Folks, I find the back and forth about Emby’s and Plex’s business models interesting and I think both sides are mostly correct. I also think there are some misunderstandings, some of which may be intentional, that are leading to this tread going off track.
My intention in posting this was just to report what I experienced in my move from Plex to Emby and let others know about what to expect in a simple move as my needs are quite simple.
I also expected that there would be reports of others about their move or about why they found that a move was not for them. I did not intend at all for this thread to get derailed into discussions of business models or even if Emby might end up in the same situation we find Plex in at this time.
This is, mostly, an open board and I would not attempt to restrict anyone’s right to post as they feel as long as the posts remain mostly polite. However I just wanted everyone to know that I, as the one who started this thread, do not think that the posts about business models and/or the future of Emby’s customer service is really correct for this thread.
But it does not bother me too much so people should feel free to derail this thread as much as they want. I just wanted to make it clear that that direction is not what I intended.
My biggest issue with Emby, is the 15 device limit for premium features. So for people that have a lot of different users, Emby probably won’t be an alternative. I now use Emby in my home and use PLEX for external users.
@dduke2104 said:
That premium devices limit is a concurrent measurement, is it not?
From what I understand 15 devices is not actually concurrent but rather it is cumulative with devices that are not seem for a while (something like 10 days or two weeks) rolling off the list.
I do not know for sure as I never reach even six devices. I do not share with others.
I do know that for a small charge you can buy the rights to have many more devices.
If you need to know more you can visit Emby’s web pages and/or forums and there you will find answers and if you do not find it easily you can ask. They respond to questions quite expeditiously.
@Fressa0815 said:
Sounds Great. Think I’ll try it later. The lack of support from the Devs here is a pain!
Exactly, my biggest gripe by far. That, and bugs like music playback that stops by itself on android that hasn’t been fixed after A YEAR. We have photo tagging, though, so there’s that.
@flamebird said:
The difference is three different people are actively trying to help solve the problem. It’s an intermittent bug, so it’s being a pain to track down; but it’ so weird to not be told it’s my fault for not using it “their way”.
Again, exactly. I had an issue trying to play back streams from a plugin, asked about it on the forums, same day it was fixed in the AndroidTV beta. I’ll never expect something similar with Plex.
One of the best things isn’t actually the software, but the support community where you can actually get support from the emby team. Something sadly lacking here for some time.
Each audiobook track has its own “watched” status. Whereas Plex has no way of marking previously read chapters (I would screenshot Plex on my phone to remind myself where I was)
Emby’s Parental Controls only have Negative Filtering for Tags thus far. Positive Filtering is an existing Feature Request and the devs say it should come soon in a future update.
There are currently no metadata agent plugins for Emby; so whereas the IFDB agent for Plex can scrape Fanedit.org for fanedits metadata, Emby can not currently do this.
It is unknown to me if Emby can populate Artist/Author posters from locally stored files like Plex does.
I tried Emby yesterday and the first thing I noticed is that I can’t just drop a bunch of TV episodes into a library folder and have it work properly. Emby relies heavily on folder structure to construct its libraries. Plex is much more flexible and matches my style of use.
@rbird888 said:
I tried Emby yesterday and the first thing I noticed is that I can’t just drop a bunch of TV episodes into a library folder and have it work properly. Emby relies heavily on folder structure to construct its libraries. Plex is much more flexible and matches my style of use.
If you get away with nonstandard naming/structure in Plex it is because you are currently lucky. Plex requires just about the same naming and structure as Emby. Sometimes a nonstandard setup will work in one of the two and not the other BUT neither guarantees that said nonstandard structure will continue to work in the future.
I have always found it MUCH easier to conform my TV shows to the standards. It is quick and easy to name and structure them correctly and saves so much future frustration.
BTW: Both Emby and Plex are much more forgiving about movie naming and structure but even then you should make sure that you keep your movie naming pretty close to the standard if you want good matching on the first try.
I don’t want to have to come up with a folder structure for shows that are going to get watched and deleted within a week or two. Most things don’t get archived forever. I do use proper naming though. Plex is more flexible for my style of watching.
I got a (partial) refund for my lifetime plex membership and went over to emby to check it out. First thing I noticed is that the menus load a lot slower in Emby. Second thing: it’s ugly.
as for metadata, tv loaded perfectly! Movies however, I have about 25 (out of 400+) movies that it couldn’t find, entered IMDB IDs into (a couple of) them and the metadata still isn’t loading. I don’t know what’s happening.
Played a DTS audio movie into the FireTV app and I got glorious 5.1 surround! Tried an ACC: 5.1 surround. AAC: 5.1 surround.
Then it said it couldn’t find the server.
So, ups and downs.
I looks like Plex stole their FireTV app design from Emby.
So, we’ll see what happens. They each have their (glaring) faults.
@Coxeroni said:
The disappearing server issue I also have regularly, something that shouldn’t happen imho.
Try loading photos, hope you like coffee
No thanks, it took all day for it just to do my movies, tv and music. Don’t get me started on music!
Ok, I’ll start…
About 1/2 the artists have no pictures, including some where there is no excuse: B. B. King (and none of his albums), Eric Clapton, Jack White, incubus, John Mayer, Johnny cash, Nirvana, Tool, U2. But it found a picture of Van Cliburn - a classical pianist and depression-era jazz clarinettist, Johnny Dodds. Very Strange. (Plex has all of them)
After using emby today I can’t see myself staying. It’s pretty bad. And it costs the same as Plex. I’ll use my month pass and decide from there. Sigh.
@Coxeroni said:
The disappearing server issue I also have regularly, something that shouldn’t happen imho.
Try loading photos, hope you like coffee
No thanks, it took all day for it just to do my movies, tv and music. Don’t get me started on music!
Ok, I’ll start…
About 1/2 the artists have no pictures, including some where there is no excuse: B. B. King (and none of his albums), Eric Clapton, Jack White, incubus, John Mayer, Johnny cash, Nirvana, Tool, U2. But it found a picture of Van Cliburn - a classical pianist and depression-era jazz clarinettist, Johnny Dodds. Very Strange. (Plex has all of them)
After using emby today I can’t see myself staying. It’s pretty bad. And it costs the same as Plex. I’ll use my month pass and decide from there. Sigh.
I feel you, had the same problem with music. I didn’t bother to correct everything as I am still staying with Plex. The main problem here is that Emby massivle throttles the access to the databases, probably for not getting banned. For me this also led to errors while checking/downloading which probalby resulted in meta-data not being pulled at all for some artists. Plex on the other hand caches all the databases/makes a proxy in-between (dunno how it is done technically) so the databases can be checked at a lightning speed compared to emby. In the beginning I also selected subtitle download and chapter image extraction. Boy did that take long. Subtitle downloads were taking forever and all the subtitles that couldn’t be found were rechecked whenever a library scan was due. Had to de-select subtitle download to get my libraries scanned at last.
I have had lifetime membership to both Plex and Emby for over a year and I have been telling everyone to forget Plex. Emby is a far superior media server with many more features and better apps. There forums support is awesome(Thanks Luke!). Emby turns outs new versions and feature adds at an astonishing rate, unlike Plex.
@ucjb said:
I have had lifetime membership to both Plex and Emby for over a year and I have been telling everyone to forget Plex. Emby is a far superior media server with many more features and better apps. There forums support is awesome(Thanks Luke!). Emby turns outs new versions and feature adds at an astonishing rate, unlike Plex.
I find that Emby lacks polish, mostly in the UI, but like you said the speed at which bugs are corrected and improvements are made is crazy vs what we see here. You won’t see 1 year of inability to listen to music with Emby.
