, promise to fix them and then just move on.
When they did the big announcement for Premium Music libraries they promised to add a lot more, but nothing else was doneā¦ even took a year to fix Android playback.
Then they introduced the streaming brain, saying they would eventually fix it so that it would prioritize using optimized versions instead of retranscoding the original file, but that never got done.
Plex is the best on the market right now so I still use it, but the point is they often infuriate their customers, overpromise fixes and donāt communicate nearly enough.
ABR works really well. If you experience issues with it then you should report them along with posting logs as it can be tweeked if needed.
Music libraries are still being added to feature wise. Weāve recently got new items added to scanning that deep analyze your music files to allow cross fading and gapless playbackā¦ Plex has also just recently released a dedicated client just for music that is the premier client for new music features.
Streaming brain does add new features and can make use of your optimized files. However if you used early versions of Optimize then it only targeted the video portion of the file and didnāt take into consideration the audio. So a targeted 4Mb file would often have been over 4Mb hence not usable by streaming brain as it wants the file to be at or under 4Mb (total) in size.
Donāt get me wrong, Iām not towing the company line or anything and have my own pet peeves with Plex but these arenāt some of them.
@Elijah_Baley - Iām surprised you got as far as you did with Emby. I installed it and used it for a day, but I didnāt like how poorly it behaved and how unstable it was and I dumped it. Maybe when itās more polished Iāll look at it again, but right now it is, in my opinion, not even in the same class as Plex.
@kegobeer-plex said: @Elijah_Baley - Iām surprised you got as far as you did with Emby. I installed it and used it for a day, but I didnāt like how poorly it behaved and how unstable it was and I dumped it. Maybe when itās more polished Iāll look at it again, but right now it is, in my opinion, not even in the same class as Plex.
I really REALLY wanted Emby to work and my need are pretty simple except for the size of my library.
All I need is the easy ability to browse and play my movies and TV shows with a properly functioning āOn Deckā or equivalent for TV shows.
Collections and some way to limit genera to just the important (to me) ones are also things that are āgood to haveā and are implemented better in Emby than in Plex.
I wish Emby worked consistently because I actually found that, again for my use case, Emby worked better and easier (when it worked) than Plex.
I think Emby and Plex show problems with two different development models. Plexās development team is large, ambitious and uncommunicative with their user base while Embyās is small, conservative and highly interactive with their user base. Plexā model results in a shotgun approach to new features with virtually none ever getting finished while Embys means that there is not enough time available to really diagnose and fix problems or to truly finish and test their product.
Both models are flawed in that things donāt get done or finished. Right now the deficiencies in Plex are easier for me to deal with than those in Emby.
@cayars said:
ABR works really well. If you experience issues with it then you should report them along with posting logs as it can be tweeked if needed.
Music libraries are still being added to feature wise. Weāve recently got new items added to scanning that deep analyze your music files to allow cross fading and gapless playbackā¦ Plex has also just recently released a dedicated client just for music that is the premier client for new music features.
Streaming brain does add new features and can make use of your optimized files. However if you used early versions of Optimize then it only targeted the video portion of the file and didnāt take into consideration the audio. So a targeted 4Mb file would often have been over 4Mb hence not usable by streaming brain as it wants the file to be at or under 4Mb (total) in size.
Donāt get me wrong, Iām not towing the company line or anything and have my own pet peeves with Plex but these arenāt some of them.
Carlo
Music librariesā new features are only available on PlexAmp for which no support is promised. I think we can all agree most people will listen to their music on Android or iOS, which donāt have those necessary features. Sure, itās probably coming now, but it should have been the case a long time ago.
They might have fixed the optimiser if you say so, but if thatās the case it goes back to the point about communication: I had no idea. They also still donāt give us options to change crf values to our preference.
Or priorities are probably not the same, no, but I really wish Plex would finish fixing their features before adding more, and especially with on communicating A LOT MORE with us.
@kegobeer-plex said: @Elijah_Baley - Iām surprised you got as far as you did with Emby. I installed it and used it for a day, but I didnāt like how poorly it behaved and how unstable it was and I dumped it. Maybe when itās more polished Iāll look at it again, but right now it is, in my opinion, not even in the same class as Plex.
I find emby pretty stable when I can login, but their emby connect thing is not half as well made as plex.tv. they allow for fully offline use though, which is a big advantage.
@kegobeer-plex said: @Elijah_Baley - Iām surprised you got as far as you did with Emby. I installed it and used it for a day, but I didnāt like how poorly it behaved and how unstable it was and I dumped it. Maybe when itās more polished Iāll look at it again, but right now it is, in my opinion, not even in the same class as Plex.
I find Emby pretty stable when I can login, but their emby connect thing is not half as well made as plex.tv. they allow for fully offline use though, which is a big advantage.
I tried Emby and ran it side by side, lasted a week for me. Too dam slow and regular restarts of Server. LG app was slow to launch at times, It functioned ok, but PMS was a more polished package. Emby set up was a breath of fresh air, itās configuration was very tailored. That was a big plus for me.
Iām not saying that the above never happens to Plex and Iām not running on the āpassā update channel. My preference overall is definitely Plex.
@Stephen3001 said:
So the proverbial verdant pastures were not that lush after allā¦
It is just that the grass here is more of the shade of brown that fits with what I need. Of course I deploy my umbrella more often here to avoid the yellow rain that Plex gives its users much too often. Maybe that is what is killing the grass here?
@Stephen3001 said:
So the proverbial verdant pastures were not that lush after allā¦
It is just that the grass here is more of the shade of brown that fits with what I need. Of course I deploy my umbrella more often here to avoid the yellow rain that Plex gives its users much too often. Maybe that is what is killing the grass here?
Plex isnāt giving us much of anything here is my opinion. New features? Sure. But bug fixes and communication are few and far between.
The one thing I wish Plex would do is place a hiatus on new features and fix the existing problems and finish the existing features before trying to expand the feature set. But wishes to Plex are like prayers to God, they always get answered but sometimes, more often than not, the answer is no.
It seems to me that new features are on at least a slowdown. Thereās been nothing since ānewsā in September, I think.
The one thing I wish Plex would do is place a hiatus on new features and fix the existing problems and finish the existing features before trying to expand the feature set. But wishes to Plex are like prayers to God, they always get answered but sometimes, more often than not, the answer is no.
It seems to me that new features are on at least a slowdown. Thereās been nothing since ānewsā in September, I think.
But they just threatened us with a server update that is for functionality of something new. I am somewhat terrified of what ācouldā be coming. It is kind of like waiting around the campfire while the fire burns down with weird shuffling noises coming from the the surrounding forest and a coed or two sitting around in their underwear and telling the guys to find out āwhat that noise is.ā
But they just threatened us with a server update that is for functionality of something new. I am somewhat terrified of what ācouldā be coming. It is kind of like waiting around the campfire while the fire burns down with weird shuffling noises coming from the the surrounding forest and a coed or two sitting around in their underwear and telling the guys to find out āwhat that noise is.ā
Sounds like politics, the Plex Conspiracy at this point holds no water
But they just threatened us with a server update that is for functionality of something new. I am somewhat terrified of what ācouldā be coming. It is kind of like waiting around the campfire while the fire burns down with weird shuffling noises coming from the the surrounding forest and a coed or two sitting around in their underwear and telling the guys to find out āwhat that noise is.ā
