Deathsquirrel 741 Posted February 6, 2017 Share Posted February 6, 2017 (edited) To answer your question. "Why do I think so?"...Well, in my opinion, any apps writing by Emby dev team on any platform should be free because without that app you can not access their "free" server. Do not forget this is an open source project. Asking users to pay for anything that is preventing them from utilizing the project as a whole is not right. However, I am more than OK with them having more than one app for a platform and charge for one. Or a community member decide to write his own program and charges for it. Again that's MY POINT of view on the take. I was a very active member in the Plex forum before I decided to walk away and I brought a really large group of users with me here. I never once told them they must donate. I told them it would be nice to. I told them the same thing about SB, CP, SAB, etc...Some did, some didn't. Some eventually did after using the product a year and change later. But that was up to them to do as they pleased. Who am i to tell people what to do or lecture them on what they must do. The way some of these comments are coming out, it as if people are shaming them for not signing up. I personally do not think that is OK at all. And I'd charge for everything past the base server bit and web UI. Hey @@Luke, suggestion for 4.0: give away less stuff. It'll quiet the complaining about value. Edited February 6, 2017 by Deathsquirrel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klarth 3 Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 I hate that this has to be my first post, especially with the sharks around who will probably not like what I have to say, but here goes. My use case is pretty basic. I have a HTPC running Kodi using the Emby plugin for my home viewing needs. I did purchase the android app so that I could watch some content more easily on my phone, but often times I want to use my wife's tablet to watch something and since it's a different account, I just use the web interface. Same for when I'm on break at work and want to watch something on a remote PC. I never liked the nag before playing content in this way but it's one simple, quick click, so that's fine. But with the latest change, it went over the line. I'm the kind of guy who will run AdBlock but whitelist the non-intrusive ads for websites I support. But a 15 second countdown nag is just not going to make more more likely to purchase more services (for my case); it's going to make me look at Plex again. I do think Emby is a good project and there has been reasonable progress made from when I started using it in 2015, but truth be told I was content with Plex except that it did not work with Kodi unless you used a particular subset of skins which weren't to my liking. It seems since then new innovations have been made and it looks like there's an addon to sync Kodi/Plex regardless of skin. I'm not saying this to be a "Oh well I'm leaving" post, because I've invested a lot of time in configuring Emby to work for me and I do like it, and as a software developer myself I respect the work they put into it; and I believe the cost of the app was equivalent to the services rendered. But from my perspective and my limited needs, I could get the same thing for free without any nagging with another service. As others said, Emby does have good premium options and I fully support them having a premium payment model for that, but basic playback of my own media, in my opinion, should not be buried behind countdown timer nags. And I say this out of concern for your product, not to get a rise out of the "'Murica: Love it or Leave It" type posts that have been popping up in this thread. I'm just trying to say that I understand where you're coming from, but you may be chasing away basic users instead of drawing in more people to premier. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pilgrim2223 1 Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 I am not a premiere owner... though I will be at some point for no other reason than to support the amazing work the devs have done and continue to do. That being said... is your time so valuable that you can't wait 15 seconds so that a splash screen offering features is displayed and not just clicked through? 15 freaking seconds. So devs who spent hundreds of hours on a project, who continue to support and improve it (love the new Web video controls FYI) give the bulk of all features away for free including some amazing scrapers, remote play ability, auto-boxsets... and a whole ton of other things... And all while doing that want you to pause for 15 seconds to consider paying them a bit for their efforts. 15 seconds is nothing. $99 bucks for the lifetime premiere is nothing compared to what they've put in. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
im85288 1493 Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Didn't read all the thread but if you want to combine Emby with the best (and most community supported client on multiple platforms) 100% for free use Kodi (with out emby for kodi addon). We have stated before in the emby for kodi section that we will never charge for playback or anything else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klarth 3 Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 I'm not denying the features, and if you read my post you'll see I have paid for the Android app, which was a fair price for the functionality. But $100 to play my own content through the web interface is pushing it, and that's the only functionality I require. Maybe if there's a lower lifetime license for just that basic functionality, it would be a nice middle ground-- say $15. I like Chrome more than IE. It has a lot of nice features and I'm all in on the Google ecosystem, but if every time I started it I got a huge splash screen nagging me to try "Google Premier" with a 15 second countdown, I'd start looking at something else. Just to reiterate because I don't want confusion: Charging is not the problem, but I'm just suggesting maybe a new tier that will give the bare bones functionality of being able to play your media nag-free in a browser without paying the premium price for all of the other features, that while great, are not what some users need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deathsquirrel 741 Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 I'm not denying the features, and if you read my post you'll see I have paid for the Android app, which was a fair price for the functionality. But $100 to play my own content through the web interface is pushing it, and that's the only functionality I require. Maybe if there's a lower lifetime license for just that basic functionality, it would be a nice middle ground-- say $15. I like Chrome more than IE. It has a lot of nice features and I'm all in on the Google ecosystem, but if every time I started it I got a huge splash screen nagging me to try "Google Premier" with a 15 second countdown, I'd start looking at something else. Just to reiterate because I don't want confusion: Charging is not the problem, but I'm just suggesting maybe a new tier that will give the bare bones functionality of being able to play your media nag-free in a browser without paying the premium price for all of the other features, that while great, are not what some users need. I very seriously doubt that the devs want to deal with supporting multiple licensing levels. Certainly I would not in their shoes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrbee99 1560 Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 (edited) I know I'm repeating myself, but I reckon any nagging to upgrade should be dialed back when you are using something which is advertised as free. Though obviously income has to come from somewhere. Edited February 8, 2017 by arrbee99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speechles 1917 Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 (edited) You should get the nag, cmon.. its the length of the nag y'all got a problem with, be honest. At first, the nag shouldnt be there. Once you play a few items, it should appear, because cmon... free doesnt mean free. It never does, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Each time you play more things, the nag should stay on-screen longer. So that when you watch the first item, no nag, just free to play. After 5 items or so, the nag stays on for a second. At 10 its 2 seconds, 15 its 3, and so on. After 100 plays you deserve that 15 second wait. People who are new to emby dont deserve that 15 second wait as they are evaluating the product. This way it would punish the right people with a wait period, those clearly no longer evaluating the product but instead expecting a free lunch. Edited February 8, 2017 by speechles 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
breezytm 124 Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 There should be no "nag." This is an open source project. There should be server and viewing capabilities. Anything extra should be made available to Premiere users. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1114 Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 Open source doesn't mean free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open_source_software 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 Open source doesn't mean free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open_source_software People never seem to understand this. You can even charge under the GPL. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkside IPTV 0 Posted February 10, 2017 Share Posted February 10, 2017 Is there a comercial licence available for emby theatre? as a lifetime licence holder im really disappointed at the fact youve added a device limit to this? We were moving over to this platform from another big media platform, found it to be great until this point? we dont pin devices, they are all set up from seperate accounts? is theer no way you can provide unlimited licences on a commercial basis? or even a one off donation to the theatre app? if not its going to be an absolute no go for me, and your audience is going to be severely limited! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted February 10, 2017 Share Posted February 10, 2017 Is there a comercial licence available for emby theatre? as a lifetime licence holder im really disappointed at the fact youve added a device limit to this? We were moving over to this platform from another big media platform, found it to be great until this point? we dont pin devices, they are all set up from seperate accounts? is theer no way you can provide unlimited licences on a commercial basis? or even a one off donation to the theatre app? if not its going to be an absolute no go for me, and your audience is going to be severely limited! Hi. Please PM me your specific situation. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1114 Posted February 10, 2017 Share Posted February 10, 2017 (edited) Is there a comercial licence available for emby theatre? as a lifetime licence holder im really disappointed at the fact youve added a device limit to this? We were moving over to this platform from another big media platform, found it to be great until this point? we dont pin devices, they are all set up from seperate accounts? is theer no way you can provide unlimited licences on a commercial basis? or even a one off donation to the theatre app? if not its going to be an absolute no go for me, and your audience is going to be severely limited! I think the general audience will be more then happy with 15 accounts unless you have one huge family. Those looking to sell access to their server...maybe not. Edited February 10, 2017 by Jdiesel 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkside IPTV 0 Posted February 10, 2017 Share Posted February 10, 2017 Yes 15 accounts will not suit my needs, as mentioned im absolutely open to investing in some form of commercial system, the platform is perfect for such Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1114 Posted February 10, 2017 Share Posted February 10, 2017 (edited) IMO opinion opening Emby up for these types of businesses could be dangerous for Emby's image similar to what we are seeing with Kodi right now. Now there could be many fair reasons for selling access to a Emby server such as providing legal/owned content. However, this could easily be abused and soon there will be tons of "Free TV" services popping up using Emby as the means to deliver illegal/pirated content and that doesn't look good. If Emby want's to go the commerical route they should approve each license, over 15 users, on a per case basis while ensuring the owner has the legal authority to server the media on the server. Edited February 10, 2017 by Jdiesel 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mastrmind11 717 Posted February 10, 2017 Share Posted February 10, 2017 Not a Plex user so how do they handle this scenario? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1114 Posted February 10, 2017 Share Posted February 10, 2017 Similar setup, up to 15 users in your "Plex Home". You can also add "friends" which is just giving someone with their own account access to the media on your server but it does not come with the premium features, specifically the free apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powersurge360 2 Posted February 11, 2017 Share Posted February 11, 2017 Hey! First I wanna say, I super appreciate all the hard work and I'm definitely a fan of emby. I've been advocating it to a lot of my peers (which are mostly programmers who are shopping mostly for plex) and I make heavy use of it myself in my home network. However, after updating a couple of weeks ago I've noticed that the daily pop-up now has a 16 second wait. I was annoyed by the popup before back when it first appeared around summer of last year but it was infrequent and I don't begrudge you raising visibility about your product's paid version but I find the forced timer to be extremely offputting. As it stands now I won't continue recommending emby because of the poor signal the timer puts off and will likely migrate away from emby in the coming months. Even if I have to pay for an alternative. Ultimately it is your product and your blood, sweat, and tears going into it so it is your choice. I just felt it necessary to voice some feedback. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theeternalmushroom 4 Posted February 11, 2017 Share Posted February 11, 2017 (edited) I'm not denying the features, and if you read my post you'll see I have paid for the Android app, which was a fair price for the functionality. But $100 to play my own content through the web interface is pushing it, and that's the only functionality I require. Maybe if there's a lower lifetime license for just that basic functionality, it would be a nice middle ground-- say $15. I like Chrome more than IE. It has a lot of nice features and I'm all in on the Google ecosystem, but if every time I started it I got a huge splash screen nagging me to try "Google Premier" with a 15 second countdown, I'd start looking at something else. Just to reiterate because I don't want confusion: Charging is not the problem, but I'm just suggesting maybe a new tier that will give the bare bones functionality of being able to play your media nag-free in a browser without paying the premium price for all of the other features, that while great, are not what some users need. I second a 'middle ground' option.. I am one of those who is on the fence with Emby & Plex. I like some features in each, and I've purchased the mobile apps, but neither hits enough of my requirements to make me want to drop $120 on the full versions. Once they do.. I am fine with that. Right now I use Emby because the NPVR plugin works better than Plex's channel method. In the meantime I wouldn't have an issue paying $25-30 to remove the nags without the premiere features. The way the license model is presented is a bit off-putting IMO. Not unique to Emby of course. 'Subscription' is a turn-off when it comes to software. Obviously no one can expect free software development and upgrades for life. I am a fan of the one time purchase, with a year (or whatever) of support and upgrades model. Then you pay again the next year to continue support. This makes the consumer feel more comfortable purchasing (and they will probably continue paying anyway). I don't know how it works currently with Emby. If the 1 year option doesn't remove the premiere features upon expiration, and simply prevents upgrades and new features, I think it could result in more buys if this were spelled out clearly.. $50 seems like the sweet spot for software. Edited February 11, 2017 by theeternalmushroom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powersurge360 2 Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 And as stated above, you're welcome to fork and modify the software to remove the nagging. I picked this comment because it captured what I wanted to address succinctly that's been repeated a few times. Yes, the code is open source and yes we could fork it to remove the nagging, however, no one really wins in that scenario imo. What happens here is now the enduser is going to have to maintain the upstream and that user as well as anyone using that fork will mostly be unreachable by the premiere product depending on how deeply the person forks it. I actually have popped into my server to remove the nagging popup altogether and it would be trivial to post a file that would disable it (as well as enable a few of the client side premiere functions like syncing media). But that's not really something I'd be comfortable doing and it's not really in the collaborative spirit that open source provides. And on top of that, despite a lot of the anger and vitriol I'm seeing heaped back and forth, the admins seem to have been nothing but professional and are obviously paying attention to this thread, which I think is great! I guess what I'm saying is this solution is a non-realistic because it doesn't really leave anyone happy. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1114 Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 (edited) Those who are non-premiere users and don't plan to upgrade what would you consider a fair compromise? I think it is fair to say the Emby needs to provide some motivation to attract paying customers as they are a business so they have two options, delay playback with a nag screen or/and put features behind a paywall. Right now they are doing both. It seems like a common theme with users complaining about the nag screen is that the premiere features do not apply to them and thus is not an incentive to upgrade. Maybe the problem is that Emby is giving you too much for free and compensating by excessive nagging to upgrade. Maybe if live TV, managed users, shared plugins, hardware transcoding, premium metadata, parental controls, movie trailers, camera upload, beta apps, and preferred treatment in the forums were not included for free there would be no nag screen. Would you give up live TV and hardware transcoding for a once a day 5 second nag screen? Honest question, what do you feel is a fair compromise? Edited February 12, 2017 by Jdiesel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powersurge360 2 Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 The thing I dislike is the time limit. And who's to say I don't plan on upgrading? I actually had been considering it prior to the nag screen time limit. The way I've seen it done before is that there is an excellent base feature set that you get for free and then future features are on a premium plan. And I feel like folks who aren't using premiere already mostly get that. I'd wager that most of the 'doesn't apply to me' camp are actually folks who are settling for the features they have and probably wouldn't have been customers anyways. I think it's the wrong approach to gimp the existing free offering and instead focus on ways to improve the paid offering. At this point, reducing the quality of the free offering will always send a signal that the users are not valued and the product is subject to erosion. One thing that could be interesting would be to have a recommendation engine. Perhaps if the premiere users are connected to some kind of verification server anyways we could track who is watching what and use it to feed a recommendation engine more robust than what is currently being used. Set it up such that it suggests movies that other folks are watching, who have similar tastes to you. It's definitely a tough proposition to face though. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1114 Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 (edited) It is a fine line and I don't know if there is a "right" balance. I paid back when it was known as being a "supporter" meaning you like the project and you voluntarily give them a donation. Things are a bit different now so I see how new users are facing different circumstances now. Improving the paid features is likely the right way to go. Introducing that killer feature that everyone wants but is only available to premiere members is a good way to attract new paying members although you will still get users who are not happy with that like what happened when the new Emby Theater was released. I can see the frustration when you are getting the nag screen on a paid app though. Edited February 12, 2017 by Jdiesel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrbee99 1560 Posted February 12, 2017 Share Posted February 12, 2017 Those who are non-premiere users and don't plan to upgrade what would you consider a fair compromise? I think it is fair to say the Emby needs to provide some motivation to attract paying customers as they are a business so they have two options, delay playback with a nag screen or/and put features behind a paywall. Right now they are doing both. It seems like a common theme with users complaining about the nag screen is that the premiere features do not apply to them and thus is not an incentive to upgrade. Maybe the problem is that Emby is giving you too much for free and compensating by excessive nagging to upgrade. Maybe if live TV, managed users, shared plugins, hardware transcoding, premium metadata, parental controls, movie trailers, camera upload, beta apps, and preferred treatment in the forums were not included for free there would be no nag screen. Would you give up live TV and hardware transcoding for a once a day 5 second nag screen? Honest question, what do you feel is a fair compromise? IMHO that's an awful long list of features to remove to still end up with a less nagging nag screen. Personally would just go back to the previous un-16 second nag. Admittedly devs may have upped the nag as the previous one wasn't working, but it doesn't really seem to be meeting with universal acclaim. Maybe a bit more carrot - 'we see you haven't purchased Emby Premiere yet, save 20% if you purchase in the next 24 hours....' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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