Help with Emby promotion and marketing

[sross44 235]

Hi all! 

I'm extremely excited to announce that I just started working with the awesome folks here at Emby to help grow the brand and Emby name. Before anything else, thank you to @ebrand @Lukefor letting me join the team and trusting me to promote Emby as the best media server available to people. 

As I start this journey, I'm asking for everyone's help with answering a few questions that will identify some things that will help start this process. 

1. What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?
2. What about Emby do you like or dislike? 
3. Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?
4. What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis? 
5. Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed.

Thank you for taking the time to help me with this. It is feedback from the users of Emby that will jumpstart this growth for us. I appreciate all of you and if you have any questions or suggestions about how we can best market, please feel free to reach out to me right away. 

 

Edited January 4 by sross44

[TalNum 11]

@sross44 - I am happy to see some efforts in getting the word out about Emby to help grow the brand. I caught your original thread on Reddit, but figured I would reply here to help get the ball rolling. Apologies for the lengthy responses to your questions, but I feel like it is worth putting this all out in the ether:

On 1/4/2024 at 10:02 AM, sross44 said:

What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?

Initially, it was a colleague of mine who suggested Emby to me. He had realized I was in the midst of consolidating my home media library into digital format and suggested that I run Emby to help with the organization and cataloging of the media. I was well aware of Plex at the time, but Emby flew under the radar for me until my colleague had brought it to my attention. In the past, I had run a strictly local Kodi/XBMC instance. Emby is the first media server I can access remotely.

On 1/4/2024 at 10:02 AM, sross44 said:

What about Emby do you like or dislike? 

Like:

1. I might be in the minority here, but one thing that absolutely sells me on Emby first and foremost would be its focus on privacy. Plex's stance on this has made me very leery about ever engaging with their product, no matter the features they offer. Heck, it only seems to be getting worse in that respect. While I have nothing to fear, I absolutely have a philosophical problem with a home server instance I paid for data mining me and potentially causing problems further on. Emby has been blunt and unambiguous in the fact that it does not collect any information about you or your home server.
2. I really like the fact that Emby has focused a lot on the 'under the hood' features and bug fixes rather than pumping out useless features. Are some other, flashier features sorely wanted? Of course! But I would never place more importance on them over the core functionality of Emby. If your system cannot read, parse, and deliver your media, what good are the other features?

Dislike:

1. To this day, I am still somewhat foggy on device limits on Emby. I have read the help documents many times over and the 25 device limit, and how it is derived, seems no more clear to me than it did when I first purchased Emby premiere years ago. I understand this is not a concurrent license nor is it a simple count of devices on your server's 'Device' page, but I am left to wonder, what is the exact parameters of this? Is it if a devices pings your server once per week? Once per month? When does a device count against one's limit?
2. The feature request system needs a complete overhaul. While I understand a forum is a great way to engender conversation on topics, it has become a patchwork mess of duplicate requests that get merged or left unattended. The path Jellyfin has taken is absolutely the path Emby should also get upon. This is a clear and concise list of feature requests that can be easily moderated and filtered down to specific platforms for the end user. People can still comment on requests, moderators can merge requests, and there is even a 'status' that developers can change a requests to should they decide it is on the roadmap.
3. I would like to see (even a basic version of) a roadmap of development from developers. I am absolutely of the mindset I would rather wait for a product that is fully fleshed out versus quick, buggy releases, but if major revisions are taking north of 1.5 years, I think end users would be much more satiated to know that there is something going on in the background versus the typical 'it will be ready when it's ready'.

On 1/4/2024 at 10:02 AM, sross44 said:

Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?

I have given Jellyfin a try as of late, and while I am a big supporter of their open-source, community driven development, it is just not ready for prime time. Emby has had much further development in both the core server and apps. I very much appreciate their efforts and will keep an eye on their progress over the years, but currently, their software leaves much to be desired.

On 1/4/2024 at 10:02 AM, sross44 said:

What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis? 

I run Emby on my Synology 920+ NAS, using the 7.2.1-69057 Update 3 firmware. I am planning to move Emby over to a NUC that will run Ubuntu Server 22 LTS. My clients are typically a wide array of Amazon Fire TV devices (E.g. Cube gen 3, 4k Max 2nd gen, etc.), coupled with Android phones (primarily the Google Pixel lineup) and various Android tablets.

 

On 1/4/2024 at 10:02 AM, sross44 said:

Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed.

Please keep up this community outreach. I admire how hands on developers are around here, but having a proxy (such as yourself) gathering and synthesizing comments would be a huge benefit not only to them for time savings, but to the community, as it would give us a sense that our voices are being heard. Thanks and all the best to your and the team moving forward.

Edited January 7 by TalNum

[sross44 235]

Thank you for taking the time to respond here. I'm glad you saw the post on Reddit as well. We're getting a lot of traction over there but it'd be great to get some here as well. 

Your feedback on both the likes and dislikes was extremely well thought out and really well expressed. I know the Emby team is always looking to improve the core product so feedback is always welcomed. Our hope is to grow the brand and we can't do that without the knowledge of what drives our users. 

[jasonmcroy 315]

What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?

I used Emby back when it was MBServer or whatever it was called back then and used it some with Windows Media Center. Back then I was very new to the whole media server bit. I don't even recall how I came across it. Back then I had even tried MediaPortal and NextPVR but those were mainly only for TV viewing and Emby had the other aspects of accessing my own media that I liked better.

I have used Plex and there are some things I like about it, but Emby ticks more of the boxes for what I am looking for out of a media server. I haven't been able to find any media server that ticks all of the boxes for me. I installed Jellyfin once just to see what all the fuss was about. Ugh, hated it. That lasted about a day.

What about Emby do you like or dislike?

Likes: I like the intro skip function and metadata management aspects. I find them easy to use. I like the fact that for me the server has pretty much always just worked. I haven't had any major issues on it's performance.

Dislikes: I really, really, really dislike this response to feature requests, "It's a good idea for the future." Meanwhile, 4 years later... - I always assume that this means this will never happen and as such I have quite making any feature requests because I feel like the devs have already decided what they want to do and if that view fits with some feature request by accident it will get implemented. I dislike what I consider to be an avoidance of just telling us "we are not going to do that anytime soon. Not a bad idea, but don't expect it for a really long time and probably not ever.

Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?

I have, like I said above, used Plex. One of the main things I liked about it is the native ability to run a commercial scanner and skip those commercials. 

I am currently using Channels DVR software mostly because of how they have implemented commercial skipping. You can even edit the commercials after it has scanned a recording for them. It's a simple little GUI that gives you the still images at the beginning and end of each cut point and you can modify it manually. As any of us that use ffmpeg to scan commercials knows, it's not an exact method. This application lets you fix that pretty easily.

What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis?

My server is on a Windows 11 computer that also holds all of my HDDs (about 40 tb) with all my movies and TV Shows. My daily clients are Apple TV and iOS.

Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed. 

My general usage of Emby as it exists is quite satisfying. I do understand they can't get in all of the users wishes as we all have some pretty different ideas of what we'd like implemented. 

I currently only have Emby and Channels DVR on my media computer. I uninstalled Plex about 3 months ago.

[Okom3pom 0]

Hello,

I am new (2 days)

What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?

Before, I used  Kodi, but there was no synchronization.

What about Emby do you like or dislike? 

I'm too new to answer this question.

Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?

No only Kodi

What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis?

Server : windows
Clients : Android TV, Android app, Web App

Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed.
 

I deleted my Github account at the beginning of the year and created a new one to make a pull request on the project.

This is to say that I find the participative side poor.

No guide, no github template ...

I'll try to make a few Pull Requests along these lines

Regards Thomas

[ebr 14923]

19 minutes ago, Okom3pom said:

No guide, no github template ...

I'll try to make a few Pull Requests along these lines

Hi.  We are not an open source project.  We welcome feedback and feature requests though.

Thanks.

[sross44 235]

On 1/7/2024 at 9:29 PM, jasonmcroy said:

What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?

I used Emby back when it was MBServer or whatever it was called back then and used it some with Windows Media Center. Back then I was very new to the whole media server bit. I don't even recall how I came across it. Back then I had even tried MediaPortal and NextPVR but those were mainly only for TV viewing and Emby had the other aspects of accessing my own media that I liked better.

I have used Plex and there are some things I like about it, but Emby ticks more of the boxes for what I am looking for out of a media server. I haven't been able to find any media server that ticks all of the boxes for me. I installed Jellyfin once just to see what all the fuss was about. Ugh, hated it. That lasted about a day.

What about Emby do you like or dislike?

Likes: I like the intro skip function and metadata management aspects. I find them easy to use. I like the fact that for me the server has pretty much always just worked. I haven't had any major issues on it's performance.

Dislikes: I really, really, really dislike this response to feature requests, "It's a good idea for the future." Meanwhile, 4 years later... - I always assume that this means this will never happen and as such I have quite making any feature requests because I feel like the devs have already decided what they want to do and if that view fits with some feature request by accident it will get implemented. I dislike what I consider to be an avoidance of just telling us "we are not going to do that anytime soon. Not a bad idea, but don't expect it for a really long time and probably not ever.

Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?

I have, like I said above, used Plex. One of the main things I liked about it is the native ability to run a commercial scanner and skip those commercials. 

I am currently using Channels DVR software mostly because of how they have implemented commercial skipping. You can even edit the commercials after it has scanned a recording for them. It's a simple little GUI that gives you the still images at the beginning and end of each cut point and you can modify it manually. As any of us that use ffmpeg to scan commercials knows, it's not an exact method. This application lets you fix that pretty easily.

What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis?

My server is on a Windows 11 computer that also holds all of my HDDs (about 40 tb) with all my movies and TV Shows. My daily clients are Apple TV and iOS.

Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed. 

My general usage of Emby as it exists is quite satisfying. I do understand they can't get in all of the users wishes as we all have some pretty different ideas of what we'd like implemented. 

I currently only have Emby and Channels DVR on my media computer. I uninstalled Plex about 3 months ago.

You've been with Emby for a long time! I love it! I appreciate all the feedback as it's been super informative as I gather information for everything. I used to use Channels DVR in the past and they did not have that implementation of editing commercials then. That's a pretty cool feature! 

[sross44 235]

1 hour ago, Okom3pom said:

Hello,

I am new (2 days)

What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?

Before, I used  Kodi, but there was no synchronization.

What about Emby do you like or dislike? 

I'm too new to answer this question.

Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?

No only Kodi

What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis?

Server : windows
Clients : Android TV, Android app, Web App

Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed.
 

I deleted my Github account at the beginning of the year and created a new one to make a pull request on the project.

This is to say that I find the participative side poor.

No guide, no github template ...

I'll try to make a few Pull Requests along these lines

Regards Thomas

Welcome to Emby! If you run into any questions, feel free to reach out here on the forums for support. It's a great place to help you if you run into anything!

[Tremas 106]

Hello @sross44- thanks for taking this on.

What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?

I came to Emby after starting with Media Portal in the mid 2000s. I started with Media Portal due to the live TV support. At the time I was living in an area that had excellent OTA coverage as the digital television transition was starting, and I wanted a completely HTPC based solution for media (TV, Music, Gaming, DVDs, etc). As Media Portal started making noise about a version 2 that would be a centralized server with mobile clients, I got really excited by the idea and found Emby. MP2 fizzled out, but Emby was doing what I wanted. I tried Plex at the time too, but emby seemed more configurable/customizable and had the better OTA TV support. I purchased a lifetime license and have never regretted it. I remember when the entire Jellyfin split happened, but was never very tempted to check it out. There wasn't anything Jellyfin had that seemed enough of an improvement.

What about Emby do you like or dislike? 

I love having all of the media I love and the ability to control my server without tracking/sending data to the company I purchased the software from (a true rarity). Playing media is robust and works excellent across my devices - the fundamentals are solid. I love being able to customize the experience (more than plex and others), though I always wish more could be done. I want to program my own media experiences, and Emby works best for me.

For dislikes, the fact that there is no formal "play later" or "watch list" function is downright criminal neglect for a media management system. Also, not being able to add things like playlists, collections, or banners to the front page is frustrating. For TV and Movies, it is also frustrating that specials do not have categories, are not exposed better to the system, and do not come up in searches or Tag listings.

Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?

I tried Plex and Emby around 2014. It was close, but I went with Emby for Live TV, the community, and a few other customizable things I liked. In its current form, Plex is a total non-starter for me now.

I use Emby for Movies, TV (live and recorded), music videos, and audio books. Works great and I don't see the others doing much better with those. For music, I do use Emby but have lately moved to a Roon server (Roon Arc for mobile) on the same NAS. Emby is good with music, but not excellent. I listen to the same playlist every morning as I drive my kid to school, but I have to go through several clicks to launch it because I cannot pin it to the start page. There are no DSP options and no cross-fading. No auto-playlists (core) or recently played tracks/playlists. Playlists are finally becoming sharable, but the interface is still lacking with square images and hard to read text (it should default to list views with no images - who has images for playlists unless emby wants to auto-generate something more interesting than 4 album covers for a playlist of several hundred songs). When managing playlists, it's very difficult to filter or sort making it hard to find the one you want when you have to choose from dozens/hundreds of images with truncated text.

Similarly, I do use audiobooks in Emby, but the chapter interface is lacking (again - everything should be text and not images), there is no sleep timer (I use the iPhone alarm to "stop playing"), no and no support for book series or narrator. Similar to roon for music, I''m going to start giving a look to audiobookshelf.

For Live TV, there is lots of discussion in the forums about Emby's current implementation, the competition and TVNEXT. Ditto. We need it.

What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis? 

I run the Emby server on a Synology NAS 1520+. All media is also stored on the NAS. The NAS is a migration from my previous HTPC, which was windows based. For clients I use Roku (Roku TVs and a Roku Ultra) and iPhone daily,  and occasionally an Android tablet. Primarily I use the web ap in firefox for server admin stuff. In the past I have also used an old 1st gen FireTV stick and Emby Theater (windows and Xbox).

Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed.

Emby often uses the phrase "your media your way." I wish the team would lean more heavily into that. Find ways to surface my media in new and exciting ways. Let me track and expose my own media behavior instead of making that experience solely the providence of Ad-driven mega-corporations. Build a function to let me analyze my listening habits and see my favorite 10 songs of the past year, or top genres, or links between my top artists and movies they appeared in. Give me an option to tell me when it's one of my favorite directors birthday and show me a cool Emby-generated banner on the front page with a link to his films. Let me curate my own banners and collections, and promos on the front page (thinks like the Christmas theme were good ideas - maybe give us the tools to do it ourselves). Allow us to better link moves, soundtracks, music videos, alternate cuts, extras and more. Give me a button that says "what to watch" that plays trailers from my watch list and then allows me to go right to that media when I see one I want (oh- and build a watch list for heaven's sake). For personal photos, start working on features for auto-generated slide shows, "On this day" photo displays, and eventually on-server facial recognition. In summary, focus on creating ways to enhance the relationship between me and my media. Find a way to really give me a truly local Netflix/Spotify that is a self-curated celebration of  cinema and music I love instead of a predatory casino of aggregators constantly pushing me to watch the next thing.

Edited January 9 by Tremas

[HouseOfCards 71]

1. What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?

I started with Plex, then they began transitioning to a service, rather than a server...  Tried Jellyfin, but it lacks apps for many things.

What about Emby do you like or dislike? 

I think the devs are great people... responsive and accessible.  But my, oh my...  We need a release cycle.  This next version has been painfully long in the making (I'm here today to see if there was a release, but again, no...), and we need at least some form of timeline and information.

People looking into a project read the forums before they jump, and for this project, the comments will be riddled with frustration about the apparent lack of releases lately.  That doesn't instill initial confidence about whether they should buy-in.  It needs improvement, even if it's just announcing the next target date, and a brief explanation about why it was missed.  We're not asking much, we just want to know when/why.  We understand delays and making it right...  We just need to stop living in the dark.

Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?

I think my biggest pet peeve is when projects use their user base for R&D.  Plex started out like Emby, but then switched to a streaming service that allowed your own content to co-exist with their streaming service.  Then it went further to require that you connect to their servers to be able to play YOUR OWN content.  If their service went down, you couldn't even play your local files.  Although they say it isn't true, the ONLY reason to require their servers to play your content is to track what you're playing.  You couldn't even delete play history for users you deleted.  What are they saving that information for?  Goodbye, Plex.

Couple that with PFSense building an open source project, then switching to a paid version and dropping a "Community Edition" on existing users.  Basically killing the development of the free version for the most part.  TrueNAS is splitting between two versions, and time will tell...  When projects do this, all the comments, kudos, criticisms you invested in feel like you were raped a little.  We comment and participate to help the developers...  When the project rewards you by saying "thanks for the help making it good,  now pay us"... well....  You get it.

What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis? 

UnRAID.  I have two servers running in Docker, and there is explanation of my rather anal-retentive approach here...

Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed.

I realize the same people don't develop all the apps, but I think some parity between them would be helpful.  For instance, I'm a big fan of the background art displaying in the web app and iOS app, but that isn't visible on the Apple TV app.  I go to great lengths customizing the artwork, and the Apple TV app is pretty plain. 

Other than that, I think Emby is great.  Keep up the good work!  If you need any more clarification, I'm here....

[sross44 235]

@TremasThanks for taking the time to respond to everything. I've definitely taken notes on what you've said and it will be helpful as I navigate some ways to promote Emby as well as where our users think we can improve. I really appreciate it again!

 

[sross44 235]

@HouseOfCardsThank you for responding and sharing your thoughts with me on this. You bring up some great points on both the positives and negatives and I will definitely take them all into consideration as I move forward with putting together a strong marketing strategy for Emby. Feedback like yours is invaluable and I appreciate it. 

[tedfroop21 38]

• What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?

My first media server was SlimServer (now Logitech Media Server) for music.  Not looking through hundreds of disks for a song and 7-10 hour playlists for parties (where no one could mess with the music)  led me to want the same for other media.

So plex as it was really good at the time.  I left plex.  What really broke that relationship?  Metadata.  Because one of their execs had a problem and then a very public peeing contest that really was childish with TheTVDB.  So they tried to work around using them.  In doing that,  my very large Looney Tunes collection, for which the only keeper of good meta is TheTVDB,  was forever misidentified.  And fixing required a new workaround every release because they tried to block using Thetvdb meta.  The end came when they went to a super closed "just push the button and it works" meta solution - that again broke my ability to get the correct meta.

So the last time was the last time and I started looking for another media server.  Tried Jellyfin - good but, in the end not what I was looking for.  Then emby - whose name I saw a lot on plex forums.  

• What about Emby do you like or dislike? 

Like?  Everything and everything.   Meta is easy to work with.  It plays everything, has apps for everything, allows custom meta via NFO files (fantastic for personal media),  and it just works.  The only real problem I had was a hardware issue with playback - and I got  the information I needed to get it fixed from Emby forums when nobody else at other server providors knew what the real problem was.

That problem fixed,  it all just works.  From the Google TV app, to the Android app, to Roku, remote streaming - everything.

• Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?

Plex is good but reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon where they try to sell a computer with one button - that they press before it leaves the factory.  Install and use it as is and that's it....

Jellyfin - good project but I have a severe anxiety disorder and the ADHD symptoms that go with it and it took a few days to install and get running.  Nothing wrong there, but I was concerned that if things went wrong I would never get them fixed.  I also have cognition problems and found their support system impossible to use. 

• What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis? 

Its an Intel i5 6500T quad core powered "refurbished"  HP EliteDesk with 32 gig memory, Intel 530 integrated video, running Ubuntu 22.04 with a couple big drives. 

I use the Android app, Google TV app, Roku app, and access via browser. 

• Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed.

Love Emby.  It's easily configurable, simple to use, lets you make it look like you want it to.  It's also hugely reliable and gives you lots of info about whats going on.  It runs perfectly and has never crashed.    It was simple to migrate from plex (actually ran both in parallel until I had Emby set up)  and when I upgraded hardware it was even easier, using the built in backups and help from the devs on the forums

I also very much appreciate the help I have been given in the forums by the users, staff, and devs.  I have pretty severe cognition problems at times that make communicating and understanding difficult and everyone has always taken time and showed patience when fixing any issues I have.

[sross44 235]

@tedfroop21thanks so much for taking the time to write all of this out. Great response and I love the feedback. I'm glad to hear that the metadata works much better for you in Emby than the alternatives!

[beckfield 93]

On 1/4/2024 at 9:02 AM, sross44 said:

What brought you to Emby? Did you leave Plex or Jellyfin or was Emby your first media server?

I've had lifetime memberships with Plex and Emby for several years, but Plex was my first, and I've spent only a little time with Emby until recently.  Emby didn't quite measure up to Plex in the areas that are useful to me.  But Plex recently did something that I felt was unethical and disrespectful toward users' privacy.  It was kind of a 'last straw' for me, so I've been spending more time with Emby, and finding that Emby has made big improvements since the last time I paid attention.  I won't say that I have irrevocably left Plex behind, but Emby has 'caught up' enough, at least in the features that are important to me, that I feel I haven't lost much by switching.

On 1/4/2024 at 9:02 AM, sross44 said:

What about Emby do you like or dislike? 

I recently thought about putting together a "Plex vs. Emby" comparison list.  It isn't much yet, but Emby's advantages vs. Plex include support for the Composer tag in music, and support for multiple artists in music tracks, and for showing albums that an artist appears on, where they aren't the primary artist (Various Artist albums, for example).  Emby's server management options are better than Plex's, and playback controls for music and movies are much better.  Outside of the product features, I'm finding that the folks at Emby have been much more responsive in their forums than Plex folk.  I have yet to see a post ignored, and have had one or two feature requests implemented surprisingly quickly.

Emby's deficiencies in relation to Plex include filtering/smart playlists, and the ability to display map locations for GPS-tagged photos.

I'm sure I can expand on the above, but that's what comes to mind immediately.

On 1/4/2024 at 9:02 AM, sross44 said:

Have you tried the alternatives out there and if so what is your feedback compared to Emby?

Aside from Plex, obviously, I very briefly played with Kodi and Jellyfin, but didn't have the energy/motivation to go very far with them.

On 1/4/2024 at 9:02 AM, sross44 said:

What OS are you running your server on? What clients do you use on a daily basis? 

My server is on Linux MInt.  For playback, I use an nVidia Shield for probably 98% of all activity.  I have used the Plex app for Android Mobile for photos only.  I haven't yet moved that over to the Emby app.  But I have no use for it on my phone for anything other than photos.

On 1/4/2024 at 9:02 AM, sross44 said:

Any other general comments about Emby and your experience are always welcomed.

I use Plex (and now Emby) primarily for listening to music, and viewing my photography.  I have only a handful of movies (around 30), and a couple of TV shows.  I have yet to figure out how to access my Emby server content from outside my home network (to share photos/music with family), but once I get that working, I'll be one step closer to not needing Plex.

[beckfield 93]

An addendum to my post:

A Plex advantage:  Several years ago, Plex added an SSL cert to the system so the users wouldn't have to.  I'm not well versed in this area, and I've been having some difficulty getting SSL set up on my server so I can access it remotely.

[ebr 14923]

22 hours ago, beckfield said:

An addendum to my post:

A Plex advantage:  Several years ago, Plex added an SSL cert to the system so the users wouldn't have to.  I'm not well versed in this area, and I've been having some difficulty getting SSL set up on my server so I can access it remotely.

Hi.  This is an area we'd like to make easier as well but it is different for us.  Since we allow you to truly own your server and users doing this becomes much harder.  The other guys can do this easily because they force you to go through them to get to your server.

We are still looking for ways to make it easier though.

[adminExitium 173]

14 minutes ago, ebr said:

they force you to go through them to get to your server.

That's not correct. You are confusing the Plex relays for their automatically generated plex.direct SSL certificates. The SSL certificates should be trivial to do these days with Letsencrypt (or equivalent ACME provider) and the HTTP-01 challenge type (since you already run a server) or even the DNS-01 challenge if you assign a random subdomain on a domain like emby.direct.

Some more details here: https://words.filippo.io/how-plex-is-doing-https-for-all-its-users/. Per their forums, they have since switched to Letsencrypt but the explanation is still mostly valid.

Edited January 19 by adminExitium

[ebr 14923]

Hi.  I over-simplified it but the bottom line is THEY have the cert on THEIR domain and they force you to have an account with them that knows about all your servers.  We don't do that.  We would basically have to to provide the same type of service.

[sross44 235]

On 1/16/2024 at 7:45 PM, beckfield said:

I've had lifetime memberships with Plex and Emby for several years, but Plex was my first, and I've spent only a little time with Emby until recently.  Emby didn't quite measure up to Plex in the areas that are useful to me.  But Plex recently did something that I felt was unethical and disrespectful toward users' privacy.  It was kind of a 'last straw' for me, so I've been spending more time with Emby, and finding that Emby has made big improvements since the last time I paid attention.  I won't say that I have irrevocably left Plex behind, but Emby has 'caught up' enough, at least in the features that are important to me, that I feel I haven't lost much by switching.

I recently thought about putting together a "Plex vs. Emby" comparison list.  It isn't much yet, but Emby's advantages vs. Plex include support for the Composer tag in music, and support for multiple artists in music tracks, and for showing albums that an artist appears on, where they aren't the primary artist (Various Artist albums, for example).  Emby's server management options are better than Plex's, and playback controls for music and movies are much better.  Outside of the product features, I'm finding that the folks at Emby have been much more responsive in their forums than Plex folk.  I have yet to see a post ignored, and have had one or two feature requests implemented surprisingly quickly.

Emby's deficiencies in relation to Plex include filtering/smart playlists, and the ability to display map locations for GPS-tagged photos.

I'm sure I can expand on the above, but that's what comes to mind immediately.

Aside from Plex, obviously, I very briefly played with Kodi and Jellyfin, but didn't have the energy/motivation to go very far with them.

My server is on Linux MInt.  For playback, I use an nVidia Shield for probably 98% of all activity.  I have used the Plex app for Android Mobile for photos only.  I haven't yet moved that over to the Emby app.  But I have no use for it on my phone for anything other than photos.

I use Plex (and now Emby) primarily for listening to music, and viewing my photography.  I have only a handful of movies (around 30), and a couple of TV shows.  I have yet to figure out how to access my Emby server content from outside my home network (to share photos/music with family), but once I get that working, I'll be one step closer to not needing Plex.

I would love to see what you come up with for a comparison list. It never hurts to see how others perceive our product versus the competition etc. 

As a side note.... I use the nvidia Shield as well and absolutely love that device. I. have one on every TV in my house. 

[HouseOfCards 71]

14 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  I over-simplified it but the bottom line is THEY have the cert on THEIR domain and they force you to have an account with them that knows about all your servers.  We don't do that.  We would basically have to to provide the same type of service.

I would encourage you to look at providing a remote connection much like the Home Assistant project.  https://github.com/home-assistant

In that case they use a service they call Nabu Casa to allow for seamless remote access through a private URL.  They charge a small fee for this, and it's totally optional, but users don't have to do the remote access setup themselves.  Users subscribe to the "feature" and they are provided a secure URL which passes them to their server from anywhere. 

In Emby's case, all that needs to happen is a similar setup...  Provide a custom URL that points to a READ ONLY access to the server, and just map the connections like they do.  I'm not sure of the technical requirements, obviously...  But in Home Assistant's case, it's seamless.  It's open source, so you guys can look at how it's accomplished and borrow what you're allowed to.  It seems like the easiest way to do this, as most of us don't care about managing the server remotely, we just want to watch our stuff while on vacation... 

 

[adminExitium 173]

38 minutes ago, ebr said:

have an account with them that knows about all your servers

Nitpicking here, but having an account is irrelevant to providing SSL certificates. You only need a unique server ID to map to the domain & the remote IP, which you already have for Emby Connect.

[Q-Droid 652]

25 minutes ago, adminExitium said:

That's not correct. You are confusing the Plex relays for their automatically generated plex.direct SSL certificates. The SSL certificates should be trivial to do these days with Letsencrypt (or equivalent ACME provider) and the HTTP-01 challenge type (since you already run a server) or even the DNS-01 challenge if you assign a random subdomain on a domain like emby.direct.

Some more details here: https://words.filippo.io/how-plex-is-doing-https-for-all-its-users/. Per their forums, they have since switched to Letsencrypt but the explanation is still mostly valid.

Interesting solution from Plex. Though certs may be trivial, bringing it all together is not. Still have to rely on Plex as the domain owner to manage the DNS for name resolution and for most users the finder as well. I still like it considering that Plex as the middleman already had the infrastructure this next step was logical for them.

 

22 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  I over-simplified it but the bottom line is THEY have the cert on THEIR domain and they force you to have an account with them that knows about all your servers.  We don't do that.  We would basically have to to provide the same type of service.

Agreed. It's still Plex's domain and DNS maintenance for the server name resolution. To do something similar you would virtually have to force most if not all users to go through something like Emby Connect just so they don't have to remember the resulting unique and likely complex name to reach the server they want to use.

[adminExitium 173]

20 minutes ago, HouseOfCards said:

passes them to their server from anywhere

Providing something like this for video streaming is prohibitively expensive. As an example, cloudflare tunnels allows the same remote access for free for any service (https://blog.cloudflare.com/tunnel-for-everyone) but try streaming video through it and see how fast your accounts gets throttled (if not disabled outright).

[darkassassin07 423]

Why not just have a domain be a prerequisite requirement?

If the user has filled in 'External domain' under network settings, provide an option to enable automatically acquiring/renewing a cert via lets encrypt and http-01.