I have used Plex from the very early days but like many others I am sick of the attitude of the Plex devs so I am switching away from Plex.
I know that there are viable alternatives and from what I understand Emby is great. It does lack some Plex features but their devs are very responsive to customer feedback and this is way more important for me.
Because of the Plex devs attitudes I believe Plex has had it’s day and that more and more users will be moving away from their platform.
Anyhow, does anybody know if there are any more viable alternatives to Plex?
The only good alternative to Plex is Emby. For me it is more than “good enough” for everything I need a system to do.
In some areas it is not as “polished” but, in Plex, another word for “polished” is “bloated.”
Emby misses some features but mostly those are features that few use and Plex has left unfinished or simply broken. Plex is very good at releasing features or updates with serious flaws or bugs.
I “think” sometime next week or the one after I will remove my last vestige of Plex by completely removing Plex from my Shield.
Emby is not perfect and neither is Plex but you are correct that the Emby developers listen and respond to their users while Plex does not.
It could be the “We are number two so we have to try harder” effect made popular by a certain rent-a-car company some years ago but that does not matter. Emby does try harder and they do listen and respond better to their users. As I say elsewhere Emby, right now, is the better company and , unless you really need something that is Plex only, a MUCH more pleasant company and system to deal with.
Emby is different and it takes some effort to make the conversion but, for me, it is well worth it.
BTW: I have been asked recently so I will say here that naming/structure that conforms to Plex standards works perfectly in Emby so that is something that does not have to be changed or even modified in a move from Plex to Emby. Also Emby is a little more flexible in the structure of TV shows but I recommend that people stay within the Plex standards. They are more rigid but they are also easier to maintain.
Another option is to use Kodi on an Android TV box such as Mi Box and serve your contents through FTP to Kodi. The drawback is no remote web interface.
Emby correctly handles episode of TV shows with multiple parts: That is an episode labeled with something like s04e04-e05 or s04e04e05 show up as one episode with a description that is pretty much correct and when it plays Emby progresses to, in the example case, to e06. As opposed to Plex’s way of having two separate entries and playing both parts as one episode when the first is selected and the playing the whole thing again when the second is chosen. Plex has been “looking into” the bug for at least two years and have not fixed it.
You can pause or stop playback and send messages to currently playing or connected devices from the web interface. This also has been asked for in Plex for a VERY long time but Plex is unable to preform that requested function.
Those are just a couple of things that further highlight Plex’s lack of caring about their customers.
I get what everyone is saying and am frustrated about things too, but Emby is far from the answer. It’s not nearly as mature as Plex and is lacking in a lot of areas. I couldn’t get back to Plex fast enough. Oh, be sure to check the Emby privacy policy too.
@jhelou said:
I get what everyone is saying and am frustrated about things too, but Emby is far from the answer. It’s not nearly as mature as Plex and is lacking in a lot of areas. I couldn’t get back to Plex fast enough. Oh, be sure to check the Emby privacy policy too.
Yea, I tried (am trying) Emby myself - and it’s not exactly ‘catching on’ for me the way it has for others.
Emby correctly handles episode of TV shows with multiple parts: That is an episode labeled with something like s04e04-e05 or s04e04e05 show up as one episode with a description that is pretty much correct and when it plays Emby progresses to, in the example case, to e06. As opposed to Plex’s way of having two separate entries and playing both parts as one episode when the first is selected and the playing the whole thing again when the second is chosen. Plex has been “looking into” the bug for at least two years and have not fixed it.
You can pause or stop playback and send messages to currently playing or connected devices from the web interface. This also has been asked for in Plex for a VERY long time but Plex is unable to preform that requested function.
Those are just a couple of things that further highlight Plex’s lack of caring about their customers.
This is very true. They spent most of their efforts trying to bring useless premium features and never trying to improve basic usability.
Transcoding performance is better than plex (lower CPU usage). I can transcode 10 videos at once in Emby compared to 7 in Plex. I can choose to use VLC to play the videos, which means that more things can be played directly.
The UI is way better than Plex’s old and new UIs, it is more customize-able and even skinnable.
The lifetime pass is a little expensive but, in my opinion, the experience is superior.
I’ve been trying out Emby over the past couple of days. Some of the UIs aren’t quite as polished as Plex, with the exception of the Roku app which is very smooth looking and running. Transcoding is noticeably faster with Emby. Media matching is pretty good, some items Plex got right and Emby didn’t, some Emby got right that Plex didn’t, Plex is easier to edit (though their “locking” feature is very buggy however Emby can edit media info on mobile devices as well as web interfaces).
Emby doesn’t require a login and can be completely run using only an IP address, depending on your setup this may or may not be an advantage. Additional users can be set up without an Emby account (literally just adding a name and optional password with no need for an email address).
I’m torn at the moment to be honest, Plex is generally better looking but Emby runs just as well as a system and offers more editable features. Waiting to see what happens with Plex’s current privacy concerns (don’t forget to read through Emby’s also, they do give an opt-out feature but some generic usage information is still sent, though not specific media information as far as I can see).
This is the main issue for me…and also the lack of stability… Plex seems to be always launching new features nobody cares while at same time breaking something…
I care much more about : stability, subtitle support ( I still have so many issues with plex and subtitles, they won’t appear, you can’t easily sync them, change color/size ) and the way emby handles multi-episodes is already a big bonus for me.
I’m taking another look at Emby, too. It has come a long way since the last time I looked, 3 or 4 years ago. My needs are simple, and primarily involving Music and Photos. The one thing that’s going to stop me is that they don’t support photos in the DNG format.
@beckfield said:
I’m taking another look at Emby, too. It has come a long way since the last time I looked, 3 or 4 years ago. My needs are simple, and primarily involving Music and Photos. The one thing that’s going to stop me is that they don’t support photos in the DNG format.
You should post on their forums… the devs are very responsive when it comes to adding features.
@ratcliffe_mike said:
You should post on their forums… the devs are very responsive when it comes to adding features.
WHAT!!?
Developers involve themselves in the community of users!?
EEEEEWWWW!
That’s just nasty, Man!
Not only are they involved but they are mostly patient and really try to help people.
Their only weakness is that they do not understand the Plex environment so they struggle, at times, to understand what people coming from Plex are expecting or trying to do. I have run into that a couple of times.
That weakness is understandable and pretty easy to work around if you keep in mind that almost all (maybe all) Emby developers have never used Plex and that until recently there has not been a lot of movement from Plex to Emby.
They answer quickly and really try to help and, over time, I am quite sure they will learn what previous Plex users need to know about the differences.
There are people, like myself, who will also, as we learn more, try to help others moving from Plex to Emby.
Their forums are a lot less active and that could be because they have a lot fewer users or it could be because they have fewer problems. I think it is a combination of both of those.
BTW: I have mentioned before BUT their Shield TV app and their Fire TV app are quite good and vastly superior, in my opinion, to anything Plex has ever even dreamed of producing.
Their Roku app is as good as the current Plex one.
My dog is even happier since I mostly switched to Emby. I curse quite a bit less and I am generally more mellow so he does not mistakenly think he has done something wrong as often. However the local supermarket and the liqueur store next to it are less pleased, their beer and liqueur sales have dropped quite a bit as I have fewer sorrows to drown.
@ratcliffe_mike said:
You should post on their forums… the devs are very responsive when it comes to adding features.
I have, but not about that. Someone else reported the problem, and the response is that they’re working on it. Something to do with a missing dependency in their ImageMagick implementation.
@beckfield said:
I have, but not about that. Someone else reported the problem, and the response is that they’re working on it. Something to do with a missing dependency in their ImageMagick implementation.
In the case of Emby you can pretty much believe it when they say things like that. They do not play the delaying game like Plex often does.
If it really is a case of a missing dependency and that is fixable within the “ImageMagick implementation,” particularly if is something like setting a flag or including an extra file, I would kind of expect it to be fixed quite soon.
