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Hi Guys. I'm fairly new to this community, hell this is my first post ;-) Im not as tech savvy as the next guy, however I get by. I have installed and been using Serviio as my server to stream all my media to my Minux Neo U1. Dont get me wrong, it works flawlessly. I love how you have total control over disabling all those useless folders, genres and all that crap. I like my folder view to be simple. I have three folders, Movies Anime Tv I can access the folders that I share as I see them on my computer. No added category's or any of that. I disabled transcoding as the minux is capable of playing anything I throw at it. I've been hearing alot about Emby and I researched abit about it, and I must say its absolutely gorgeous. So I installed it onto my windows machine, and installed the add-on via kodi. I wasnt fond of all the different folders everywhere, too many to mention. Im hoping I can change that and only display the root folders and the content within them. Anything I play through Serviio, no hang, no freezing, no buffering, plays flawless. I cant even get anything to play with Emby. It doesnt just hang or freeze, my whole box freezes. Mind you, I had both Serviio and Emby running at the same time on my Windows PC. I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction, as I'm sure if I played around with the category's displayed and fixed the issue with playback I would switch to Emby in a heartbeat. I dont know why everyone is buzzing about it? Is it just me? :'(

It seems I have complicated my life but my intention was to keep things simple... What is the best setup for my needs? Background: For years, I've had movies stored on a network share and have been using Serviio Pro (DLNA) for standalone Blu-ray players that do not play all video formats. Serviio also does a fairly decent job of streaming over the Internet via it's built-in web portal. I occasionally utilize this functionality when I'm away. Next, I added a WDTV device because the standalones sometimes freeze and have problems with fast forward and reverse. The WDTV device plays videos directly from the network share and was working great up till the last couple of firmware updates. The stupid device periodically looses track of the network share and cannot find it again unless I reboot my PC's and/or server, depending on which one is designated as the master browser. This is a known issue that will probably never be resolved. Anyway, I replaced the WDTV with an Android TV box because of that issue. I'm loving the Android box (MeMoBOX MX MAX) but it has complicated matters. For example: I can no longer use a single universal remote to control the TV, standalone and streaming box. Now I have to have two separate remotes. I had to purchase a separate air mouse remote with a keyboard to utilize the features of the Android box. I could not find an all-in-one that has air mouse, keyboard and that can be programmed to control the standalone and TV. This one (MX3) comes close and it works very, very well. I just hope it holds up. The Android box came with Kodi so now there's a great deal more menus and more steps involved to navigate to and play videos. More menus and options = confused wife. I don't know what is the most efficient way to set things up. My questions and dilemma: I want robustness and simplicity. I do not want to have a complicated setup that requires administration of redundant services or multiple libraries. I want the flexibility of being able to access a single library from the LAN or WAN and be able to select whether I want to watch a transcoded movie or a direct stream. I do not want to transcode everything. Only when needed. Money is tight so I don't want to purchase Emby Premiere Lifetime unless it's needed or very beneficial. It's just not clear to me if I need Kodi on all PC's, Kodi with Emby add-on, Emby Server, Emby Premiere or Emby at all because Kodi does scraping too. Do I need Kodi on any device or PC to play movies if I install Emby server? If so, does each PC maintain it's own library? In a nutshell, why would I need Emby Premiere? Is Emby Theater a replacement for Kodi on Windows? How does it differ from Kodi? Does it automatically transcode the video or is transcoding a selectable option? If I install Emby Server, do I have to pay for the Android app on each device? If so, is it a one time purchase and does that give me the same functionality as if I purchased Premiere? Do I have to pay a fee for each phone or does the one fee cover all phones on the same google account? I'm most confused about why I need Emby since Kodi scrapes. It appears to me that each product has a different purpose but there is some functionality overlap.