Jump to content

Emby Blog

A group blog by Developers in General

  • entries
    585
  • comments
    5104
  • views
    3661706

Contributors to this blog

  • Luke 359
  • ebr 70
  • Carlo 31
  • sross44 27
  • 7illusions 15
  • ScottIsAFool 12
  • Abobader 11
  • radeon 8
  • xnappo 8
  • darwindeeds 7
  • Redshirt 6
  • Cheesegeezer 5
  • leedavies 3
  • Aphid 3
  • bigjohn 3
  • snazy2000 3
  • softworkz 3
  • techywarrior 3
  • Soultaker 2
  • chef 2
  • gcw07 2
  • marcelveldt 1
  • hurricanehrndz 1

Emby Community Spotlight – Volume 2

sross44

Entry posted by sross44 in Emby

8245 views

 Share

Welcome back to our Emby Community Spotlight series where we showcase real users and the powerful, creative, and often surprising ways they use Emby across different environments.

In this edition, we’re featuring everything from a professionally calibrated home theater server to a budget friendly setup that just works. Whether you're building a server in your basement or streaming from a single-board computer, there's something to learn from each one of these users.

1. Modular, Scalable, and Always Moving Forward

This user built their Emby setup with future expansion in mind, combining Unraid with Docker-based services, remote access capabilities, and a clean, efficient hardware layout.

  • Motherboard: ASRock B550 Extreme4

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

  • RAM: 32GB

  • GPU: NVIDIA Quadro P620 (for transcoding)

  • Storage:

    250GB SSD for Docker containers and VMs

    4.5TB SSD media cache pool

    4x12TB HDD array (36TB usable)

  • HBA: LSI 9211-8i

  • Chassis: Inter-Tech 4U-4410

  • Power: Corsair RM750i PSU

  • Remote Access: Sipeed NanoKVM PCIe

  • OS: Unraid

Clients include a NVIDIA Shield TV for local playback, Emby for PC, Infuse for mobile, and Chromecast for travel. About 10 remote users also access the server via web and TV apps.

“I’ve been using Emby for about five years. I chose it over other platforms because it had the right balance of app support and flexibility.”

2. Professionally Tuned and Built for Total Reliability

This setup blends enterprise-grade storage, a calibrated video pipeline, and TrueNAS reliability — all focused on delivering uncompromising playback quality through a single, optimized client device.

  • CPU: Intel Xeon E-2124G

  • RAM: 96GB ECC DDR4

  • Motherboard: Supermicro X11SCH-LN4F

  • Storage:

    Boot OS (TrueNAS 25.04.1): 2x WD Red 500GB SATA SSD (mirrored)

    Emby App Storage: 2x WD Red 1TB NVMe SSD (mirrored)

    Media Storage: 6x 8TB WD Ultrastar DC HC510 SAS HDDs in RAID-Z2

  • HBA: IBM M1215 (IT firmware)

  • Network: LACP trunked to switch, isolated subnet

  • Power: Platinum Seasonic PSU + UPS

  • Location: Basement, rack-mounted with adjacent core network gear

Client: One — but it’s a serious one. A NVIDIA Shield TV Pro (2019) connects to a Lumagen Radiance Pro video processor, which handles upscaling, tone mapping, and color calibration before outputting to a professionally calibrated Panasonic 4K OLED.

“Of all the solutions I’ve tried — madVR HTPCs, Oppo players, Dune boxes — Emby with Shield is the only one that just works. I finally get to enjoy my media instead of constantly troubleshooting. It’s peace of mind.”

3. Small Footprint, Big Results

Proof that a setup doesn’t have to be expensive or complex to be effective, this user keeps it simple — and functional — with a low-cost SBC and NAS combo.

  • Server Device: OrangePi 5+

    Storage: 256GB eMMC

    CPU: 8-core

    RAM: 16GB

  • Storage Backend: Synology DS224+ (2x 8TB WD Red drives)

  • Networking & Extras:

    Ubiquiti UCG Ultra

    External backup drive

    System76 Meerkat for other services

Clients:

  • Android phones and tablets

  • Roku

  • Chromecast

  • Web browsers

No frills, just dependable performance for in-home and personal streaming needs. This setup is lightweight, quiet, and gets the job done with minimal power and space requirements.

 

Have a Setup Worth Sharing?

We’re always on the lookout for more community submissions. Whether your Emby server is built for performance, portability, or just personal fun, we’d love to feature it in an upcoming spotlight.

Submit your setup on the forums or reach out directly to be considered for a future blog post.

  • Like 2
 Share

1 Comment

Recommended Comments

Dibbes

Dibbes 514

Posted (edited)

 

The hardware I’ve set up for Emby isn’t particularly remarkable. It’s my old daily driver: an Intel i7-7700 paired with 48GB of RAM and an ageing GTX 1660 GPU handling the transcoding duties.

For the operating system, I opted for Windows Server 2025, as I happened to have an unused licence key available. It’s installed on its own dedicated 64GB NVMe drive with the paging file disabled.

Emby itself is installed on the system drive, while the cache and image storage are handled by a second NVMe drive (500GB), installed using a PCIe x16 to NVMe adapter.

My media library is quite extensive. It includes music, audiobooks, ebooks, films, home videos, television series, photo uploads and YouTube downloads. This main library, not including the comic book collection (which spans 50TB and resides on a separate instance), holds roughly 3.3 million entries. These are spread across 50TB of local RAID volumes for frequently accessed content, and four Synology NAS systems for archived material, totalling approximately 400TB of raw capacity.

Films are organised by decade, distributed across multiple volumes and disk groups. TV series are divided into two separate libraries: one for Running series and another for Archived or no longer running stuff. Music, ebooks and audiobooks are housed on a separate local volume.

For conversion and transcoding tasks, I use older SATA SSDs configured in RAID 0. As this is a non-critical function, I’m not concerned about potential drive failures in this setup.

As clients I have a Nvidia Shield TV 2019, a Nokia Box 8000, an Apple TV 4, 2 x 1080p Android beamers, 3 Smart TVs (LG and Samsung), various iPads, iPhones and Android phones/tablets on various OS versions that connect regularly from various counties mainly within Europe.

Edited by Dibbes
  • Like 1

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...