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jeffshead

It seems I have complicated my life but my intention was to keep things simple... What is the best setup for my needs?

 

Background:

For years, I've had movies stored on a network share and have been using Serviio Pro (DLNA) for standalone Blu-ray players that do not play all video formats. Serviio also does a fairly decent job of streaming over the Internet via it's built-in web portal. I occasionally utilize this functionality when I'm away. Next, I added a WDTV device because the standalones sometimes freeze and have problems with fast forward and reverse. The WDTV device plays videos directly from the network share and was working great up till the last couple of firmware updates. The stupid device periodically looses track of the network share and cannot find it again unless I reboot my PC's and/or server, depending on which one is designated as the master browser. This is a known issue that will probably never be resolved. Anyway, I replaced the WDTV with an Android TV box because of that issue. I'm loving the Android box (MeMoBOX MX MAX) but it has complicated matters. For example:

  1. I can no longer use a single universal remote to control the TV, standalone and streaming box. Now I have to have two separate remotes.
    • I had to purchase a separate air mouse remote with a keyboard to utilize the features of the Android box. I could not find an all-in-one that has air mouse, keyboard and that can be programmed to control the standalone and TV. This one (MX3) comes close and it works very, very well. I just hope it holds up.
  2. The Android box came with Kodi so now there's a great deal more menus and more steps involved to navigate to and play videos. More menus and options = confused wife.
  3. I don't know what is the most efficient way to set things up.

My questions and dilemma:

I want robustness and simplicity. I do not want to have a complicated setup that requires administration of redundant services or multiple libraries. I want the flexibility of being able to access a single library from the LAN or WAN and be able to select whether I want to watch a transcoded movie or a direct stream. I do not want to transcode everything. Only when needed. Money is tight so I don't want to purchase Emby Premiere Lifetime unless it's needed or very beneficial. It's just not clear to me if I need Kodi on all PC's, Kodi with Emby add-on, Emby Server, Emby Premiere or Emby at all because Kodi does scraping too. 

  1. Do I need Kodi on any device or PC to play movies if I install Emby server?
    1. If so, does each PC maintain it's own library?
  2. In a nutshell, why would I need Emby Premiere?
  3. Is Emby Theater a replacement for Kodi on Windows?
    1. How does it differ from Kodi?
    2. Does it automatically transcode the video or is transcoding a selectable option?
  4. If I install Emby Server, do I have to pay for the Android app on each device?
    1. If so, is it a one time purchase and does that give me the same functionality as if I purchased Premiere?
    2. Do I have to pay a fee for each phone or does the one fee cover all phones on the same google account?

I'm most confused about why I need Emby since Kodi scrapes. It appears to me that each product has a different purpose but there is some functionality overlap.

Edited by jeffshead
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Hi, welcome. Emby Server is an app that allows you to easily manage your media from one centralized location, and then serve that content to your devices. 

 

On each device, you'll choose how you want to play that content, which could be via an Emby app, or DLNA. If you want to use Kodi, then you can connect to your Emby library using our Emby for Kodi-addon. Emby Theater is designed to be a user-friendly replacement for Kodi altogether.

Does this make sense? What I would suggest doing is checking out our download page:

 

http://emby.media/download.html

 

Then for each device that you'd like to play content from, you can see the available playback options, whether it be a dedicated Emby app, or just DLNA.

 

Does this help? 

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jeffshead

Thank you for responding :-)

 

What about transcoding? If I install the Emby apps on Windows and Androids, will all streams automatically be transcoded or can I choose different quality levels from raw to low quality, each time I pick a movie to watch? I do not want the server transcoding everything if the device can handle the raw movie format. Everything DLNA will be transcoded, right?

Edited by jeffshead
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Guest asrequested

Thank you for responding :-)

 

What about transcoding? If I install the Emby apps on Windows and Androids, will all streams automatically be transcoded or can I choose different quality levels from raw to low quality, each time I pick a movie to watch? I do not want the server transcoding everything if the device can handle the raw movie format. Everything DLNA will be transcoded, right?

 

It will depend on your network bandwidth. It will adjust according to that.

 

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/Transcoding

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Every Emby app will direct play without transcoding as much as possible, and will only transcode when either the app video player doesn't support the content, or the size of the video is too large for your network connection to handle.

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Vidman

It seems I have complicated my life but my intention was to keep things simple... What is the best setup for my needs?

 

Background:

For years, I've had movies stored on a network share and have been using Serviio Pro (DLNA) for standalone Blu-ray players that do not play all video formats. Serviio also does a fairly decent job of streaming over the Internet via it's built-in web portal. I occasionally utilize this functionality when I'm away. Next, I added a WDTV device because the standalones sometimes freeze and have problems with fast forward and reverse. The WDTV device plays videos directly from the network share and was working great up till the last couple of firmware updates. The stupid device periodically looses track of the network share and cannot find it again unless I reboot my PC's and/or server, depending on which one is designated as the master browser. This is a known issue that will probably never be resolved. Anyway, I replaced the WDTV with an Android TV box because of that issue. I'm loving the Android box (MeMoBOX MX MAX) but it has complicated matters. For example:

  • I can no longer use a single universal remote to control the TV, standalone and streaming box. Now I have to have two separate remotes.
    • I had to purchase a separate air mouse remote with a keyboard to utilize the features of the Android box. I could not find an all-in-one that has air mouse, keyboard and that can be programmed to control the standalone and TV. This one (MX3) comes close and it works very, very well. I just hope it holds up.
  • The Android box came with Kodi so now there's a great deal more menus and more steps involved to navigate to and play videos. More menus and options = confused wife.
  • I don't know what is the most efficient way to set things up.
My questions and dilemma:

I want robustness and simplicity. I do not want to have a complicated setup that requires administration of redundant services or multiple libraries. I want the flexibility of being able to access a single library from the LAN or WAN and be able to select whether I want to watch a transcoded movie or a direct stream. I do not want to transcode everything. Only when needed. Money is tight so I don't want to purchase Emby Premiere Lifetime unless it's needed or very beneficial. It's just not clear to me if I need Kodi on all PC's, Kodi with Emby add-on, Emby Server, Emby Premiere or Emby at all because Kodi does scraping too.

  • Do I need Kodi on any device or PC to play movies if I install Emby server?
    • If so, does each PC maintain it's own library?
  • In a nutshell, why would I need Emby Premiere?
  • Is Emby Theater a replacement for Kodi on Windows?
    • How does it differ from Kodi?
    • Does it automatically transcode the video or is transcoding a selectable option?
  • If I install Emby Server, do I have to pay for the Android app on each device?
    • If so, is it a one time purchase and does that give me the same functionality as if I purchased Premiere?
    • Do I have to pay a fee for each phone or does the one fee cover all phones on the same google account?
I'm most confused about why I need Emby since Kodi scrapes. It appears to me that each product has a different purpose but there is some functionality overlap.
To be clear you brought an android box , not an android TV box . An android TV box must support hdmi-cec and be completely remote friendly according to the android TV specs so you would not have the remote control issues you have with your android box, although I see the os is 5.1 and the hardware is amlogic s905 so it is capable of both those things Edited by Vidman
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jeffshead

Thanks to everyone for the replies :-) Great info.

 

Every Emby app will direct play without transcoding as much as possible, and will only transcode when either the app video player doesn't support the content, or the size of the video is too large for your network connection to handle.

 

If I'm understanding how Emby works, there is no way to totally disable transcoding per streaming instance. If I use the Emby apps, I have to rely on their detection mechanisms and the only way I can be assured that no transcoding will take place is to use Kodi or another player app. Is this correct?

 

-----------------------------------------

 

About where to install... I've been reading all day and see some users have installed Emby on VM's with no issues but those users have pro-grade servers with plenty of cores and RAM. I have a vSphere 6 setup and I am considering installing Emby on a Win2012 VM but my equipment is not server grade.The ESXi host I want to use has 24GB of non-ECC RAM and an i-7 processor but I do not want to give the majority of the resources to the VM with Emby.

 

There will rarely be more than 3 users streaming at the same time. What is the minimum number of vCPU's and vRAM I can specify for the VM and expect good results? I do have another physical PC with a an old Quad Core Intel CPU I can use if that would be better but I'd rather not add another box to an already cramped and hard to keep cool space. I'm guessing I'd be better of using the PC???

Edited by jeffshead
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  • 2 weeks later...
dcook

You could make your VM with 2 cores and 8GB to start, there are plenty of people who run Emby on a Intel NUC with i3 CPU and 8GB of ram for example.

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