Hi,
I am new to plex and emby as I just bought my LG 65" Flat screen some weeks ago. I have all my movies on my PC and used to watch them with my ipad over an app.
Now I am slowly diving into the world of media server which seem plex and emby being the most used ones.
There is nothing I need other then intuitive and easy control of my movie library that is stored on my PC from my TV.
emby alwys every few files asks me annoyingly to upgrade to PRO and sometimes subtitles are not automatically downloaded but sometimes they are and I have not idea what makes the difference other than when its not they want me to upgrade to PRO.
I am willing to pay 100$ for the full license of either of those but not for both so I am curious what experienced users with way more knowledge here say about plex and maybe emby and why should I purchase PLEX full license?
Hit me with your best shots 
I tested Emby, but Plex work better for me. Worth paying for Plex Pass if you want offline downloads, otherwise you can unlock mobile app with a single payment. If you want offline downloads on mobile i suggest switch to old sync feature, because new download feature is not complete yet. If you use Plex for music you can use Plexamp (plex pass required). I didn’t tested subtitle download, but my entire movie library was identified without issues. Emby has a device limit, something that Plex does not have. Plex is easier to configure if you want remote play
I use both Emby and Plex. I have a lifetime license for both. I find Plex to be a lot like cotton candy, a lot of sweetness but very little substance while Emby is pretty much the other way around.
For me Emby just works without getting in the way.
If I were starting on my media server journey at this time I would not get Plex at all as it has degraded to the point where it does not do the job I need well enough to justify the effort to get it going.
But realistically I “might” use Plex even starting out today but I would not purchase a Plex lifetime license as Plex has decided to make their system non user friendly and they have been very successful at it.
Emby continues to be well worth the lifetime purchase even though they are adding “fluff” kind of like Plex did in the past and are continuing to do but they have not, yet, cluttered up the interface with a lot of worthless crap.
It seems like the direction the two are taking has them moving apart in an accelerated manner. Plex wants to be to one and only media interface that is used by their customers while Emby seems to only want to be the best media client/server application there is. Emby is moving in the direction they seem to want while Plex is moving toward combining a Netflix like delivery system with other intrusive “features” so as to make all the money they can. Plex is modeled to mimic the profitable companies on the internet by stealing as much customer info as possible.
Plex has become the masters of customer exploitation in the client/server universe. My choice, at this point, is Emby by a landslide. I STRONGLY recommend against providing financial support for a exploitative company like Plex.
It also depends heavily on the clients and the media you are using. On iOS, iPadOS and especially tvOS forget about Emby…
Thanks for your input.
The only thing I really need is to play movies/videos/series/ from my PC. And the menu needs to be easy and cool to use. What I like from emby is that it recognized my movies and adds sometimes a trailer or info even though I have only the mp4 file.
I will check out Plex today and see how different it is.
emby someties gives me example of last added files…
BUT
- it only shows a shortage of the name and sometimes some filenames are very long and I cant see the name of the episode before entering the videofile which is annoying. Cause when I go back outside its vanished from the list of newly added cause I clicked it.
p.s.: I got one issue with PLEX.
I added a new series and a movie to the directory and it shows just the new movie but not the directory with all the episodes.
Why is it not updating that automatically and how do I force him to show that file when I exactly know which one it is?
You don’t really need the Plex Pass unless you want premium features like Live TV/DVR. If you just want to watch media, pay the one-time $5 to unlock the plex player that you need (Android/FireTV/Roku etc).
If you were thinking about Plex for Live TV/DVR, my advice would be: Run FAST. Run FAR.
It’s just a mess. Basic features don’t work for many months at a time. I paid for the lifetime pass to get Live TV/DVR and I really feel like I’ve been scammed. If you have lots of free time, you’ll definitely be able to fill it with all the troubleshooting and bug reporting that you’ll be doing trying to get Plex’s Live TV/DVR to work.
I use Jellyfin now with the NextPVR plugin for TV/DVR. All free.
I don’t use Plex day to day anymore – just too frustrating. But I do continue to try it out every month or two to confirm that it still totally sucks. I would not trust plex with my money again and regret that I did so the first time.
Plex (I don’t know about EMBY), requires shows/movies to be in a particular format and location. If you set up a Movies library, it will look for movies within that folder and all sub-folders, and ignore files that look like TV episodes (S02E15, for example). If you do a TV Shows library, it’s the opposite, looking for files labeled like a show, and ignoring all else.
Plex is particular about file naming, and has a strict separation of shows and movies. There are a few articles that may help. These will help get a movie/show found and indexes in Plex, but it’s also GREAT for organizing your media for any other service as well, not just Plex.
General content-not-found issues:
TV Shows:
Movies:
EDIT: Plex I think requires a paid Plex Pass for automatically collecting trailers and other extras for your movies/shows. But if you have your own, you can include them without paying.
Also, I seem to not have a lot of the issues people have here with Plex. My DVR works near flawlessly, and any issues I have with it seem to be related to the guide data being incorrect. I don’t watch much live TV, but I DVR the heck out of shows daily, and they seem to record ok.
@cke6 , the way the Plexscanner works, you cannot have TV shows and Movies in the same Library. What you can do if you don’t want to maintain multiple media folders is create a TV Library and point it to the same folder as the Movies Library. As long as your files are named properly, the corresponding media will either show up in the movies or TV show Library. Also, you can browse by folder within the Library itself at the top under one of the filters.
My take on the Plex vs Emby is that everyone will have their own experience and mileage with each platform. There are so many things to take into consideration when setting up/ building a server. Hardware plays a huge part in terms of stability and in my experience, this is typically the issue when it comes to the DVR issues that many ppl have. So one person having zero issues over several years vs one person having nothing but issues from day one is more than possible with either platform.
@MovieWiz made a valid point. You might not even need plex pass as you might never use the additional features that it offers so you could try Plex before paying for Emby and see which suits you.
Thanks for your input. I appretiate that.
What I noticed so many people mentioning a DVR and yet I never said I had one attached. I simply enjoy online content ala youtube and co or my media files on my pc. thats it.
The DVR comment was from/for one of the replies above, I just wanted to give additional context. Also, this is one of the features that would be enabled via plex pass and it sounds like you might never use it. Plex has a ton of features. This has slowly become a hot topic for some users but if you spend the time to curate your server, you never even see the additional options unless you want to.
My recommendation: don’t do that.
It will turn around and bite you in the back eventually – sometimes with a large delay.
Well, to be honest. I can understand why an software wants that the customer separates the files.
For commercial use and like business purposes I can see this being even the best idea and for someone who used to be an Linux System Admin I understand the logical concept behind it.
But as long as no Plex employee comes to my house, sits in front of my pc for hundreds of hours and starts sorting 10.000 video files and separate them in different folders, this software has one of the biggest flaws I can think off.
I personally also dont want my files separated for many reasons.
Its just a no go for me, so I can only go with other options and deal with the consequences and maybe the errors.
For now its working with what drslevy suggested.
If it stops working than Plex will not be the right software for my needs and I have to switch back to emby or something else.
It is easy as that.
But the best thing is, I learned something and now that I know how it works I understand why it isnt working.
So, it’s always recommended to have separate Folders for each media type @OttoKerner ?
100%
From https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/
The scanners and metadata agents used by Plex will work best when your major types of content are separated from each other. We strongly recommend separating movie and television content into separate main directories. For instance, you might use something like this:
/Media /Movies movie content /Music music content /TV Shows television contentWarning! : Plex will do its best to appropriately find and match content. However, a failure to separate content such as movies and TV shows may result in unexpected or incorrect behavior.
In the above example, it is the main folder of each type of content (e.g.
/Movies,/Music,/TV Shows) that you would specify as the content location for that library type.
Yes, very much so.
If you have any kind of serious, organized colelction, you are likely 95% of the way to a Plex viable setup already. The only issues may be those few pesky mixed cases, such as shows that had a movie, or a movie that spun off a show. In both cases, the movie/show database communites have agreed that there are “special” episodes that don’t belong to any numbered season, and have designated these movies as “specials” of the show itself. The only thing that doesn’t work out too well for me, is the hundred or so scooby doo movies and the TV Shows, and the Tremors RV show (loosley related to SOME of the movies, but not all. So those stay separate).
But I understand the reluctance to mangle your library into a form that Plex demands. It feels invasive, asking me to change MY OWN organization to match your own demanded setup. But the ease with which Plex handles metadata and pretty-ing up displaying of titles… I suddenly have a Netflix-like service I own all to myself, and when I drop in new content it is automatically and perfectly picked up.
The problem isn’t that the files need to be separated on the files system level. The problem is that Plex fails to bring together movies and TV-shows internally: so I’ve I’m selecting an actor in the movies section plex won’t show me the TV-shows that actor did (and vice versa).
Emby on the other hand does exactly that: if I navigate to an actor’s page I see >>>ALL<<< the content I’ve have from that actor; regardless of the library it’s in. That’s the behaviour I’d expect.
Emby also allows “mixed” media in a library. I have never tried using a “mixed” type of library as I have found it totally unneeded.
I have never wanted to see a TV show associated with a movie and if I want a movie included in a TV library I just label it as a TV show (s00eXX) and place it in a Season 00 folder. But mostly I have found no need for that. I would rather have the same movie in my libraries twice than trying to invent some other way that may or may not work or create other problems.
We’ve come quite some way from the OP’s post.
As for the need for a mixed content library type… there’s a feature suggestion which is addressing this – though support/demand for this suggestion hasn’t been that huge.
There’s a more popular suggestion to show media of all libraries when you click on an actor/director
or to have an actual actor profile page (with their filmography as available in your libraries)
Personally I have condensed my libraries quite a bit over time, so if I click on an actor profile, I’ll pretty much see all their movies (or shows respectively). If I know I want to see the big picture, there’s always the option to use the global search.
