Why do you chose Emby over Plex?

[adminExitium 173]

On 19/10/2023 at 23:42, Luke said:

What about the ui do you think is better?

If you are really serious about this, you will need to ask users outside of this forum who haven't switched to Emby because most users in this forum already like the UI or have gotten used to it.

[bakes82 90]

9 hours ago, adminExitium said:

If you are really serious about this, you will need to ask users outside of this forum who haven't switched to Emby because most users in this forum already like the UI or have gotten used to it.

Why not just look at how popular plex is, seems like their UI is the one most people like, or maybe its the features in plex, you tell me.  My users prefer plex, its also the same debate as iOS vs Android, I tend to feel iOS is a bit more "refined" than Android, while it might lack some of the customization of Android Im also not looking to do much customization.  So make this is the issue at hand while Emby might be able to do what plex does, it doesnt do it by default, maybe there should be a set to plex default option some place.  If you have used IDEs like jetbrains they give you the option to set your key bindings to the visual studio format for those that are more use to that.  It looks like some one made CSS for the plex format for the webUI, maybe take that and make that an option.  Has one one gone thru screen by screen and tried to replicate what plex does, what is Emby missing?  What steps do I need to do to make emby look more like plex?  @Luke

[Luke 37068]

I don't want us to look just like Plex. As I said before, if I'm taking inspiration from something, it's generally Apple Music or Apple TV+, and figuring out how to incorporate our enthusiast type of features into them.

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

I don't want us to look just like Plex. As I said before, if I'm taking inspiration from something, it's generally Apple Music or Apple TV+, and figuring out how to incorporate our enthusiast type of features into them.

Thank you for voicing where the basic form of Emby comes from. However could you PLEASE not mention Apple when discussing Emby. I try very hard to keep all things "Apple" out of my environs. I suppose they are no more "evil" than Google or Microsoft I just get a sick feeling whenever Apple enters a conversation.

I have some of the same complaints about Apple that I have about Plex and the biggest single complaint I have about both is that their interfaces are way too cluttered with "pretty." I don't need or want "pretty." But I do want functionality and that is where Plex fails. It is not that Plex does not work it is that Plex hides the good stuff under layers and layers of fluff. Using Plex is a lot like needing a good meal and having to dig through 60 kilos of lime flavored cotton candy to get at the steak that lies hidden underneath.

[Luke 37068]

44 minutes ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

Thank you for voicing where the basic form of Emby comes from. However could you PLEASE not mention Apple when discussing Emby. I try very hard to keep all things "Apple" out of my environs. I suppose they are no more "evil" than Google or Microsoft I just get a sick feeling whenever Apple enters a conversation.

I have some of the same complaints about Apple that I have about Plex and the biggest single complaint I have about both is that their interfaces are way too cluttered with "pretty." I don't need or want "pretty." But I do want functionality and that is where Plex fails. It is not that Plex does not work it is that Plex hides the good stuff under layers and layers of fluff. Using Plex is a lot like needing a good meal and having to dig through 60 kilos of lime flavored cotton candy to get at the steak that lies hidden underneath.

It has nothing to do with what I think of their company or policies, but in general I think A**le does a nice job designing user interfaces.

[arrbee99 1560]

...its 90% rows of thumbs, can't be that difficult.

[Luke 37068]

5 hours ago, arrbee99 said:

...its 90% rows of thumbs, can't be that difficult.

What is?

[arrbee99 1560]

11 minutes ago, Luke said:

What is?

Media servers are in general. They are mostly, to me, rows of movies, rows of TV series, rows of TV episodes, rows of songs, rows of albums...

[Luke 37068]

1 minute ago, arrbee99 said:

Media servers are in general. They are mostly, to me, rows of movies, rows of TV series, rows of TV episodes, rows of songs, rows of albums...

True but the devil is in the details and also the flow of how certain tasks are accomplished.

[arrbee99 1560]

Details like fonts and spacing an lining things up and exact colours and combinations and...

And, somewhat related, please keep that css option available. We all have our own pet ideas which we bore everyone with at the lest opportunity (well I do anyway)...

Talking of which, the new Android app...

[mgworek 121]

not sure what you are meaning of rows of thumbs. It could go either way, see below.

I switched from Plex almost 10 years ago and couldn't be happier. 

As far as UI, this has been awhile now but Emby did start to switch from the old standard of XBMC up and down to I guess modern design of left to right. I wasn't a fan of the change but then they gave us a choice between them.

I am just hoping in the various apps it will be universal with how you like the scroll. You can scroll up and down with your library section but  favorites or some other things it goes left to right and it's like damn it, that is not how i want it and it's just weird how they don't work the same.

But those small things would never make me switch, or maybe that I am turing almost 50 and my desire to research and discover tech is winding down......... 

[RanmaCanada 345]

I have a lifetime pass for both, and honestly the support for Emby is superior to Plex.  At least here, Luke and other devs answer your questions where on the Plex forums it's normal for questions to go unanswered and then closed after MONTHS of being ignored by the dev teams.  Plex has 10's of millions of dollars and over 100 employees, yet they still can't take the time to answer simple questions.  People might give Luke and the other devs flack for "taking too long to address things", I know I have, but the thing is, at least they are answering our stupid questions and letting us know they see them instead of just locking the thread after ignoring it for several months.

[blgentry 49]

On 10/18/2023 at 7:03 PM, Snorbor said:

What can you do with Emby and not Plex?

I used Plex for a couple of years before switching to Emby.  Everything in Emby seems easier to me.  Messing with metadata for my movies.  Matching movies to their proper title with the "identify" feature.  Changing cover art.

 

Navigating the list is faster on my clients and just seems to be more the way I would have done it.  Plex works, but it feels weird.  It's measurably slower on my system too.  Emby is a little bit better looking from a picture perspective on Nvidia Shield. It is slightly sharper than Plex and slightly more deeply saturated.  It just looks better playing content.

 

Play,  pause, seek, and information display on the client are better for me.  Choosing the audio track and the subtitles is better.

 

Collections with the auto collection feature are awesome.  Plex has collections.  But you have to do it all manually.  The Emby auto collection feature is not perfect.  It got most of mine right.  The ones that were not right, I fixed using the web interface.  It was easy to do so.  I created a bunch of my own collections too.  That was very satisfying.

 

If you want more of my gushing about how much better Emby is, read my forum post in this forum called "Love Letter To Emby".  That's probably bit too enthusiastic, but it really is an enormous difference for me having come from Plex and from Kodi before that.

 

Brian.

[bakes82 90]

On 10/23/2023 at 9:45 PM, RanmaCanada said:

I have a lifetime pass for both, and honestly the support for Emby is superior to Plex.  At least here, Luke and other devs answer your questions where on the Plex forums it's normal for questions to go unanswered and then closed after MONTHS of being ignored by the dev teams.  Plex has 10's of millions of dollars and over 100 employees, yet they still can't take the time to answer simple questions.  People might give Luke and the other devs flack for "taking too long to address things", I know I have, but the thing is, at least they are answering our stupid questions and letting us know they see them instead of just locking the thread after ignoring it for several months.

Saying "coming soon" or "we have plans" for that is the same as plex not answering the question.  So honestly Id rather they dont answer the question and give false promises... Im still waiting for features they said they could do from 5+ years ago

[bakes82 90]

On 10/24/2023 at 11:00 AM, blgentry said:

I used Plex for a couple of years before switching to Emby.  Everything in Emby seems easier to me.  Messing with metadata for my movies.  Matching movies to their proper title with the "identify" feature.  Changing cover art.

 

Navigating the list is faster on my clients and just seems to be more the way I would have done it.  Plex works, but it feels weird.  It's measurably slower on my system too.  Emby is a little bit better looking from a picture perspective on Nvidia Shield. It is slightly sharper than Plex and slightly more deeply saturated.  It just looks better playing content.

 

Play,  pause, seek, and information display on the client are better for me.  Choosing the audio track and the subtitles is better.

 

Collections with the auto collection feature are awesome.  Plex has collections.  But you have to do it all manually.  The Emby auto collection feature is not perfect.  It got most of mine right.  The ones that were not right, I fixed using the web interface.  It was easy to do so.  I created a bunch of my own collections too.  That was very satisfying.

 

If you want more of my gushing about how much better Emby is, read my forum post in this forum called "Love Letter To Emby".  That's probably bit too enthusiastic, but it really is an enormous difference for me having come from Plex and from Kodi before that.

 

Brian.

Plex has auto collections too.  Seems like everything you are saying plex does, just better.  There is also far better support for collections with PMM. I would say Plex also looks 10000% better.  Plex also allows you to set defaults for audio/subtitles so you dont need to change them from place to place.  Also I find plex matches more stuff correctly than emby especially when radarr/tvdb does weird stuff like a tv show might start off in 2023 or something but they they back date it to 2022 so emby is now like nah, plex says oh thats like a 90% match fine.

 

Maybe you should take a real look at the plex ecosystem again, youre missing out on alot and you are arent limited on devices.

[bakes82 90]

On 10/21/2023 at 11:19 PM, arrbee99 said:

Media servers are in general. They are mostly, to me, rows of movies, rows of TV series, rows of TV episodes, rows of songs, rows of albums...

Except in emby where one screen its 1 row per item, on other screens you scroll left/right, very inconsistent.  I also believe AppleTV+ has some of the worst usability scores compared to others like netflix, so makes sense emby picks one of the worst.

[bakes82 90]

@LukeI asked some people who have multi user Emby boxes and plex what their issues are and here was the feedback, there is alot of frustration about devices/users and migrating from plex to emby as a user can take all your licenses and you get fubared for days...  Things that you could manage in tautulli dont have an emby alt.

Searching - When you search and have libraries of multi resolutions you see N items with the same name but no delineation of library/resolution.

Favorites - Shows N copies, even setting the dont show option on the home screen settings thing doesnt remove from here

Device Limits - No way to see current in use premier licenses, why cant I see 21/25, Ideally I could see whos using what but again you still havent figured out how to expose that to us yet I guess, why not make us use a emby page to see it since it seem all this info is stored on your systems and not ours, show me a fall off counter IE 4 will fall off on xx date.  This is very useful when a user logs in on multi devices and takes up "slots" testing but then you limit it down after you notice but cant add new devices.

Device Limits - Ability to set a user to only use N # of premier licenses.

User/Devices - When you goto a user to set the devices they can use it shows every device in the system and not filtered down to ones they have used, also should show

Transcoding - Set ability to not transcode certain libraries, users, codec (audio/video)

UI - Inconsistent flow of screens, some screens you scroll left/right thru items, others you scroll up/down, some screens show 1 item per row, others dont.  Plex gives ability to toggle grid/detail views (on episodes/series w/only 1 season), Series (shows) shows posters, series (suggestions) shows thumbs.

UI - Filtering, no way to clear a filter, drop downs not searchable, have to scroll thru massive lists, ability to save filters as smart views/collections that auto update

UI - Discovery, basic whats trending/new on xx service (TMDB/Trakt have basic lists for these) - Alot of people like the discovery aspect of plex especially if you have multi users and fairly large automated setups where you just download new stuff

UI - Feels "dated" - no context given, the Plex webUI for emby felt much better.

UI - Gets wonky will have to close/reopen for somethings to work right after it gets in a weird state or doesnt load

Media - Unmatched files, plex has a filter to find "unmatched" media, Emby doest seem to have that eventhough media wont have tmdb/imdb/tvdb, tends to do with mismatched years on the folder IE tvdb fixes the year after you have files and its now 2006 but you have 2007.

 

 

[Luke 37068]

54 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

@LukeI asked some people who have multi user Emby boxes and plex what their issues are and here was the feedback, there is alot of frustration about devices/users and migrating from plex to emby as a user can take all your licenses and you get fubared for days...  Things that you could manage in tautulli dont have an emby alt.

Searching - When you search and have libraries of multi resolutions you see N items with the same name but no delineation of library/resolution.

Favorites - Shows N copies, even setting the dont show option on the home screen settings thing doesnt remove from here

Device Limits - No way to see current in use premier licenses, why cant I see 21/25, Ideally I could see whos using what but again you still havent figured out how to expose that to us yet I guess, why not make us use a emby page to see it since it seem all this info is stored on your systems and not ours, show me a fall off counter IE 4 will fall off on xx date.  This is very useful when a user logs in on multi devices and takes up "slots" testing but then you limit it down after you notice but cant add new devices.

Device Limits - Ability to set a user to only use N # of premier licenses.

User/Devices - When you goto a user to set the devices they can use it shows every device in the system and not filtered down to ones they have used, also should show

Transcoding - Set ability to not transcode certain libraries, users, codec (audio/video)

UI - Inconsistent flow of screens, some screens you scroll left/right thru items, others you scroll up/down, some screens show 1 item per row, others dont.  Plex gives ability to toggle grid/detail views (on episodes/series w/only 1 season), Series (shows) shows posters, series (suggestions) shows thumbs.

UI - Filtering, no way to clear a filter, drop downs not searchable, have to scroll thru massive lists, ability to save filters as smart views/collections that auto update

UI - Discovery, basic whats trending/new on xx service (TMDB/Trakt have basic lists for these) - Alot of people like the discovery aspect of plex especially if you have multi users and fairly large automated setups where you just download new stuff

UI - Feels "dated" - no context given, the Plex webUI for emby felt much better.

UI - Gets wonky will have to close/reopen for somethings to work right after it gets in a weird state or doesnt load

Media - Unmatched files, plex has a filter to find "unmatched" media, Emby doest seem to have that eventhough media wont have tmdb/imdb/tvdb, tends to do with mismatched years on the folder IE tvdb fixes the year after you have files and its now 2006 but you have 2007.

 

 

Some of these as you mention require more specifics. Anyway I will finally add the dedicated Clear Filter button to the filter dialog, which has long been needed anyway.

[RanmaCanada 345]

2 hours ago, bakes82 said:

Saying "coming soon" or "we have plans" for that is the same as plex not answering the question.  So honestly Id rather they dont answer the question and give false promises... Im still waiting for features they said they could do from 5+ years ago

 Nah, cause we can keep pestering the devs here till they get sick and tired of hearing from us and work on something, where as Plex devs just ignore it and refuse to answer you, akin to putting their fingers in theirs ears and going "nahnahnahnah I can't hear you".

Some things user request just aren't possible, and their stupidity/ignorance about that is what causes a lot of problems.

[blgentry 49]

2 hours ago, bakes82 said:

Maybe you should take a real look at the plex ecosystem again, youre missing out on alot and you are arent limited on devices.

I used Plex, exclusively for 2 years.  I'm no longer interested.  Emby works better for me.  It works on the devices I need it to. 

 

My post above was meant for the original poster.  I wasn't trying to refute any points you have made.  I am not trying to sway your opinion.  You can think what you want and you can continue to post your negative opinion of Emby.  But one wonders what your motivation is.  You don't seem to want a solution.  What exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?

 

Brian.

[arrbee99 1560]

4 minutes ago, RanmaCanada said:

 Nah, cause we can keep pestering the devs here till they get sick and tired of hearing from us and work on something, where as Plex devs just ignore it and refuse to answer you, akin to putting their fingers in theirs ears and going "nahnahnahnah I can't hear you".

Some things user request just aren't possible, and their stupidity/ignorance about that is what causes a lot of problems.

See NextgenTV (again). Very possible, done, ignored.

[bakes82 90]

Just use plex. Has basic features like this out of the box.  Maybe in another 5years you can then come back to emby.

[bakes82 90]

1 hour ago, blgentry said:

You don't seem to want a solution.  What exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?

I actually have plugins that fix some of these issues that are “basic” features, I just don’t publish them because the whole publishing of plugins for emby is a huge manual process and well the community isn’t that great either. Few others have stopped doing it and supporting theirs also.  Who implements a multi selection filter with no option to reset all of them with 1 click?  Why is the library/quality still missing from the search screen after 4 years?  How does being able to change the accent color in 4.8 rank higher than basic usability!?  Just because you seem fine with a product that is feature lacking doesn’t mean the rest of us are.  He asked for feedback. I give it.  I can’t help that it’s mainly negative, that’s what’s given to me when I try to use it with other people or when other people have tried converting to it.  The only reason emby is semi popular is because of the “baconfeet” share back in the day.  Like I said maybe you should retry plex again has come along way in a few years.  It’s also not perfect by any means either but unfortunately they have a larger more active and funded development team.  Emby also still doesn’t seem to fully support Dolby vision as some files won’t play but plex on the same device does so there is that issue for me also.

[neik 837]

7 hours ago, bakes82 said:

Emby also still doesn’t seem to fully support Dolby vision as some files won’t play but plex on the same device does so there is that issue for me also.

Don't know what kind of strange file some of ýou guys have but my Shield Pro (2019) plays everything I through at it using the standard Emby for Android app.
No matter if 1080p HDR, or 4K DV remuxes, from 2.0 audio up to (real) TrueHD / DTS:X.

[blgentry 49]

@SnorborUltimately only you know what features and UI you are looking for.  Emby is free to install and use other than the Premiere features.  You might give it a try just to see what it's all about.

 

When I first tried Emby a few months ago, I ran it along side Plex with the idea that I would mess with Emby and continue to use Plex as my main media server.  That didn't work out that way for me.  Emby was so much better from the jump that I never went back to Plex at all.  Weeks later I fired up Plex again to do some UI tests and some picture quality tests.  Those made me happy that I had switched.

 

You might feel differently.  The big things that are important to you may be different than mine.  Your clients may behave differently.  The only way to be really sure is to try it.

 

Best of luck to you,

Brian.