Which do you think is better plex or emby

[skidmarks 188]

I have been a strong supporter of the team here since the beginning (windows media center days).  They have always been available and supported the end user.  Above and beyound any other interaction i have had with the magority of service providers.  I did move to plex a few years ago, but always kept up with the progression the emby team was making.  In my opinion Plex has no support and the forum was and is a horrible experience.  Nothing like here!

 

The one complement I can give Plex is it just works.  I have really been able to configure it once add users as needed and never had any issues with it.  Response times from client media request to play time is outstanding.

 

I switched over becuse the Roku client in Plex was, again in my opinion, graphically more appealing and worked without issue.  I was having a heck of a time getting emby to work on my server (responding to client requests with many freeze ups).  I just figured emby was having a difficult time managing my library.  I stayed with Plex as emby was becoming more refined and I really required shuffling support in the new emby roku client for music videos.  That feature has been added (again because the team here listened  and responded).

 

Emby by far has the better clients at this point.

 

I have finally decided it was time to dump Plex and return to Emby.  My only concern is the load times in the various clients I utilize.  Plex was almost instant, emby seemed to struggle at times.  I will find out shortly as I am adding my library back into the server as I respond to this thread.      

Edited July 13, 2018 by skidmarks

[speechles 1918]

In my opinion Plex has no support and the forum was and is a horrible experience.  Nothing like here!

 

Have you seen the way plex runs their web-front community forum now? Discourse? Isn't that simply reduce every post to #hashtags and makes threading impossible.. Yep.

 

I see that the new move also included pruning posts which were quite critical of plex. Their developers still use the same "mouthpiece guy" to respond to posts with some random "works for plex" title under his username. Oh okay, so now they pay another middle man to middle manage their middle ware product. How middle of the road of them.

 

Whilst here at the emby forum it is quite different. I never knew @@Luke was a robot. How he finds the time to reply to posts as often as he does, and still has time to do all the rest. You are either a robot, or a human that never sleeps. I am guessing a robot..lol..

 

I use emby because it is far easier to work with the API and even though the documentation might not be there for everything, it is easy enough to read source code and json payloads to get the "gist" of it quick enough. Plex on the other hand with its "you must auth through our network, bud!" protocol is quite a pain in the ass. You cant just do things without internet, nope, they want your soul. At emby owning your soul is not a requirement. Go emby!.. lol again..

Edited July 14, 2018 by speechles

[ghaugabrook 15]

Hello Emby community. I'm new here, but very happy with what I've seen so far. I've been a Plex man for years, so why am I here now.  Yes, there are some minor difference between Emby and Plex, but most of them will not affect most people. There is really not that much of a noticeable difference in the trans-coding that the average user will have concern with. Emby does offer a few more free services, most people know how to setup their media centers now, so that most stuff is already free. So, you ask, why did I leave plex to come over to Emby. I was having one small or maybe, not so small problem with plex that Emby resolved. I recently acquired the Dark Shadows collection with over 1200 episodes, and many of them have more than 100 episodes per season. Plex for some strange reason is only able to handle folder files up to 99, 2 digits. It had all of my files mixed up crazy. I even used a bulk renamer to rename the files and I broke up the large season folders into sub-folders, but that seemed to only make it worse. If I kept them in the same folder, I wasn't able to access any content over 99 and if I divided them into sub folders, it would re-number the subs not keeping the original episode numbers. So, I decided to give Emby a try, and immediately it recognized my entire library(s). Everything was well organized and Emby's system of what's been watched is far better than Plex. I'm only sad now, that's I went through all that renaming and lost the original title / episode coding. Well, it's a pleasure to meet you fellow Emby users.

Edited September 25, 2018 by ghaugabrook

[Luke 37068]

Hello and welcome !

[ebr 14913]

Welcome!

[CharleyVarrick 277]

Also I have a high opinion on the involvement of the dev teams in the forums.  Not always the cuddliest of responses...

[CharleyVarrick 277]

I'm not the only one that's seen the issue, and it's already been posted about. And the scan issue has been posted about too. 

 

But then again, I'm used to having weird issues.... unfortunately. 

I too have a pretty beefy collection (45tbs), and I had issues with lengthy opening scans, until I removed music from Emby. While music folders were small in comparison to movies/tv shows, it seemed to always hang. Might have to do with numbers of files, as computers seem to deal better with larger file size than with lots of smaller ones.

In any case, I never looked back, Emby has been a solid performer ever since.

[CharleyVarrick 277]

One other thing, I tried a number of Emby alternatives and I strongly remember that PLEX had by far the worst accuracy at identifying correctly my content, around 50% if I recall.

While Emby was not perfect either, it came in at around 97-98% correct. Case closed.

[Luke 37068]

The next release of emby server should perform better with music. Thanks.

[paulsalter 84]

Another plus for Emby, it has plug in support

 

Plex, soon wont have

[Perplexed 25]

I have always been a staunch Plex user, tried Emby a few times in the past but always ran back to Plex. Until recently... around the time that (I feel) Plex lost it. First they introduced totally idiotic additions such as News and VR. Then they upgraded the Android app to some unusable monstrosity. Now they are doing away with plugins (the only one that will affect me is trakt, but it just so happens to be the one feature that keeps me sane between 3 Plex servers and now Emby).

 

What is worse, almost all complaints and concerns are met with silence or disdain from the Plex employees. Their standard response is mostly "...silence...", "it works for me, therefore the problem must be you", "you are just a vocal minority" or "your feedback is useless because you need to give us the exact placement of the pixel you want moved".

 

About 2 months ago I reinstalled Emby and to my surprise they have improved the app tremendously since the last time I tried it (well over a year ago) and they keep on improving it. They respond quickly to technical issues (Luke is a machine!) and they seem to actually listen to their community. On top of that, new additions are almost always useful in some way, unlike the nonsense Plex keeps adding these days.

 

I haven't abandoned Plex altogether, but my main driver is Emby now. They both work well, but to me, Emby has the edge now. I hope they keep doing what they are doing!

 

Edited to add that Hitsville below pretty much nailed what I meant

 

The difference being that from what I see here in Emby land you guys don't introduce new stuff whilst ignoring the fact that the basics are fundamentally broke.

 

Edited September 26, 2018 by Perplexed

[Luke 37068]

Just FYI to the above, I would like for Emby to support VR in the future, after other more important things of course.

[Guest asrequested]

It almost sounds like Plux is working toward providing a service, rather than just being a media server. Expanding beyond being just a product.

 

I hope Emby never has plans to go in that direction. Or at least never departs from being a media server.

[Hitsville 37]

Just FYI to the above, I would like for Emby to support VR in the future, after other more important things of course.

The difference being that from what I see here in Emby land you guys don't introduce new stuff whilst ignoring the fact that the basics are fundamentally broke.

 

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[Hitsville 37]

It almost sounds like Plux is working toward providing a service, rather than just being a media server. Expanding beyond being just a product.

 

I hope Emby never has plans to go in that direction. Or at least never departs from being a media server.

Plex has pretty much become all about profit first, working product,second.

It offers little over Emby other than 3rd party stuff like Tautulli.

Now they are ripping out plugins, unless they integrate things like Trakt I foresee a mass exodus.

 

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[adamstewiegreen 147]

Plex is trying to keep people in the boat (while the boat is filling with water and Plex is throwing out non essentials to keep the boat light and afloat).  The Android TV/Fire TV people will only put up with randomly quitting videos for so long.  It's such a stupid/annoying bug to have for 8+ months that I'm surprised anyone using Android - experiencing that bug - still uses Plex at all.

[Hitsville 37]

Plex is trying to keep people in the boat (while the boat is filling with water and Plex is throwing out non essentials to keep the boat light and afloat). The Android TV/Fire TV people will only put up with randomly quitting videos for so long. It's such a stupid/annoying bug to have for 8+ months that I'm surprised anyone using Android - experiencing that bug - still uses Plex at all.

Yeah that particular bug I never encountered at all... until about 6 months after the initial report.

From then on it was frequent

 

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[Joe Farmer 2]

Tried Plex, it wouldn't play any videos I had with a particular audio format, can't remember which sorry, so I tried Emby, plays everything without issue.

Also found that Plex was doing a ton of unnecessary transcoding that was hammering my CPU. With Emby I can play resource intensive games while two or three people watch Emby off the same PC.

The only thing that it hasn't got is a Continue Listening function for Music libraries, once you close the app you lose your place in whatever mix, album, song you were listening to.

Edited September 27, 2018 by Joe Farmer

[jasonmcroy 315]

I used to keep Plex installed alongside Emby up until about 4 months ago. I uninstalled it based on something they did, I don't even recall now what it was. There are so many different little things that annoy me about the ecosystem that I couldn't take it anymore. Plus they changed their forum over to Discord which makes it impossible to navigate, not that it mattered that much since you couldn't get any answers or real help from employees on there.

 

The Emby devs are quicker to respond and squash most bugs fairly rapidly. 

 

The biggest item that keeps me with Emby is very simple but makes my experience much nicer - in the Android TV App I can pause my recorded TV Show by hitting enter on my remote, then skip forward with the direction arrow and the only thing that pops up on screen is the single little green indicator line at the bottom that shows me where I am at in the show. That makes it SO much easier to watch out recordings. The Plex app does weird things when you try to do this. This function also works on Emby Theater on the Xbox One. It's my biggest function that keeps me here. It may sound strange, but that one simple thing makes that much difference to me.

 

Anyway, big thanks to Luke and Ebr for the hard work they do here. 

[darkassassin07 423]

My breaking point with plex was having the app freeze up while trying to stream music. Every single time I played music for more than ~15min the app would lose connection to the server or just completely lockup. When I went asking for help I was literally told "its probably your fault" in those words and replies stopped there.

 

Emby on the exact same devices/networks had no trouble with it right out of the box. Now I just have to spend another 6months still trying to satisfy embys sorting algorithms for music.

[adrianwi 237]

I still have a Plex jail running 1.8.4, which was the last version I used before switching to emby.  It was the last one to include a switch in the setup to send usage data to Plex Inc.  

 

I recently fired up a new jail to check out what Plex has come up with in terms of a Live TV schedule grid view.  After 10-15 minutes playing around, I came to the conclusion that I actually prefer using emby, something I never thought I'd say when I waved goodbye to Plex. 

 

The fact I have total control over access to my server and its security along with an excellent support forum, where the developers actively contribute and listen, makes emby the current winner for me.

 

I have a lifetime pass for both, but can't see me switching back to Plex anytime soon, if ever.

[TylerV76 84]

Ive been swapping back and forth between Plex and Emby since May of 2017 and I have finally dropped Plex from both my servers. There are just entirely too many issues with Plex and instead of fixing them they just try to add something new to distract from the issues. 

 

Live TV/DVR on Plex is a complete disaster:

 

- Tuning channels fails frequently

- The transcoding folder frequently does not release the temp files which then causing channel tuning to fail

- The DVR prematurely ends recordings early or starts them late often

- Spillover from back to back recordings causes conflicts at random 

- Currently unable to change quality on the fly for live tv on Fire Tv's and Android devices. This forces horrible deinterlacing on 1080i broadcasts on Fire Tv's

- The grid guide will glitch if you scroll to fast and when you get it back it will skip days ahead 

- Theres no way on the grid guide to get back to "current" listings

- Constant "this server is not fast enough" errors even though Im direct streaming the file through an Nvidia shield. Same error when playing the file local using the Nvidia shield as a PMS

- Artifacts during recordings with hdhomerun's. Some shows become completely unwatchable

- Unable to switch channels while watching another. The tuning fails and you need to completely back out of the current stream in order to start a new stream

 

There are other issues with Plex like their HORRIBLE customer service and lack of participation in their own forums but the above is what has caused me to drop them. 

 

Emby does have some things that I wish were different but for the most part they are minor:

 

- Sound on Plex seems much much better on Live TV. On Plex I set my volume to 34 which matches other services like Netflix, Prime etc. Emby is always 44-48. Surround sound sounds much richer and fuller on Plex. Neither have any audio boosts or adjustments. 

- I don't like the guest account setup on Emby when running multiple servers. You have to invite the guest to both servers individually or else they get access to the 2nd server even if you don't want them to. 

- Limiting bandwidth on Plex on a per server basis is much better. Currently if I limit bandwidth on my remote server to say 10mbps and then switch to my local server, bandwidth in the app is also limited to 10mbps and only a restart of the app will allow it to revert back to 80mbps. Ive resorted to just leaving both on Auto but this is not ideal. 

- This one is petty but I do like that with Plex I don't need a separate account to gain guide data. I don't mind the $25/year but I would rather it was built into Emby. 

 

For me there are 2 things that have sold me on Emby. The support is unrivaled. Almost every question gets answered on here and resolved. LiveTV/DVR functions as close to a provider service, and in some ways much better, as you could get. Emby is the only setup that I am confident anyone in my home can run. Even my mother in law can navigate and use it while she dog sits for me during vacations. This is the same woman who keeps logging into the kids account on Netflix and cant understand why its all children shows. 

 

Emby isn't perfect but currently it is hands down the most complete and functional system out there. 

[Hitsville 37]

I have to agree.

I'm slowly transitioning to Emby on my local and remote servers.

With the latest W10 version just having hit, I decided it was the ideal opportunity to rid my local server of Plex.

Honestly I get home from my 12 hour shifts and stuff just works now. I couldn't be happier.

So thanks for all the great work guys.

[emoji3]

 

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[Luke 37068]

Thanks for the feedback !

[Chyron 221]

Plex and Emby both have their own strengths and weaknesses.

 

Plex pros:

• Plex's UI is cleaner and appears more polished. Emby's UI is comparatively rough around the edges in places but is (more) customizable.
• Plex's music player on mobile, at least on Android, is quite superior---again with an interface that is both cleaner and prettier, by among other things making use of Google's Material Design design language.
• Plex has limited audiobook support; but Emby's is barebones to say the least, with the inability to play multi-track books easily.

Emby pros:

• Emby's posters cache and do not need to constantly refresh when scrolling back and forth on a page or when browsing different pages; Plex's posters reload every time they move off of and onto the screen again, even while on the same page.
• Emby has receptive Support staff; Plex's support staff (esp. employees) are largely either absent or dismissive.
• Emby does not bloat its app(s) and waste man-hours with cash grabs like online sources for News and sponsored Web Shows; Plex does. Routinely. And we had to demand a way to disable them before one was implemented.
• Emby is MUCH more stable and less prone to crashes; Plex for Android alone crashes multiple times daily, and often syncing of content will malfunction or break.
• Emby has a straightforward "Server > Library > Content" approach; Plex is ditching this company-wide in favor of a "Content > Category > Library (username)" approach. The latter does not scale well and comes with a host of organizational difficulties.
• EDIT: Emby is more responsive. MUCH more responsive. While remote from the server, Emby takes a fraction of the time to play content or to seek while playing.

As I have said umpteen times, if Emby will get on the ball with multi-track audiobook support, I will drop Plex like a hot potato. I do use Emby, and even have a Premier account, but I can't use Emby for all my content yet.

Edited October 18, 2018 by chyron8472