Why do you chose Emby over Plex?

[mgworek 121]

14 hours ago, bakes82 said:

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

You do realize some features that Plex has added in the last 5 years, Emby has had for years. Just like there are some things Plex has had before Emby. It is just like any other thing out there, video game systems, phones and so on. 

[RanmaCanada 345]

4 hours ago, mgworek said:

You do realize some features that Plex has added in the last 5 years, Emby has had for years. Just like there are some things Plex has had before Emby. It is just like any other thing out there, video game systems, phones and so on. 

They're obviously here just to sow discord, nothing more.  Nevermind the fact that Plex has tens of millions of dollars at their disposal and over 100 PAID employees.  Idiots seem to forget that Emby is literally a handful of people doing the work.  Plex recently laid off 20% of their work force, which was 37 employees, which means they had 185 paid employees (175 reported in January 2023), and still have almost 150 on payroll.  Again, look back at my ignorance/stupidity post.  I'd say said user is just being ignorant and is only here for the reactions.

[arrbee99 1560]

If sowing discord gets a cancel all filters button, I ain't complaining...

[speechles 1919]

The "Clear filters" button would be nice. Otherwise filters become sort of game like. Click the button until you find the target (ie filter that is set) and clear it. Then look for more targets (set filters). A single button that kills all the targets is much faster and less game-y.

The idea with the other guys is they want a presentation for their users to see their ad-driven material. Notice I said their users. These aren't your users when you use Plex. Read that as many times as you need to. The fact users can even see your local media collections is not what they care about. The other guys care about their advertising on their web based channels being consumed by your users more than they cosume any content from your server. Because it says "Free Movies and TV" underneath their logo on the apps.

That is shown below their logo all the time. That is what the majority of their focus is on. Pleasing their sponsors and investors. Not pleasing you as users. Getting ad revenue from driving sponsored content and always showing that free movies & tv tagline in your face. That isn't your media your way. That isn't Emby.

Edited October 26, 2023 by speechles

[Luke 37071]

51 minutes ago, arrbee99 said:

If sowing discord gets a cancel all filters button, I ain't complaining...

It was needed.

[bakes82 90]

@LukeLook, apple going to look more like Netflix now lol https://mashable.com/article/apple-tv-app-overhaul

[bakes82 90]

13 hours ago, mgworek said:

You do realize some features that Plex has added in the last 5 years, Emby has had for years. Just like there are some things Plex has had before Emby. It is just like any other thing out there, video game systems, phones and so on. 

What features  has emby had for years that plex recently got, do tell?

[Luke 37071]

2 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

@LukeLook, apple going to look more like Netflix now lol https://mashable.com/article/apple-tv-app-overhaul

Yea I saw. But on other form factors they have been moving towards sidebars for the last couple years. Not a big surprise and I'm sure they want to get rid of the duplication that they currently have with having both the TV+ app and itunes movies/shows apps.

 

[bakes82 90]

7 hours ago, speechles said:

The idea with the other guys is they want a presentation for their users to see their ad-driven material. Notice I said their users. These aren't your users when you use Plex. Read that as many times as you need to. The fact users can even see your local media collections is not what they care about. The other guys care about their advertising on their web based channels being consumed by your users more than they cosume any content from your server. Because it says "Free Movies and TV" underneath their logo on the apps.

Ive never seen a plex advertised movie/tv show show up in my feed/search, you should try turning it off if it bothers you somuch.  So while plex may take my "watch" data, they arent charging me a device license and then not accurately showing me how my devices licenses I have used/left like emby.  Im sure lots of people use trakt to keep their stuff in sync/backed up also, so not like the data isnt being shared.

 

Also plex does direct linking to the other apps, so if you tell you plex you have hulu etc it will then kick you over to that app, or it will tell you if you have it on your server, my users like this as it gives trending and new stuff in a cental location and when you have auto downloads with overseerr and such it makes it easier to find things, plus the watchlist allows you to add things not released yet.

[Bagul 146]

I read the thread carefully and I think debating on "plex is better" or "emby is better" is silly because it depends on your preferences and judging a tool/program for its interface is nonsense and I think the answer to that question is to try.

"plex the UI is way better"

VLC is one of the most widely used players in the world, yet its interface is old and there's no real design.
But why do people use VLC? Because it works and it does what it's designed to do: play media.

I was a plex user and I left it because the playback problems were multiplying (I can name some that have been solved and others that still haven't and it's been over 5 years since I switched and the problems are piling up).

I'm not saying that Emby is problem-free, but it does what it's supposed to do, without adding any more useless features. And I have friends who are just fed up with having to educate people to deactivate this or that feature because their users receive emails they never wanted with every new "social" feature.

When I run Emby (or even when my users run Emby) they want to watch media, they can and have no problems with duplicate subtitles, out-of-sync audio (a problem that has been a top-trend on the plex forum for quite some time despite their update) and the interface doesn't lag (if you tell me it's not slow on TVs you're kidding yourself) And these are just examples.

And to say: "look, we've got lots of features" but to be unable to play external subtitles without them being burned by the server into the video in addition to being displayed by the player is pretty useless I think (I can give you a very nice picture of the problem).

Plex is moving more and more towards a streaming service than a self-hosted media server.

And having an IMDB rating on a poster with PMM is good, it's pretty, but it's completely useless.

 

My message may seem angry but it is not. I just find it odd that someone would sell a service on another service's forum. 

 

And I find that Luke (and the others I don't know) do a very good job on the interface and that it gets better with each update.

Edited October 27, 2023 by Bagul

[bakes82 90]

1 hour ago, Bagul said:

When I run Emby (or even when my users run Emby) they want to watch media, they can and have no problems with duplicate subtitles, out-of-sync audio (a problem that has been a top-trend on the plex forum for quite some time despite their update) and the interface doesn't lag (if you tell me it's not slow on TVs you're kidding yourself) And these are just examples.

Can you point me to this, I run appleTvs and have more issues with Emby than with plex.  My audio is never out of sync(unless its a bad rip) and I have one going into a samsung sound bar and one going into a mirantz receiver, and duplicate subtitles?  Is that when the subtitle file also shows text and the file has the subs burnt in at the same time?  Also why are you using external subs, why not get a proper release with the subs built in for the file?  I dont use subs unless forced english, but all the files I get tend to have subs for 5+ languages by default covering a good portion of the population I would think.  Emby seems more "wonky" for me (some screens will get out of focus and need multi clicks, sometimes the webui its like you click the filter or othe rbutton and it now reopens the same window so now you have 2 of the same filter box open) with it also taking more time to load, for me, there are also cases where an admin account will take far longer than a non admin account to render, not sure if its "admin" related or not but fix is make a new account thats not the default/admin account and then the ui renders faster.  Maybe there is some kind of cpu/ram/db settings for certain library sizes that could help, but both emby/plex run on the same box  Emby also doenst support the same number of Dolby Vision profiles that plex does on AppleTv.  I would agree adding the imdb rating to the image for plex makes no sense when its already built in to to the UI, most use PMM to make thousands of stupid collections of like Halloween Movies, Hallmark Xmas Movies, IMDB top 250, etc, I only use it for overlays to add the video resolution IE 4k/ 4k HDR vs 4k DV since the continue watching in plex/emby will show you all the version of the files, and well grouping in emby is just as bad as plex.  I havent used Emby for prob a year maybe 2 and I installed it, it looked like it did 2 years ago, the same issues I had 2 years ago were still there, also the 4.8 beta has been in beta for what a year now, more than a year?

Note: I runt the beta of both plex/emby

 

[Bagul 146]

6 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

My audio is never out of sync(unless its a bad rip)

 

https://forums.plex.tv/t/apple-tv-4k-audio-sync-issues-with-enhanced-player/522782/1

I know that people have the same problem with Emby but my friends have the problem with plex and only with plex, that's why I know this post which dates from 2020 (well before even).

8 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

Is that when the subtitle file also shows text and the file has the subs burnt in at the same time?

 

 plex (my friend):

 

Emby (me):

 

Same video, same subtitles.

Why wouldn't I have external subtitles? These are subtitles. This is precisely the point I made in my previous message. Emby does what he's asked. Plex does weird things.
This same friend cannot play videos with subtitles in ass format without Plex transcoding on Apple TV. Emby does not do this for example on Apple TV.

And I'm not English (that must have something to do with my English haha) so the subtitles are very used (forced or complete depending on the language of the audio)

 

15 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

Emby also doenst support the same number of Dolby Vision profiles that plex does on AppleTv

 

As someone else said previously, Emby's team is much smaller than Plex's. If I understand correctly there is only one developer for the Apple TV application who does a very good job and who, as soon as I have a bug, resolves it. The application for Apple TV is still young and improves from version to version.

 

19 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

I would agree adding the imdb rating to the image for plex makes no sense when its already built in to to the UI, most use PMM to make thousands of stupid collections of like Halloween Movies, Hallmark Xmas Movies, IMDB top 250, etc, I only use it for overlays to add the video resolution IE 4k/ 4k HDR vs 4k DV since the continue watching in plex/emby will show you all the version of the files, and well grouping in emby is just as bad as plex

 

It's certainly nice, but it doesn't help at all for a media server. With features like discover, or others, it doesn't help to play a video correctly and doesn't help with the user experience for video playback (or music playback).

 

And as I said emby is not absent of defects or problems. But Emby does what we ask and the team behind Emby, despite what we may say, is very responsive and knows what it is talking about and if you have problems, nothing is stopping you from opening a post in the correct section on the forum and I think Luke will be happy to help you.

[bakes82 90]

1 hour ago, Bagul said:

Why wouldn't I have external subtitles?

Because external subtitles dont always match the timing of the file, so you can usually download rips with the proper embeded ones like this, see they arent "external".  Why are you using english audio with french subs when there is french audio also?  You also showed two diff TV, are they the same device?  are you just using the built in tv app?  Also is that 4k?  Are you allowing transcoding for 4k, thats something I dont allow, so my guess is its related to the external sub transcoding.  Alot of issues arise because people allow other people to play 4k files on devices that dont support the audio or they dont change settings to up the remote quality and it forces a transcode and what not, I also believe if the sub was "embeded" and not an external SRT, it "might" work and you not get the duplication.  Usually sharing 4k with people is a huge loss (emby included) otherwise the default plex for remote is to set the quality to like 720p and my nas can handle 1 stream like that but then it starts impacting other things because the end user didnt properly configure their device or they want to use the built in tv app which is horrible, subtitles are also handled diff per device in plex, IE I think shields handle external subs better than Apple as apple is ONLY designed for streaming platforms.

You can usually find releases like these where the subs are part of the file.

1 hour ago, Bagul said:

It's certainly nice, but it doesn't help at all for a media server. With features like discover, or others, it doesn't help to play a video correctly and doesn't help with the user experience for video playback (or music playback).

Whats the point of a media server if you cant find what you want to watch and search and stuff doesnt work properly?  You can stream the file with VLC right?  Just have a FTP and have your friends use the URL of the path and boom, media server.

 

Im not sure how many people work on Emby, nor do I know if its their full time job, so when luke says hes styling stuff it seems like hes also coding stuff and doing ui and support etc, so it leads me to believe its a very small team and hence why stuff is very much just pieced together as there is no lead UX/UI designer going thru and saying hey these dont flow right, why do we need to go levels to do xyz, example  why is the unmerge files option only inside the movie details , but the merge is done from the previous (library) screen, why cant I mass unmerge?

 

I will say most issues tend to be specific device/configuration/file setups on any platform plex or emby and once you can pin point it you can then usually 

[jaycedk 382]

Guess this guy should stick with plex, since it does what it wants.

[Abobader 2945]

5 minutes ago, jaycedk said:

Guess this guy should stick with plex, since it does what it wants.

My thought as well.

[Bagul 146]

28 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

Because external subtitles dont always match the timing of the file, so you can usually download rips with the proper embeded ones like this, see they arent "external".  Why are you using english audio with french subs when there is french audio also?  You also showed two diff TV, are they the same device?  are you just using the built in tv app?  Also is that 4k?  Are you allowing transcoding for 4k, thats something I dont allow, so my guess is its related to the external sub transcoding.  Alot of issues arise because people allow other people to play 4k files on devices that dont support the audio or they dont change settings to up the remote quality and it forces a transcode and what not, I also believe if the sub was "embeded" and not an external SRT, it "might" work and you not get the duplication.  Usually sharing 4k with people is a huge loss (emby included) otherwise the default plex for remote is to set the quality to like 720p and my nas can handle 1 stream like that but then it starts impacting other things because the end user didnt properly configure their device or they want to use the built in tv app which is horrible, subtitles are also handled diff per device in plex, IE I think shields handle external subs better than Apple as apple is ONLY designed for streaming platforms.

You're trying to turn the problem around and say that the problem could come from either the file or the devices, and you're getting away from the basic question. 

To begin with, I'll answer: 
The subtitles have the timing of the video and there is no connection between the timing and the fact that plex burns the subtitles in addition to displaying them.
These are 2 different 4K Apple TVs, but the problem with the Plex application appears on 2 servers and 2 4K Apple TVs, so the problem is not localized. It's not 4K but 1080p. Transcoding is authorized. And the problem occurs locally and remotely in both cases with the official plex application downloaded from the store.

I don't know if this is done in other countries, but in France some people like to watch the media with the original audio. So English audio track and French subtitle.

 

 

29 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

You can usually find releases like these where the subs are part of the file.

The MP4 format does not support embedded subtitles. Do you ask people who use MP4 to stop using MP4? Please, let's be serious.

 

32 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

Whats the point of a media server if you cant find what you want to watch and search and stuff doesnt work properly?  You can stream the file with VLC right?  Just have a FTP and have your friends use the URL of the path and boom, media server.

I have the impression that you've decided to come up with arguments that are neither head nor tail. A search allows you to look for a media. If I search for "Seven", I'll find Seven with either Plex or Emby. If this doesn't work for you, there's a problem. But that doesn't make the search "not working properly".

If you're talking about the media being separated or the parent library not being mentioned, this is the FR and nothing is stopping you from participating in this FR so that the developers implement it.

49 minutes ago, bakes82 said:

Im not sure how many people work on Emby, nor do I know if its their full time job, so when luke says hes styling stuff it seems like hes also coding stuff and doing ui and support etc, so it leads me to believe its a very small team and hence why stuff is very much just pieced together as there is no lead UX/UI designer going thru and saying hey these dont flow right, why do we need to go levels to do xyz, example  why is the unmerge files option only inside the movie details , but the merge is done from the previous (library) screen, why cant I mass unmerge?

So, I've probably looked the wrong way, but is there an FR where you've taken part in this? I can't find it

 

Well, it's a problem to think like that. It's certainly not up to the customer to adapt his content, but to the person delivering a solution that should normally work. If an FTP server couldn't transfer files smaller than 10MB, should people only have files larger than 10MB? No. If VLC could only play MKV files, would you use it? No.

 

Well, it's a problem to think like that. It's certainly not up to the customer to adapt his content, but up to the person delivering the solution to manage it.

 

And I'm going to end this conversation. This is neither the place to debug plex nor the place to write novels and I don't want to get yelled at for polluting the forum.

I wish you all the best and invite you to open feature requests.

 

[bakes82 90]

8 hours ago, Bagul said:

So, I've probably looked the wrong way, but is there an FR where you've taken part in this? I can't find it

emby is closed source bud, you cant contribute and I dont really post my plugins because I dont want to deal with the extra support outside those people that I know who use them as they tend to be tailor made, also if you look in the dev forums you will see Ive found a fair few issues with the API in 4.8 for them to fix, and that have been fixed.  Pretty sure if you look you will see a 4k/hevc transcode killer posted though, its just not on the store because emby requires a 2nd account, and you have to manually upload the file each version where if you just tell people its on github they can add the file themselves, again emby doesnt seem to want to "help" this process and many devs have asked for it, and it could be a very simple POST Api call but again, on deaf ears

Note: Plugins for Emby tend to be admin/server specific, you cant really impact the UI as those have to be done on the clients

Side Note: you can also use the REST API to achieve some of these things like collection creation from trakt, 

 

8 hours ago, Bagul said:

If you're talking about the media being separated or the parent library not being mentioned, this is the FR and nothing is stopping you from participating in this FR so that the developers implement it.

this is like saying you go to google and search for something but it doesnt show you the website its on, yeah thats useful huh, thats not a search at that point its just a guessing game, again, emby is closed source so I cant "contribute" the fix and all they have said is its "coming soon" per the post from 2020. 

 

8 hours ago, Bagul said:

The MP4 format does not support embedded subtitles. Do you ask people who use MP4 to stop using MP4? Please, let's be serious.

All of my stuff is automated people dont really upload mp4s atleast in the fairly well known popular private trackers, and it seems that embeded subs on a mkv might be a good thing if you cant embed subs on a mp4, Id rather have a file with the proper subs, plus its less work in needing to find a sub that is correct, especially after you rename files, trying to match it for automatic subs doesnt always work right.  Also if I knew that mkv with embeded subs didnt cause the issue you are causing I would say because it stopped the transcode, well for me that would be a reason to not use mp4s in my setup if I had multi users who want subs as I dont want stuff to transcode, maybe you do

Also per luke not every device supports every aspect of emby.  EX Shields have far better DV support and TrueHD Audio compared to Apple but thats is "known", but when the same file and supported profile DV plays in plex and infuse on apple but not emby, now what, it plays fine on the shield

 

8 hours ago, Bagul said:

You're trying to turn the problem around and say that the problem could come from either the file or the devices, and you're getting away from the basic question. 

No, Im trying to understand the issue so when I see it in the future I have knowledge about it, so is the file you are using MP4?  This is the issue alot of people say oh I have this issue and then dont get the full details on how to recreate it.

 

 

So while you all see this a pointless and bashing, you kind of kind of need to know this if you want to share out with people other wise you start and then find out Sally just used all of your device licenses and deleting them from the admin ui does nothing, or if you develop a channel plugin its not designed to link to media on your box otherwise apparently it duplicates item in the database, eventhough the channel supports linking to items and doesnt say not too.  I would rather hear the negatives about something than the people saying its great, you want to convert the people saying its bad, youd be surprised how much a small fix like having a clear button on the filter improves the overall experience since its something that you could be using multiple times a day, so if Im searching multi times a day for items, seeing the library/quality is a HUGE issue, just like subtitles for me are a non issue as Im not consuming foreign media nor would I want to read it and not enjoy the show.

 

Also for your subtitle thing, does it happen on ios also by chance or only tvos?

[Bagul 146]

FR = Feature Request, not Pull Request.

I could have written it out entirely, but since Pull begins with the letter 'P', I didn't think such confusion would arise. 

 

Your comparison makes no sense.
The search allows you to find the media but not to know which library it comes from.
You would have told me "you're doing a google search and you don't see the description" I would have said ok, but just like plex in reality. You have to click on it for it to suggest the version to watch. So you have 1 extra clicks for Emby (the click on the back), which can be cancelled with the "Covert Art" plugin to add the 4K logo as with PMM. 

You're trying to understand a Plex problem on the Emby forum. Apart from polluting the forum, that doesn't help anything (plex being a closed source, you won't be able to propose a solution either).

And I assume (perhaps wrongly, you might say) that if a video works on 99% of video players, it should work everywhere.

And finally, MP4 is the format that's compatible with the most devices, so it can be played on the most devices natively, unlike MKV, and my file isn't an MP4 but an MKV, but I just don't see how that solves the problem. And the problem only occurs on Apple TV, so....

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by Bagul

[tattler 31]

One important aspect I like about Emby is the backup and restore plugin. Plex doesn't even have that baked in. I have had numerous outages with Plex previously and rebuilding the database again and hence lost all my watch states! Plex releases bad updates too frequently and getting their support in the Plex forum is impossible!

I like the forum support here as the developers are willing to solve the issues. Over there at Plex they treat us (Plex pass - paid customer) like idiot. Most of the forum posts were not answered and automatically closed after 3 months. I am not amused. I should have switched to Emby years ago but am glad I am using Emby fulltime now

For people who are arguing about the ugly Emby UI: I forgive you for wanting a beautiful product. Beauty is just skin's deep and for me Emby looks pretty enough. When my users got migrated to Emby they praised the UI: clean, not cluttered with (faux) movie/series suggestions from Plex, fast and it even solved one user's "mysterious issue" with intermittent frozen video in Plex. He had to stop the video and restart it to continue watching. On Emby this issue is non-existent! It plays all my videos without any issues and fast! Oh god, it is so fast like they are watching the movies locally (transcoding to 8 mbps)! I don't even have a powerful media server. Emby is running as docker container on my Synology DS920+

Emby is way better than Plex without the flashy UI and streaming services. It just works out of the box!

[Guest]

If you are thinking of leaving plex, go with jellyfin. I regret ever having given emby any of my money. Jellyfin works better for me and is much prettier than emby ui wise. It isnt as straight forward as plex, but it also is free.

I have never understood why people claim the support in the forum is better than plex. Judging by the few issues i've actually had with plex, I got help within an hour, it was accurate and solved my issue. Here, you often spend several hours just trying to convince the developers you actually have an issue, and that their infallible software is the culprit. Just scroll through the forums and you can find plenty of instances of the devs and support staff being quite rude to people who are simply asking questions. Tom Cruise help you if you request a feature.

Support id say stick with plex

UI, jellyfin and plex are both better than emby

New features...jellyfin almost always has new features long before emby. Recent examples AV1 support, intel arc gpu support, ATSC 3.0 support (admittedly still not great anywhere), and watch parties (emby still doesnt have this)

Avoid emby at all costs!

[justinrh 174]

4 hours ago, lukeoslavia said:

Here, you often spend several hours just trying to convince the developers you actually have an issue

This can be a problem.  You often do get a response from Emby folks, but it can be frustrating.  So you have balance quality of support with any support.

I am grateful to all of the users that lend support to other users.

[ng4ever 39]

On 1/7/2024 at 5:30 PM, justinrh said:

This can be a problem.  You often do get a response from Emby folks, but it can be frustrating.  So you have balance quality of support with any support.

I am grateful to all of the users that lend support to other users.

Agreed.

[ng4ever 39]

I almost switched back to Plex but glad I did not. Mainly because of all the issues going on. Fixed them myself.

 

The only advantage I see right now is remote viewing together. Though that is coming to Emby sooner or later. Plus will be even better than Plex's version I just know it.

 

 

[Luke 37071]

25 minutes ago, ng4ever said:

I almost switched back to Plex but glad I did not. Mainly because of all the issues going on. Fixed them myself.

 

The only advantage I see right now is remote viewing together. Though that is coming to Emby sooner or later. Plus will be even better than Plex's version I just know it.

 

 

And we're happy to have you.

[Damien_ 24]

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

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

how about the admin controls-  as the server owner you have true controls over the end user experience to a pretty granular level. Plex you basically have none and never will as that's their target audience - our shares supply their never ending people to market their ad-supported tv, tidal wave whater er, and now you can "buy movies" (no such thing, you don't own it). connecting directly to my server the list goes on..

At this point the server owner is simply a tool for Plex. I have no doubt that if they achieve their end goal of the all in one media hub, the server will eventually go. I can't imagine why you would want to watch whatever premium service you pay for via an intermediary instead of the hosts app it was specifically built for but good luck with that.