What Path Is Emby Going Down?

[Luke 37093]

we have to have some secrets, but you guys know from our other responses that Emby Theater, windows 10 unification, and xbox one are very much in our thoughts.

[Deihmos 147]

Not using a touch device.

 

I am currently using a Windows 10 machine with three monitors. No touch pad. Just a gaming keyboard and 8 button mouse. My other machines are Windows 7 and accessed via TeamViewer

Kodi works well with a KB and mouse even with the default theme. The emby addon is excellent and plus kodi has some fabulous addons. Edited May 30, 2015 by Deihmos

[Koleckai Silvestri 1150]

what do you like about that screenshot that made you post it?

 

That style of layout, allows me to manage playlists and music content while listening to playlists and music content. I can even be listening to a different playlist and work on another. However I primarily use Spotify. Spotify's desktop app has a very similar interface. Their web app is a little different and goes to a three column layout.

 

In the song list, click on the artist name and go to that artist. 

In the song list, click on the Album and go to that album.

In the song list, I should be able to favorite a song and build a playlist of those songs.

I should be able to create a new playlist without leaving the screen.

I should be able to drag and drop 1 or more songs to a playlist.

Start a "Channel" from an individual song - an automatic playlist of similar music based on genres and tags. I should have the option to save this as a playlist.

While a playlist is playing, I should be able to click on the album cover of the currently playing song and choose from some options - remove it from the playlist, find similar songs, favorite the song and go to the artist's page.

[shadowmike 0]

Plex NAS support is getting stale, as a lot can't transcode [not enough power] unless you pay $$$

Their new music extras for instance isn't compatible with FreeBSD [although the Gracenote integration is poor imho, especially for a wider taste in music, ie. not Pop/Current/AOR]

The XBOne client is woeful, as is the PS3 client, and only available for paid subscribers [a lot of moaning is cleverly hidden behind closed Plex Pass forums which the general public can't see]

The Samsung app is developed for free by a non employed person [but for some very stupid reason he donated the code to Plex should anything happen to him and still works on it for gratis - go figure]

There are about 42 employees at Plex, I'd say about 15-20 are top level management [read speak waffle etc]

There are 2 devs for PHT, 1 skinner. One of the devs is also dev for PMS [their average bugfix turnaround is 1-2 years - no kidding; plus then they break something and leave that for another year]

Plex is only ahead by advertising and fundraising [having just raised $10 million from a venture capital firm - with the said promise of better music integration due to this investment; which failed to impress after them spending 6+ months working on it and ignoring all other bugs/top requests/better integration of existing mechanisms into already avialable apps]

 

 

I just spent 9 months getting to grips with Plex, only to realise once you scratch the surface, everything falls apart. I left because of this and because after a while you know you're just a cog in their machine, which seems to be largely based at the moment on reselling you free content off the internet with plugins cobbled and stolen from Kodi and others. Of course, this is my own humble opinion, and maybe slightly obsessive! Hehe

 

Almost everything you said here is incorrect.

 

> Plex NAS support is getting stale, as a lot can't transcode [not enough power] unless you pay $$$

 

Plex is on the cutting edge of NAS support, enabling it as best they can for the largest number of users. They never charge a premium for this privilege.

 

> Their new music extras for instance isn't compatible with FreeBSD [although the Gracenote integration is poor imho, especially for a wider taste in music, ie. not Pop/Current/AOR]

 

You can enjoy most of the new music benefits even with the status quo Last.fm agent.  The FreeBSD limitation is Gracenote's, and completely outside the control of Plex.

 

> The XBOne client is woeful, as is the PS3 client, and only available for paid subscribers [a lot of moaning is cleverly hidden behind closed Plex Pass forums which the general public can't see]

 

They have been completely up front about the fact that the XB1/PS3/4 clients are not feature complete.  Further, there has been no attempt to hide this fact.  You'll find it clearly presented in the app store descriptions.

 

> The Samsung app is developed for free by a non employed person

 

You have no data upon which to base this claim.  The Samsung app is one of the most widely used (and liked) of any Plex client.

 

> There are about 42 employees at Plex, I'd say about 15-20 are top level management [read speak waffle etc

 

I'd say you're wrong here, based on the total level of output across all teams over the past year or so.  But what do I know?

 

> There are 2 devs for PHT, 1 skinner. One of the devs is also dev for PMS [their average bugfix turnaround is 1-2 years - no kidding; plus then they break something and leave that for another year]

 

Maybe you're right.  Maybe PHT is not the future of a best-in-class HTPC experience for the living room. Lots of maybes.

 

>  I left because of this and because after a while you know you're just a cog in their machine, which seems to be largely based at the moment on reselling you free content off the internet with plugins cobbled and stolen from Kodi and others

 

1. Zero Plex plugins were begged/borrowed/stolen from Kodi.  I challenge you to present a counterexample.

2. Plex does not "sell" (let alone "resell") content to anyone.  Your media is your media.  I know it may be hard to grok the fact that a for-profit company can be non-evil, but Plex is the closest thing to it.  I behoove you to look a little closer.

[Luke 37093]

That style of layout, allows me to manage playlists and music content while listening to playlists and music content. I can even be listening to a different playlist and work on another. However I primarily use Spotify. Spotify's desktop app has a very similar interface. Their web app is a little different and goes to a three column layout.

 

In the song list, click on the artist name and go to that artist. 

In the song list, click on the Album and go to that album.

In the song list, I should be able to favorite a song and build a playlist of those songs.

I should be able to create a new playlist without leaving the screen.

I should be able to drag and drop 1 or more songs to a playlist.

Start a "Channel" from an individual song - an automatic playlist of similar music based on genres and tags. I should have the option to save this as a playlist.

While a playlist is playing, I should be able to click on the album cover of the currently playing song and choose from some options - remove it from the playlist, find similar songs, favorite the song and go to the artist's page.

 

Good stuff thank you. I will look at these.

[politby 88]

Windows Media Center is approaching 15 years of age, and yet none of the other front ends are even remotely close to its stability and WAF. It may not have the everything but the kitchen sink functionality of the others, but in comparison they are really a bunch of enthusiast projects.

 

I have been using Windows Media Center for almost 10 years and I cannot honestly remember it crashing even once of its own accord. Any problems I've had with it have been caused by my own tinkering. The only components of my current Media Center installations which are not behaving are Emby Classic and Plex Home Theater. They both work reasonably well, but there will always be something that needs fiddling with when the family sits down to watch something. In all honesty, Classic has become less dependable in the past year. My family has actually stopped using it favor of PHT, which does not have nearly as much bling as Classic but does exactly what we want it to do - play back media.

 

This pretty much also describes the Android, windows 8.1 and web clients. Yeah, they can all be described as "working" but they are certainly not production stable.

 

After a while, community driven projects tend to come in danger of falling into the "we want to be everything to everyone" trap, focusing on adding one new cool feature after another and forgetting to sweat the little fundamental stability details. I fear Emby is heading the same way.

 

I think the team should step back a little and put a little more effort into finishing up and stabilizing the current functionality.

 

I realize some of you may take this as more criticism than may be needed, i think every developer is doing a great job individually but the whole project needs to think about the feature vs stability question for it not to end up a kludge like the others.

[Deathsquirrel 741]

As @politby said, it's easy to end up in projects like this spending lots of time on features that posters on the forums are noisy about but which don't really get used much.  @ebr, for example, does a really good job of saying 'no, that would not be good for most users' so I'm not saying this is a problem now, but it certainly can be.

That's why I suggested a little published mission statement and current dev status post for each client & server earlier in this thread.  Really it just helps remind the community what the current project goals for that server/client are.  Then, when someone asks for something near and dear to them but way outside the goals of that client, it's easier to answer.

Edited June 5, 2015 by Deathsquirrel