45 Device (Lifetime) Gone?

[Tsch3ns 14]

I also considered to support the Emby team by upgrading my lifetime license to the 45 device lifetime  license. It’s gone now

 

[ebr 14937]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

the current Lifetime price is the same as the old Lifetime upgrade - at least for today...

Thanks for the support.

 

[neik 837]

Have you thought about giving some sort of benefit/promotion to the existing lifetime users who want to upgrade to a bigger device subscription?

Would maybe be some sort of trade-off for the existing users...

[ebr 14937]

24 minutes ago, neik said:

Have you thought about giving some sort of benefit/promotion to the existing lifetime users who want to upgrade to a bigger device subscription?

That's what it was before but it caused a ton of issues with people incorrectly purchasing it.  Long standing home users shouldn't really have a need for more devices if using the product as intended.

Simple is just better.  Thanks.

[e-charge 6]

Evenin' all

Just arrived here after trying to find the lifetime 45 device upgrade option, only to find that it's gone...apparently.
For what it's worth, I think that this should be something that you should still offer to those who are already premier lifetime members, as you're not going to get any more revenue from us otherwise, unless we of course decide to subscribe to the monthly option - which I won't be. Not wanting to pay monhtly was the reason I went premier lifetime in the first place. At least offering it to the members who are already lifetime license holders, would allow you to reap some more revenue from those who don't wish to pay an extra monthly fee.

Maybe a promotion of some sort...especially since we were not made aware of the change (as far as I'm aware anyway)

I do understand some of your reasoning for the change though, but certainly in my instance (and many others I suspect), you could either gain another lifetime license sale from me, or nothing in  terms of a monthly sub.

Just my thoughts.

L

[Suliamu 4]

21 hours ago, ebr said:

Simple is just better.

Actually, if i may add my thoughts to this, i found the general selling-concept of emby quite unusual.   
In my opinion i would change the concept in this way:
 
Instead of two tiers, Free & Premiere, i would introduce three tiers: Free Trial, Standard and Premium.  

With the Free version i would use the device-limit concept and limit those Users to one device.
But with all features that todays "Premiere" has. Most of those features are anyway just interesting when Emby is used together as a
group or family. And being able to try HW-transcoding and the other features like working intro-skipping in the free (trial) version or
trick-play or all the other things that don't work with the other opensource-product, should be a necessity to present Emby's capabilities
to potential buyers.
This is also what brought me here from JF. It works simply, and it works well.  

The Standard-Version, today called Premiere i would sell for a fixed price, basically the lifetime-price. Just as it is today.
For those i would think about removing the general device-limit completely and replace it with a user-limit.
If you have an extended circle of family and friends of 10 to 15 people and all use
multiple devices like browsers, pads and phones and TVs you quickly reach your device-limit but by distinction by user
you would never run into this problem really.

Then there is this other group of folks who "use this product not as intended" as you coin it.   
Basically people that sell accounts to their libraries as VOD-service.  
And instead of pretending that those do not exist i would simply sell them your product accordingly.  
It is not your thing what people do with your product. A store that sells tools is not reponsible for the hammer that it sells to someone.  
Just make a "Premium"-License with high monthly cost that lifts also the user limit of the standard-version.

I am convinced this would make you more revenue by selling more "standard"(now lifetime-premiere)-contracts and make basically every serious user of yours happy and
there is also this certain class of users that simply buy always the most expensive thing/plan that is there, because they can and simply don't care.  

Also i would maybe think of selling a managed hosted version of emby with included "Premium" and hardware-specific optimizations for even more money per month.

[sross44 239]

4 hours ago, Suliamu said:

Then there is this other group of folks who "use this product not as intended" as you coin it.   
Basically people that sell accounts to their libraries as VOD-service.  
And instead of pretending that those do not exist i would simply sell them your product accordingly.  
It is not your thing what people do with your product. A store that sells tools is not reponsible for the hammer that it sells to someone.  
Just make a "Premium"-License with high monthly cost that lifts also the user limit of the standard-version.

 

Not speaking for the Emby team here or anyone other than myself and my own thoughts.... but "pretending that those do not exist" is not what Emby is doing. They know they exist and I'm assuming do not want them as a customer. There's a reason that those Plex servers got shut down at Hetzner. Bad business IMO and that is a lot of headache for sure. 

[Suliamu 4]

2 hours ago, sross44 said:

There's a reason that those Plex servers got shut down at Hetzner.

Can you elaborate? 
I thought that Plex went this way because they want to go into the business of showing ads and distributing their own content. 
Like a Netfl*x with attached own media-library.  
For that you must be on good terms with this industry i would assume.
If Plex was really forced to block DC-installations by someone then there is basically no reason that this
cannot happen to emby too.
And in this case it would be imo the best idea to not have any sort of this data (where is server installed, who and how many use it and so on) in the first place.
But that way you cannot enforce any limits at all, or at least not online. 
Would maybe work with classical cdkey and some function in the servercode that does the checking for valid keys offline. 
This is prone to manipulation, but let's be honest here, as long as you distribute the server to the people, they can mess with it. 
You can hook inside every software and manipulate the stuff in memory, extract the crypto-keys, and manipulate the network-traffic and what not...  

Just my thoughts on this issue. 
 

Edited December 7, 2023 by Suliamu

[sross44 239]

10 minutes ago, Suliamu said:

Can you elaborate? 
I thought that Plex went this way because they want to go into the business of showing ads and distributing their own content. 
Like a Netfl*x with attached own media-library.  
For that you must be on good terms with this industry i would assume.
If Plex was really forced to block DC-installations by someone then there is basically no reason that this
cannot happen to emby too.
And in this case it would be imo the best idea to not have any sort of this data (where is server installed, who and how many use it and so on) in the first place.
But that way you cannot enforce any limits at all, or at least not online. 
Would maybe work with classical cdkey and some function in the servercode that does the checking for valid keys offline. 
This is prone to manipulation, but let's be honest here, as long as you distribute the server to the people, they can mess with it. 
You can hook inside every software and manipulate the stuff in memory, extract the crypto-keys, and manipulate the network-traffic and what not...  

Just my thoughts on this issue. 
 

All of these different servers are personal media servers. Plex blocked them because at that point people were using their Plex servers to make money and share their content with a lot of people. It was not personal use at that point, it was business. Plex shares or Emby shares, or anything else like that is prohibited.

[ebr 14937]

21 hours ago, Suliamu said:

A store that sells tools is not reponsible for the hammer that it sells to someone.

Hi.  The problem is we are not as simple as a hammer and it is not easily obvious to an outside observer that any server providing this type of service is NOT us - it says "Emby" right there on it.

We have worked with the MPA in the past and they understand our product and business and the fact that we do not condone the illegal use of our product.  We want to keep it that way.

[laie_techie 12]

Every 5 years or so you need to do a study to see what is common in the average home. I have 4 people in my household (just happens to be average size of household in the USA). My wife and I have our smart phones. Our children have an iPod and iPad each. Then we have two smart TVs and a shared laptop. Your 25 device license still works for my family for now. I see us getting more devices in the future. What portion of Emby users have larger families?

[ebr 14937]

9 minutes ago, laie_techie said:

What portion of Emby users have larger families?

Hi.  At this time, a very small percentage of our users require a larger device license than the default.

[Chillout 85]

There could be better transparency on how the device limit works. 

I'm assuming the limit is, 25 devices being used at the same time,  in which I would agree 99.9% of the people this shouldn't be a problem.  We have more than 25 devices in our house that could connect but only a few people ever use it at the same time and Emby says I am well within my device limit.

[pwhodges 1534]

It's not exactly simultaneous usage  - a device which is counted stays counted for about a week, and then drops out.

Paul

[katbyte 23]

On 12/5/2023 at 11:32 AM, ebr said:

That's what it was before but it caused a ton of issues with people incorrectly purchasing it.  Long standing home users shouldn't really have a need for more devices if using the product as intended.

Simple is just better.  Thanks.

this is not simpler, this is limiting user choice and options. I am also very disappointed to see the option gone and I didn't even know it existed until today otherwise i would have purchased it long before now on top of the lifetime subscription just for peace of mind. 25 cuts it close for my family 45 is way more then enough.

now i learn i missed it by days and that is honestly very irritating. at the very least you should have warned people before removing it so anyone who wanted it could have gotten it, cashed in from lifetime users who are not paying anything atm, and then removed it instead of now you have upset a lot of people as it simply seems like a cash grab by pushing people towards subscriptions instead.

emby/plex are not the only only game in town anymore and jellyfin gets better by the day, is free, and has no device or user limit

Quote

I'm assuming the limit is, 25 devices being used at the same time,  in which I would agree 99.9% of the people this shouldn't be a problem.  We have more than 25 devices in our house that could connect but only a few people ever use it at the same time and Emby says I am well within my device limit.

its 25 used within some unspecified time frame and which you have no way of seeing which count towards it. apparently within a week that "used a premier feature" -  I personally have at least 5 devices that I use emby on: appletv, andriodtv, mac studio, mac book, iphone, ipad. 

Edited December 14, 2023 by katbyte

[Chillout 85]

I think the important note is that some devices dont count against the limit.   

If people are just watching videos and not using live TV or using some of the premium features then its not an issue.  I guess you could disable the premium features to prevent the devices from counting against your limit. 

Knowing which devices count against your limit would be useful for administration, but I dont think thats possible right now.

https://emby.media/support/articles/Premiere-Feature-Matrix.html

 

[e-charge 6]

On 13/12/2023 at 10:54, pwhodges said:

It's not exactly simultaneous usage  - a device which is counted stays counted for about a week, and then drops out.

Paul

Do they/does it? Is this normal behaviour...because mine stay listed indefinitely. I have to manually clear the list down as and when.
Is there a setting I can tweak relating to this? If not - that would be a nice feature to have.

L

[pwhodges 1534]

You don't see the Premiere list - that's at Emby.  The list of devices that you can see is a different thing.

Paul

[Darkseidd 58]

with poor device "premium consumption" visibility, admin inability to limit the consumption  and managing premium slots, now this.

..ill be spending the extension budget elsewhere.

[Darkseidd 58]

3 hours ago, e-charge said:

Do they/does it? Is this normal behaviour...because mine stay listed indefinitely. I have to manually clear the list down as and when.
Is there a setting I can tweak relating to this? If not - that would be a nice feature to have.

L

there's nothing you can do on "premium consumption"

one user can have TV, tablet and phone, will consume 3 premiums and there's nothing you can do about it. Except to scold the user and say "hey! use one device only please!" repetitively without knowing if the user reaaaaaaly consuming only one premium slot.

[davedick 17]

1 hour ago, Darkseidd said:

there's nothing you can do on "premium consumption"

one user can have TV, tablet and phone, will consume 3 premiums and there's nothing you can do about it. Except to scold the user and say "hey! use one device only please!" repetitively without knowing if the user reaaaaaaly consuming only one premium slot.

You can restrict a user to a specific device(s)

Edited December 14, 2023 by davedick

[benpicard 15]

Hello, what happens to the lifetime upgrade? I wanted to buy it.

This kind of behaviour will push the users to Jellyfin or back to Plex. I feel bad that the only solution is a monthly subscription. It doesn't look to be a fix for the price structure, it looks like a fix to get more money using a dark pattern.

I'm really disappointed in the team choice. At least, you should have let the lifetime available and increase the price if you felt that i was not high enough.

[katbyte 23]

1 hour ago, benpicard said:

I'm really disappointed in the team choice. At least, you should have let the lifetime available and increase the price if you felt that i was not high enough.

i believe the the reason excuse upthread is "user were getting confused by the options" which honestly makes no sense but hey apparently that is why the option has been removed. I am staunchly anti subscription for any software ever so if i hit the limit (which should be users not devices imho) thats it i'm going to jellyfin even if its worse overall not "i guess i'll pay for more devices"

 

[bakes82 90]

Just wait till the mpaa comes knocking on embys door again because most of the plex sellers moved to emby lol. It’s pretty clear why they did it. They want to capitalize on the new sales. Emby could probably do an audit of their licensing to see they have users selling access, not many legal people using Emby especially on the higher devices, but they probably say I’m Bobs IT services to emby sales.  Also everyone crying about the device limits and sharing with their friends. You’d think they would hear this as it been a huge issue for years, but if they moved to a users limit it people would just use one account since you could then have unlimited devices. The sellers would love that!  Maybe everyone will move to jelly and get those guys working more.

[benpicard 15]

On 08/12/2023 at 15:09, ebr said:

Hi.  At this time, a very small percentage of our users require a larger device license than the default.

If I buy a second lifetime premiere license, can you up my device limit to 50 ? (25+25)

Thank you