Emby Premier Costs etc.

[darkassassin07 434]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

You don't have to because we explain why.

Is there a limit to Emby Premiere?

That's complete horseshit and we all know it.

 

@ebrYou're entirely unwilling to explore providing this information in any way. You have been for at least a decade.

 

You repeatedly quote that its for 'security' but refuse to explore any methods of providing that information securely.

 

There are several ways you could do this. For example: provide a form on your site;

enter premier key, receive email to the addresses used for purchase with even the most basic of information 'x of y slots in use'

Or

As discussed many times already: have the public api call that's already asking for permission to use premier features return an integer instead of just true/false. =the number of slots in use.

 

There's no need to expose any harmful or personal/identifying information. We don't need individual device IDs, IP addresses, hosts, etc. Just a single integer: how many slots of your key are currently in use.

[dnicks 26]

The answer to this is easy. Stop letting users give access to so many people for free. The Netflix model is fine. 

[andrewds 98]

3 hours ago, dnicks said:

The answer to this is easy. Stop letting users give access to so many people for free. The Netflix model is fine. 

Is the assumption here that the main complaint is coming from resellers? Genuinely asking. I have no context really for how prevalent that is. I've gotten the impression that it has mostly been people who want to provide access to groups of friends and family. I do see some people talking about how they have the 7 (one for each of 6 household members plus one communal) televisions in their household, plus their phone, a tablet, and a Windows device running Emby Theater. For a household with 6 people in it, that would be 25 devices. Give access to another house similarly sized (or two more half size) and that's 50 devices.

[dnicks 26]

5 minutes ago, andrewds said:

Is the assumption here that the main complaint is coming from resellers? Genuinely asking. I have no context really for how prevalent that is. I've gotten the impression that it has mostly been people who want to provide access to groups of friends and family. I do see some people talking about how they have the 7 (one for each of 6 household members plus one communal) televisions in their household, plus their phone, a tablet, and a Windows device running Emby Theater. For a household with 6 people in it, that would be 25 devices. Give access to another house similarly sized (or two more half size) and that's 50 devices.

Honestly I don't know how prevalent it is either and maybe it wouldn't be enough for the Emby team to make enough extra money.

[revengineer 127]

Enough, I am unsubscribing from this thread. This was a perfectly good discussion topic until a day ago when someone hijacked this thread for off-topic bullshit. Learn some manners and create a separate thread for your grievances. Cheers!

[Clackdor 23]

11 hours ago, andrewds said:

Is the assumption here that the main complaint is coming from resellers? Genuinely asking. I have no context really for how prevalent that is. I've gotten the impression that it has mostly been people who want to provide access to groups of friends and family. I do see some people talking about how they have the 7 (one for each of 6 household members plus one communal) televisions in their household, plus their phone, a tablet, and a Windows device running Emby Theater. For a household with 6 people in it, that would be 25 devices. Give access to another house similarly sized (or two more half size) and that's 50 devices.

Bingo! My household has 6 people with multiple TV's, xboxes, windows PC's, tablets, phones, etc. It's the reason why I hate that they removed the option to upgrade to 45 device lifetime. I only share with 2 family members outside of my household and their usage is very light. For me it has nothing to do with selling access or sharing with a huge number of people. It's about being able to share with a handful of people and letting them watch on whatever device they want without worrying about hitting the device limit. Resellers do exist, but I don't think they're all that common. We can't have nice things because of the very small minority that might take advantage or abuse it.

[ebr 14958]

1 hour ago, Clackdor said:

Bingo! My household has 6 people with multiple TV's, xboxes, windows PC's, tablets, phones, etc. It's the reason why I hate that they removed the option to upgrade to 45 device lifetime. I only share with 2 family members outside of my household and their usage is very light. For me it has nothing to do with selling access or sharing with a huge number of people. It's about being able to share with a handful of people and letting them watch on whatever device they want without worrying about hitting the device limit. Resellers do exist, but I don't think they're all that common. We can't have nice things because of the very small minority that might take advantage or abuse it.

We provide you the larger subscription plan for that instance. 

[ebr 14958]

19 hours ago, darkassassin07 said:

That's complete horseshit and we all know it.

It is not.  It is the actual reason.  The additional information that goes with it though is that doing anything about it takes time and resources and we have better things to spend that time and resources on right now.  The percentage of legitimate users of the system who need more detail like this is extremely small.

The dash already tells you if your are close to or over the limit and that is all the information that most people need to use the system as intended.

[jaycedk 396]

37 minutes ago, ebr said:

We provide you the larger subscription plan for that instance. 

And that at the cost of monthly subscription, nice of Emby to remove that option. 

[jaycedk 396]

Ok seriously.

Do I really need to buy another 25 lifttime license, and rotate it every 6th day.

Guess 2 x 25 will get me 50 users.

And with clients only asking every 7 days, I'm good.

[kikinjo 172]

42 minutes ago, jaycedk said:

Ok seriously.

Do I really need to buy another 25 lifttime license, and rotate it every 6th day.

Guess 2 x 25 will get me 50 users.

And with clients only asking every 7 days, I'm good.

No you don't,  Jellyfin is almost good as emby, really soon if this horseshit of excuses dont stop and if they continue to not listen to longtime paying emby users, they will be surprised.

[jaycedk 396]

15 minutes ago, kikinjo said:

No you don't,  Jellyfin is almost good as emby, really soon if this horseshit of excuses dont stop and if they continue to not listen to longtime paying emby users, they will be surprised.

Well !! I will not jumping ship, because of 1 rat, in the cargo.

Edited May 3 by jaycedk

[Ronstang 205]

The biggest problem with the device limit is that it takes a week for one to drop off, when they should reset every day.  This is just a stranglehold to extract more money, the proof is they took the lifetime device upgrade away.  If I was paying a sub for emby I would have been gone a long time ago, especially considering it takes forever for them to fix the problems they create with each release and LiveTV has not worked properly the almost 5 years I have been using emby.

I love emby, use it every day even though it has lots of issues.  Luckily the device limit does not really affect me as only my wife and I use it in the house on only 3 devices and my family and friends that use it usually use it on only 1 TV and not that often.  It helps that I have most of them on Firesticks because I bought that app and a lifetime Premiere, but if I hit the device limit I would be peeved considering I do not use it for anything illegal.

[bakes82 90]

20 hours ago, andrewds said:

Genuinely asking. I have no context really for how prevalent that is

Emby reselling and Plex reselling is very high.  For emby though they just pay the sub fee and pass on the cost so no big deal per say. Not hard to run multi dockers of emby on one server with diff keys.  Just a minor annoyance but many scripts and platforms automate it.

[Q-Droid 670]

I'll start by saying that I'm not affected by the device limit so to me it's not a big deal either way. And as long as the overall experience doesn't change I can understand a cost increase and/or changes to premiere options since there hasn't been much of a price change over the years.

Maybe those calling the Emby team greedy or deceitful should consider this: Emby, the company and the product, have to navigate waters where the big media companies swim. These companies which include the well known big entertainment plus FAANG plus big communications can easily decide that Emby facilitates piracy and come after them. Their means of distribution in the app stores for all of the supported platforms are in one way or another tied to those companies in the media sphere. So I think Emby has to make a reasonable effort to prevent misuse of their product and be guarded about how this is achieved.

Plex likely gets a pass because they've cozied up to big media and who knows what user data they've shared to stay in that "partnership". I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little arm twisting and light extortion in the mix and they caved for the sake of their survival. And as long as Plex continues to play the game they'll stay in big media's good graces.

Jellyfin isn't a business so they probably don't have much to worry about.

Emby Corp is not entirely off the hook and could be less evasive about the device limit details and retention among other things. I can't claim to know where that line is they don't want to cross.

[lifespeed 42]

I would like to add a comment regarding Emby funding their development going forward.  There has been mention of the recurring costs of the live TV guide, and breaking this out as a separate subscription instead of included with a lifetime payment.  This sounds reasonable, as it is a recurring cost to Emby and is truly a "service" requiring continuing data.

However, and this is a big one, live TV is on the verge of being broken for Emby by virtue of ATSC 3.0 DRM.  ATSC 1.0 is only required to be transmitted for another 4 years.  At first glance, it appears it could be impossible for Emby, as a software-only device, to meet the DRM requirement of playing back on the same hardware that made the recording.  Possibly this could be solved by close coordination with SiliconDust, but why would they partner with Emby instead of selling you their own DVR software with guide subscription?

While I really enjoy the integration Emby has offered thus far, both movie libraries as well as live and recorded TV, it appears this is coming to an end.  As such, who will want the partial solution of non-DRM'd TV that Emby might be able to offer?  I can't see a TV guide data subscription working as a reasonable revenue stream for Emby going forward.  Although I do think their efforts need to be supported financially, this would appear to be a dead end.

[Spaceboy 2504]

17 minutes ago, lifespeed said:

I would like to add a comment regarding Emby funding their development going forward.  There has been mention of the recurring costs of the live TV guide, and breaking this out as a separate subscription instead of included with a lifetime payment.  This sounds reasonable, as it is a recurring cost to Emby and is truly a "service" requiring continuing data.

However, and this is a big one, live TV is on the verge of being broken for Emby by virtue of ATSC 3.0 DRM.  ATSC 1.0 is only required to be transmitted for another 4 years.  At first glance, it appears it could be impossible for Emby, as a software-only device, to meet the DRM requirement of playing back on the same hardware that made the recording.  Possibly this could be solved by close coordination with SiliconDust, but why would they partner with Emby instead of selling you their own DVR software with guide subscription?

While I really enjoy the integration Emby has offered thus far, both movie libraries as well as live and recorded TV, it appears this is coming to an end.  As such, who will want the partial solution of non-DRM'd TV that Emby might be able to offer?  I can't see a TV guide data subscription working as a reasonable revenue stream for Emby going forward.  Although I do think their efforts need to be supported financially, this would appear to be a dead end.

a world exists outside the USA

[lifespeed 42]

2 minutes ago, Spaceboy said:

a world exists outside the USA

Is said market sufficient to financially support Emby development?  There is more to it than mere existence.

[ebr 14958]

14 hours ago, Spaceboy said:

a world exists outside the USA

Indeed.  Just FYI our non-US users now appear to outnumber our US-based ones.  But, aside from that, I think a lot of assumptions that are unknowable at this time were made in @lifespeed's post.

[pwhodges 1538]

15 hours ago, lifespeed said:

Is said market sufficient to financially support Emby development?  There is more to it than mere existence.

There's also more to Emby than just live TV.

Paul

[lifespeed 42]

38 minutes ago, pwhodges said:

There's also more to Emby than just live TV.

Paul

Not as it pertains to charging for TV guide subscriptions.

[neik 838]

43 minutes ago, pwhodges said:

There's also more to Emby than just live TV.

Paul

True, on the other hand though it's the part that imo lacks the most development - we might see some steps forward though as TVnext was kinda announced to be included into the server.
"Regular" playback is working just fine for me.

[lifespeed 42]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

Indeed.  Just FYI our non-US users now appear to outnumber our US-based ones.  But, aside from that, I think a lot of assumptions that are unknowable at this time were made in @lifespeed's post.

I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong and Emby to be able to record ATSC 3.O DRM'd TV. Have Emby engaged with A3SA on this subject?

[ebr 14958]

 

[kikinjo 172]

On 5/4/2024 at 2:32 AM, Q-Droid said:

 

Quote

I'll start by saying that I'm not affected by the device limit so to me it's not a big deal either way. And as long as the overall experience doesn't change I can understand a cost increase and/or changes to premiere options since there hasn't been much of a price change over the years.

Cant agree on this one. Hasn't been a price change over the years stands, but tell me did we get any new premiere features worth mentioning ? Maybe, maybe not, but main argument is that features that are already premiere are somewhat not stable at all, live tv for example. There are numerous really numerous posts about live tv not working, or working for 2 beta rlses and than all over again from the start... It is really pathetic that emby calls live tv part a premiere feature. It simply is not something to talk about at all from their side and calling it premiere feature is a small insult. I gave up on live tv after 3-4 months because i was not ready to constantly restart whole emby server because live tv was frozen, or stuck, or any other problem you can find on forum in few thousands post on live tv not working.

Quote

plus big communications can easily decide that Emby facilitates piracy and come after them

Emby is no unique product. Plex also "could facilitate piracy" , jellyfin too, and million others. Hiding behind piracy claims here only has one purpose, make more money on premiere and limited number of devices, nothing more. If that wasn't true we would have now control of our devices, we could have control to delete, kick device and management of it in general. No we have some silly explanations and shitload of posts about piracy. Common, we are not kids. If they are so scared of piracy issues, than go code a children book or something, and leave streaming server product. Ok lets talk about piracy, if that is an issue as we read here alot from emby devs...why is there a 75 devices license ?  Why not make it 10 maximum, its a home server and we don't want piracy right ? Whats the difference in these "talks about piracy" when emby is selling 45, 75 devices ? What anti piracy allows up to 75 devices all over 75 is piracy ? There is no logic in any of the explanations, especially when ebr comes to "teach us".