Which is better plex or Emby for the money?
I do not find that Emby is in any way better than Plex. In some ways they are equal and in others Plex leads.
Right now Plex is a long ways superior even with the poor choices Plex has made lately.
As far as “for the money” both are free in their basic forms and buying a sub gives you some additional features. However I really do not use any of the extensions that are provided. I bought a Plex Pass because I wanted to support Plex. I do not feel the same about EMBY. I would only use Emby if, for some reason, I could not use Plex.
Emby has some nice server side settings but their clients are not even close to the Plex equivalents. I use both, but the Roku Emby client is extremely clunky and ugly (I use MB Media centre instead which is better but still not great), and the windows tablet/phone apps are just as bad. It also tends to transcode a lot more than Plex.
I too use both Plex and Emby on the same server.
I agree with everything said thus far by @Elijah_Baley and @WilhelmStroker. There are things that Emby does really well and I wish Plex had done the same way (filtering/parental controls, sharing, etc). Emby doesn’t need to “phone home” or rely on user accounts created “offsite” like Plex does. Emby allows you to fully control the user accounts on the server itself including passwords. It also does filtering/parental control a lot better. It can do mixed libraries, box collections and supports additional library types (eg books, DVR TV, Podcasts) as well as support DVR and Live TV functionality. It handles pictures and home movies a lot better as well. It can also “cast” to any DLNA device which can be quite powerful! Emby also supports the use of Intel’s Quick Sync during transcoding (still needs a bit of work). Emby’s syncing (cloud, client, mobile & folder) is better than Plex’s implementation.
As @WilhelmStroker pointed out Emby tends to have to transcode more often than Plex does for the same media. It’s not as bad as it used to be but still… You can get around this somewhat (on both platforms) by pre-transcoding your media to MP4.
While as good as this has probably sounded thus far for Emby, at the end of the day it’s all about the clients used to view your library. Emby’s clients suck. There is no comparison to Plex’s clients. To be fair, Emby has up to recently been focused on the server side of things and they have done a great job. they are just starting to focus a bit more on the client side.
So what does all this mean? Install and use Plex as your “goto” media center. Once you have this up and running well, install and play with Emby. They can co-reside. You’ll probably end up only sharing Plex with Friends/Family but use Emby for some features for your own use (eg Live TV or DVR).
Carlo
About Clients - only have experience with the atv4 apps (both emby and plex) and i have to say - the emby client is much nicer (in fact the emby client looks beautiful) - the plex developer of the atv app should have a closer look :-).
I belive that Plex and Emby needs to coexist for any progress to be made. Both have their ups and down.
Also regarding clients, I find the Emby Android TV client to be light years ahead of the one for Plex. Plex’s is decent and it gets the job done, but the Emby one is much more information rich and “just looks better” to me.
That being said, I run both systems as they have their pros/cons.
@Doonga said:
Also regarding clients, I find the Emby Android TV client to be light years ahead of the one for Plex. Plex’s is decent and it gets the job done, but the Emby one is much more information rich and “just looks better” to me.That being said, I run both systems as they have their pros/cons.
How is your system load by running both? I am considering it, however my system is already under some load. ( do run more than just plex)
I have no problems running both. It’s a similar setup as what you have listed in your signature, without vmware. I stopped virtualizing stuff about a year ago and just consolidated into a single linux machine.
@Doonga said:
I have no problems running both. It’s a similar setup as what you have listed in your signature, without vmware. I stopped virtualizing stuff about a year ago and just consolidated into a single linux machine.
CPU time is already at 80-100% most of the time, so an upgrade for me is in the works. I’m just quite picky on what i want, and very few offers that in one package. eg I would like 10g right on motherboard and those are close to 900 Euro each,add cpu on top of that 500 euro for a descent xeon so build would quickly go to 2000 euros.
