Why do you chose Emby over Plex?

[Snorbor 1]

I’m trying to figure out if switching would have benefits. 
What can you do with Emby and not Plex?

[justinrh 174]

What do you want to do that Plex isn't doing?

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

I will give what I think are the two very best reasons to use Emby over Plex:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

1. Support
2. Emby has MUCH less superfluous crap cluttering the interface.

There are lots of other reasons but those two pretty much covers the biggest advantages.

It is much like Gibbs' rules about lawyers: where there are a lot of "lawyer" rules but you really need only one. #13 - Never, ever involve lawyers.

Edited October 19, 2023 by Gilgamesh_48

[Q-Droid 643]

Singular reason: I don't have to login to Emby Corp to use my Emby server. None who access my Emby server have to login to Emby Corp either.

Is that still one reason?

 

 

Edited October 19, 2023 by Q-Droid

[Snorbor 1]

14 hours ago, justinrh said:

What do you want to do that Plex isn't doing?

I wouldn't mind some more customisability. But I can't really figure out those differences.

And... fun, new stuff, the change and opportunity you sometimes experience with open products.

13 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

1. Support
2. Emby has MUCH less superfluous crap cluttering the interface.

There are lots of other reasons but those two pretty much covers the biggest advantages.

It is much like Gibbs' rules about lawyers: where there are a lot of "lawyer" rules but you really need only one. #13 - Never, ever involve lawyers.

1: yeah, I'm a paying customer over there and I have to say that I haven't found much support. Although I haven't needed much support, it's pretty stable. But that doesn't really translate because I still don't understand the Emby product being supported, what the difference is.

2: That's pretty close to my gripes, I have three servers on the screens with 2-3 libraries each, and as such I'd like to re-arrange, edit, choose. And I can't. Such a missed opportunity. I don't understand the lawyer bit.

But... the things I'd like to edit in Plex, I'm not sure if they're even there in Emby? Again... the product isn't really all that well presented on site. 

12 hours ago, Q-Droid said:

Singular reason: I don't have to login to Emby Corp to use my Emby server. None who access my Emby server have to login to Emby Corp either.

Is that still one reason?

I quite like that part. I trust plex inherently, as they know damn well that their whole business is protecting us users' shady relationship with certain dodgy laws. I would not like to manage logins myself, and the plex ecosystem makes all that real easy. You can hook a very casual user up with a movie they're looking for and it's not much of a hassle for either party. 

But maybe that isn't hard on Emby either, idk. And I don't know if I'm an edge case here.

- - -

I guess I just want something exciting and new? Features? And... Since Plex is slowly killing plugins, it just feels like more open platforms might offer some nerdy fun. 

Edited October 19, 2023 by Snorbor

[Snorbor 1]

I hope that this doesn't come off as debating. I don't know Emby all that well, so please don't read any of my replies as value judgments. I'm here because I'm open to it, but I don't understand it well enough.

[Spaceboy 2493]

i think the oddest thing is your views on Plex login, as that is one of the biggest drivers of the choice of Emby over Plex if you are interested in privacy

[Snorbor 1]

Just now, Spaceboy said:

i think the oddest thing is your views on Plex login, as that is one of the biggest drivers of the choice of Emby over Plex if you are interested in privacy

Why make it personal? I can't respond to that because that's me defending myself, in my first post while considering if this is a nice community to join.

I don't really want to worry about more things. I don't really think I can cover all the holes of privacy, so risks are calculated. Also, where I live is never gonna have strong copyright police, so the legality thing is less of a worry for me. 

Anyway, it fills me with great unease to have to defend myself here. Be nice to the noobs man.

[clarkss12 295]

Emby supports Trakt, And that is a big one for me.

Another biggie is the camera upload feature. You can set your cellular phone up to send all your videos and photos that you take with your phone to the Emby server. 

 

 

[Spaceboy 2493]

16 minutes ago, Snorbor said:

Why make it personal? I can't respond to that because that's me defending myself, in my first post while considering if this is a nice community to join.

I don't really want to worry about more things. I don't really think I can cover all the holes of privacy, so risks are calculated. Also, where I live is never gonna have strong copyright police, so the legality thing is less of a worry for me. 

Anyway, it fills me with great unease to have to defend myself here. Be nice to the noobs man.

its not about defending yourself - its about informing yourself. Plex are mining and selling your user data. they are not your users, they are Plex's. if you are content with that, fine. but many are not.

[justinrh 174]

@SnorborI don't see any of your comments as wanting to debate.  I'm glad to see you are inquiring.

 

Emby is free and is easy to set up, so I'd suggest you just give it a try (they'll run side-by-side).  Once you get in and look around, maybe you'll better know what you need to ask about.

Edited October 19, 2023 by justinrh

[jaycedk 382]

2 hours ago, Spaceboy said:

its not about defending yourself - its about informing yourself. Plex are mining and selling your user data. they are not your users, they are Plex's. if you are content with that, fine. but many are not.

Thats exactly why I jumped ship in 2016 - 2017. 

[One2Go 98]

I have a Plex life time license but stopped using is years ago. Been with Emby since it was Media Browser so much for the history and where I am coming from.

I have a few users and on Plex they had to create an account and thus they are exposed to message sent out by Plex. In turn they would ask me what to do about the content of those messages as they are often not very tech literate nor savvy how to deal with their advertisements. That was time wasted I never get back.

When I gave users access to my server it is me that decides who or what and it just between me and them.

The support in this forum is bar none the best because you deal with dedicated users and staff.

Customization, I have found out that you can make Emby do things that a straight forward meta data created from the meta data sites will not allow you to do. So the flexibility and my preferences I can do in Emby, but was not able to do in Plex.

Finally Plex has financial obligation to show profits and they will do whatever it takes to achieve that. As already pointed out you are not dealing with a corporation but dedicated enthusiasts and experienced helpful users users.

[bakes82 90]

18 hours ago, Snorbor said:

I’m trying to figure out if switching would have benefits. 
What can you do with Emby and not Plex?

Just stay with plex the UI is way better, they ship out faster updates.  Emby has a lot of talk just because plex has banned hetzner where alot of people sold shares to plex so they all jumped ship to Emby.  All these people talk about how emby is great but the emby premier stuff still phones home as far as I can tell as there is no way to know what "devices" impact your limits and it goes across servers if you have a key on multi boxes, so it has to report back home the devices being used per key.  So while plex makes money of selling your usage history, they dont complicate your "device" license, with plex it doesnt matter if your friend installs and uses plex on 5 TVs, with emby it does.  Some people also like the "discover" feature in plex as a way to see what content is new or catagorized.  Support for emby can be a mix just like plex with alot of "we plan to add that" its been 10 years and some basic stuff still hasnt been added but its "coming soon".....  They also dont always post relevant info to fix the issue.   I run both, I use plex 99% of the time just because the UI is far more polished and it works, where emby has issues with stuff not refreshing having to open a screen then close out and reopen it, there no way to clear filters on some UIs, but when I press play on a movie it does start 500MS faster than plex so thats a win I guess?

[Luke 37067]

20 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

Just stay with plex the UI is way better, they ship out faster updates.  Emby has a lot of talk just because plex has banned hetzner where alot of people sold shares to plex so they all jumped ship to Emby.  All these people talk about how emby is great but the emby premier stuff still phones home as far as I can tell as there is no way to know what "devices" impact your limits and it goes across servers if you have a key on multi boxes, so it has to report back home the devices being used per key.  So while plex makes money of selling your usage history, they dont complicate your "device" license, with plex it doesnt matter if your friend installs and uses plex on 5 TVs, with emby it does.  Some people also like the "discover" feature in plex as a way to see what content is new or catagorized.  Support for emby can be a mix just like plex with alot of "we plan to add that" its been 10 years and some basic stuff still hasnt been added but its "coming soon".....  They also dont always post relevant info to fix the issue.   I run both, I use plex 99% of the time just because the UI is far more polished and it works, where emby has issues with stuff not refreshing having to open a screen then close out and reopen it, there no way to clear filters on some UIs, but when I press play on a movie it does start 500MS faster than plex so thats a win I guess?

What about the ui do you think is better?

[bakes82 90]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

What about the ui do you think is better?

Plex lays thing out better, clicking on "Series/TV" goes to the "recommended" tab that will show you the continue watching for that specific library, it also shows recently added, recently released episodes.  It also doesnt show the things like 2021-Present.  Emby does alot of duplication of stuff, like when youre on a season it shows S1:E1-<title>  Plex just shows the title, no spoiler description either, the thumb is also larger.  When you click on a episode emby then shows me more epiosdoes from the season for some reason, and then it shows me a bunch of the meta at the bottom of the page.  Also not every show has banners or whatever the thing is by the "back" button.

Plex has more padding and is visually less busy on this page, could also have to do with the bacgrounds but is mainly the padding and extra episodes I dont care about

 

Plex also tends to have the page scroll down rather than left/right

 

 

Personally would rather have the taller poster, than wider thumb just because I can see more and well I know the posts more than the thumbs (or be able to set it takes up 2 rows instead of 1)

 

Searching is also 1000% better in plex as it has place to type in stuff and not just a drop down list, also has the basic clear filter option

[Luke 37067]

15 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

Plex lays thing out better, clicking on "Series/TV" goes to the "recommended" tab that will show you the continue watching for that specific library, it also shows recently added, recently released episodes.  It also doesnt show the things like 2021-Present.  Emby does alot of duplication of stuff, like when youre on a season it shows S1:E1-<title>  Plex just shows the title, no spoiler description either, the thumb is also larger.  When you click on a episode emby then shows me more epiosdoes from the season for some reason, and then it shows me a bunch of the meta at the bottom of the page.  Also not every show has banners or whatever the thing is by the "back" button.

Plex has more padding and is visually less busy on this page, could also have to do with the bacgrounds but is mainly the padding and extra episodes I dont care about

 

Plex also tends to have the page scroll down rather than left/right

 

 

Personally would rather have the taller poster, than wider thumb just because I can see more and well I know the posts more than the thumbs (or be able to set it takes up 2 rows instead of 1)

 

Searching is also 1000% better in plex as it has place to type in stuff and not just a drop down list, also has the basic clear filter option

hi, we also have a place to type stuff in search, right?

[Luke 37067]

Quote

Plex lays thing out better, clicking on "Series/TV" goes to the "recommended" tab that will show you the continue watching for that specific library, it also shows recently added, recently released episodes.

We do the same thing in the Suggestions tab, right?

[Luke 37067]

Quote

Emby does alot of duplication of stuff, like when youre on a season it shows S1:E1-<title>

When you are looking at the episode list for a season, we do not show S1:E1, we just show 1. <Title>

[bakes82 90]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

hi, we also have a place to type stuff in search, right?

Typical response dont even look at the screen shot and offer "we have a search" yes but they have a search built in to the filtering of all their drop downs too so you dont need to scroll thru 5000 studios on the filter menu, so is it the same thing, nope, your search is the same as their search.

[Luke 37067]

Quote

Plex also tends to have the page scroll down rather than left/right

Where do you think this? I just tested their series screen and it's exactly the same as ours. They have a long list of sections going down vertically, and each one scrolls horizontally.

[bakes82 90]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

We do the same thing in the Suggestions tab, right?

nope, you show continue watching and then a massive list of episodes, I think plex also remembers the last tab you used so if you used library view one day the next time you use it its library, I think emby has a way to default a view though.

[bakes82 90]

1 minute ago, Luke said:

Where do you think this? I just tested their series screen and it's exactly the same as ours. They have a long list of sections going down vertically, and each one scrolls horizontally.

If you click on a season it will show all the episodes you dont scroll left or right, you scroll up/down.

 

[arrbee99 1560]

'Plex has more padding and is visually less busy on this page, could also have to do with the bacgrounds but is mainly the padding and extra episodes I dont care about'

Speaking as a big backdrop fan, that can be tidied up a lot IMHO using css, at least on a web page.

[Luke 37067]

5 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

nope, you show continue watching and then a massive list of episodes, I think plex also remembers the last tab you used so if you used library view one day the next time you use it its library, I think emby has a way to default a view though.

In the 4.8 release they are now grouped by series, and yes you can pick whatever default tab you want.