The Emby interface is confusing. It’s really two different interfaces when using a web browser. There is the ever confusing management (default view) and the Theater view which is closer to what Plex gives you. Of course on a Plex system it’s all one interface that blends perfectly.
Turning off Transcoding is kind of dumb from many points of view. If you can’t direct stream the file then you typically want the server to transcode the video so that the client can play it. The only real use of turning off transcoding is to brutally force a user to direct play “or go home”. 
The emby transcoder is no where near as sophisticated as the Plex transcoder. Emby often times picks weird combinations of codecs to use when there are better suited codecs. Emby can’t throttle the transcoder very well so it goes nuts if you have people checking out different videos such as playing the first couple minutes of different vids to see what they want to watch. Plex handles this in stride while Emby keeps stacking up transcodes even though many of them aren’t needed anymore.
For those that follow Plex closely you noticed in the last few releases that Plex now handles audio a bit differently. It caused a few bugs that had to be fixed but now opens up tremendously what can be done down the road. For example with HW transcoding Plex can worry about the video only via HW and tackle the audio separately for better handling of TrueHD, atmos, DTS while Emby has to rely on the hardware to do both audio and video and will only be able to use the audio codecs that are strictly supported by the HW GPU. Not nearly as flexible.
I could go on and on and I run both systems and know both inside and out. Where Emby is better for now is in a few things. First is Live TV with time shifting which we know is coming to Plex. Emby handles scheduling better in the DVR and makes better use of the tuners and respects network tuners where Plex “assumes it owns” the network tuner and doesn’t handle things well when it can’t access a tuner. Why this is important is that Emby will check to see what needs to be recorded and if multiple things need to be recorded it picks the highest priority item, checks for a tuner then records, it does this until all shows are being recorded. In the event a tuner isn’t available it will be the lowest priority show that doesn’t get recorded. Plex on the other hand appears to schedule what tuner is used much earlier in the process even though it has no idea if the tuner is available or not (since it assumes it will have access to all tuners). So if you happen to use another device to watch live TV then you have no idea which show won’t get recorded and it could have been you #1 priority show that’s a MUST record. Meanwhile 2 shows you might not care about get recorded because the tuner that was pre-allocated for it was available. ← not sure of the technical implementation but the outcome of the recordings is the same.
Emby allows you to manage users on the system with no need for a 3rd party to be involved. So you can create an account, set a password and give access to your libs while on the phone with someone and have them immediately log in. This was a strong point for Emby but they are now mucking it up. They rely more and more on the server admin having a Premier account (similar to Plex-Pass) but are far more restrictive. For example you can only have 15 total devices that require premier membership attached to your server then otherwise you have to purchase the apps. So you could be running the “free apps” but do to a few friends using your server you can’t login yourself without having to purchase the apps. STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. Emby also now checks daily on the server to see if it can “phone home” for premier validation. If it can’t connect it doesn’t work even though your accounts are local. You can get around this but you have to re-compile the code and know what you’re doing.
Another thing that Emby does really well that Plex does not is handling Movie Collection. It can automatically create your Back to the Future, Start Wars, Star Trek, James Bond collections for you which is nice.
In the TV shows listings Emby can have placeholder for shows you are missing or upcoming shows that haven’t aired yet. Both a nice touch.
Other then these few things Plex is better in almost every respect. Plex has more clients, has smoother working and more reliable clients, has more features that just plain work and uses less system resources when transcoding.
Carlo
