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Plex Refugee


fisticuffs

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fisticuffs

Just wanted to say hi to the community. I’m moving away from Plex due to their terrible design decisions as of late, removal of features, and general apathy toward their users’ concerns. Their recent Roku release is causing a huge backlash, so I imagine more refugees will be popping in soon. Looking forward to migrating over completely and possibly working on some plugins as extensibility was a huge deal for me, and Plex took that away.

Edited by fisticuffs
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sluggo45

As a dual Plex/Emby user (lifetime pass for both - I still have family I share Plex with I haven't gotten around to migrating yet) I have to agree that they really dropped the ball with the new Roku client, as well as some of their other decisions. Emby on the other hand has put out steady improvements to their clients.

 

A couple years ago, even a year ago, you could have made the argument that Plex had a better set of clients, but I don't think that is the case today. The Emby Roku client is very nice, and there are some even nicer improvements in the works. The Emby Android TV client - which, frankly, was at one time almost a joke - has massively improved. ATV and mobile clients have gotten better as well. And I've always preferred Emby Server.

 

Make sure to read and research, and keep in mind there are some things that aren't going to be 1:1. Plex for example has better stats thanks to the 3rd party Tautulli app - there's no direct Emby equivalent of that, though there are some stats plugins that are fairly decent. Plex is also easier to set up for remote access than Emby though the argument could be made that Emby's method (set up your own reverse proxy) is technically better. And so on.

 

P.S. if you don't already know, both systems support Trakt, which is one of the easier ways to migrate watched data, etc. for your library from Plex to Emby.

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makarai

The worst thing about plex is that you are  forced to use their shitty webapp/login/dns/server. 

 

I have my own reverse proxy, i dont want theirs.

Edited by makarai
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fisticuffs

I sincerely hope Luke and his team are watching what’s going on over at Plex as a primer on what NOT to do. I’m cautiously optimistic by what I’ve seen so far.

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We're not forcing anyone to do anything and we sincerely take your feedback to heart, so please feel free to leave your suggestions at any time. Thanks !

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BAlGaInTl

The worst thing about plex is that you are  forced to use their shitty webapp/login/dns/server. 

 

I have my own reverse proxy, i dont want theirs.

 

This!

 

One of the main reasons that I switched.  That and Live TV support which was available and usable in Emby before Plex.

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I don't consider myself a refugee, but an immigrant :D

Hi, welcome !

Emby, the Canada of Media Servers.

Edited by chef
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notla49285

Are you able to post pictures of the new interface? I've heard all the bitter complaints about it but not seen it and I've already removed all of my previous Plex stuff now Emby is running :/

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Gilgamesh_48

For me the new interface in Plex is OK as it allows my home page to be limited to "On Deck" which serves the same purpose as Emby's "Next up." Emby also allows this!

 

I have been running Plex and Emby side by side for some time and using "Trakt" to sync watched states between the two.

 

BUT Plex has been making changes that have greatly slowed down virtually all aspects of using Plex from the initial startup to the startup of videos to be played. This in spite of the fact that Plex resides on the same computer where most of my media is hosted and Emby accesses the media over the network through network shares.

 

All actions in Emby are two to four or five times faster.

 

The speed is important to me because I am limited in mobility and I watch my media for large parts of each day and the slowness of Plex quickly becomes quite irritating and that makes Plex unpleasant to use after a while.

 

The interfaces, for me, are about equal but the previously stated issues have caused me to use Emby almost all the time for the last few weeks.

 

I am quite pleased with Emby (My Emby use has been off and on for several years) and I think they have won me over. The responsiveness of the Emby developers is quite impressive as well.

 

I have had several good discussions with Emby developers and that is good. The only thing I actually like better in Plex is that they use simple posters for "On Deck" while Emby uses wide, space wasting landscape images for "Next up." This means that only four shows appear in "Next up" on the screen as opposed to the seven or so that Plex displays.

 

My Plex experience has devolved for some time while my Emby experience has steadily moved in the other direction.

 

One last thing that I just remembered that Plex does better and where Emby has a LOT of room to improve is fixing the rare bad matches I have. My media (movies in this case as I have no mismatches Plex or Emby for TV shows) is named like "Movie Name (Date).ext" and that seems to produce 99% or better matching for both Plex and Emby but, on the rare situations where a bad match or no match is made, it is MUCH easier to fix in Plex than it is in Emby.

 

In trying to fix a match in Emby (identify) you are presented with an empty screen where you have to fill in everything while in Plex (Fix match) the screen gets populated with Plex's best guess and you only need to alter/fix what might be wrong. From that it is much easier to fix a matching issue with Plex than it is with Emby. But this is fairly minor as my naming is nearly perfect so mismatches are very rare for either system.

 

Lastly I want to praise Emby for a solid system that is not overburdened with fluff and nearly useless parts and I really hope that Emby does not move into the "forced feature" model that Plex has moved to that, even with those features turned off, overburdens Plex and makes it slower and more buggy than Emby and it also slows development as every "new" feature must be evaluated and tested against all the core features and that takes development time away from that core.

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Chyron
In trying to fix a match in Emby (identify) you are presented with an empty screen where you have to fill in everything while in Plex (Fix match) the screen gets populated with Plex's best guess

 

While I do think the Match interface in Plex feels more streamlined than the Identify interface in Emby, I don't agree that you have to fill in everything. Also, where Plex guesses what you want to match media to, you can (if you so choose to) straight up tell Emby the ID of what it is. Plus, Emby will show you a selection of posters related to what you want, where Plex just shows a list of title names.

Edited by chyron8472
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Coxeroni

I also find the identify option better in emby than in Plex. Although already the title is normally enough with emby, the options to also input IDs is really useful.

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Gilgamesh_48

While I do think the Match interface in Plex feels more streamlined than the Identify interface in Emby, I don't agree that you have to fill in everything. Also, where Plex guesses what you want to match media to, you can (if you so choose to) straight up tell Emby the ID of what it is. Plus, Emby will show you a selection of posters related to what you want, where Plex just shows a list of title names.

 

By "everything" I meant that the screen is completely blank with no fields filled in and NO clue as to what the naming is which means that you have to look up things like the ID based on memory and you are not given a clue. Also the matching based on IMDB ID does not always work and you get zero clue as to what went wrong if there is no match returned based on name or ID and you have to start all over from scratch if things fail even because of a typo.

 

It is a real weakness in Emby but, for me, it is not too important as my media is well named but it is frustrating as I tried to setup a second Emby server and, just a little example, for the TV movie version of "The Andromeda Strain" does not match even though it matched in my original server. I try with the IMDB ID the name and the correct date and it fails to find anything and never says why. Plex also fails first try bu with the ID it succeeds. Also the original Emby install matched it just fine.

 

It is the only real bad part of Emby but it is bad. It is a LONG way from a showstopper for Emby but it does produce a much higher frustration level than needed.

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Chyron

By "everything" I meant that the screen is completely blank with no fields filled in and NO clue as to what the naming is which means that you have to look up things like the ID based on memory and you are not given a clue.

idk, I just google "(movie title) moviedb" or "(tv show title) tvdb" and google figures out what the ID is. But yes, as I said, the Plex interface for Matching is more streamlined, as it has fewer options and is therefore less confusing at first.

 

just a little example, for the TV movie version of "The Andromeda Strain" does not match even though it matched in my original server. I try with the IMDB ID the name and the correct date and it fails to find anything and never says why.

Google says there is a 1971 movie and a 2008 miniseries with that title. I don't believe Emby would match a movie for you if you gave it a tv series' ID.

Edited by chyron8472
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BAlGaInTl

What is the IMDB ID for that one?

 

I just searched for "Andromeda" using the identify tool and got a bunch of hits, including 5 movies that are "The Andromeda Strain".

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Chyron

What is the IMDB ID for that one?

 

I just searched for "Andromeda" using the identify tool and got a bunch of hits, including 5 movies that are "The Andromeda Strain".

Two of them are the 1971 film, with one entry from imdb and the other from themoviedb (you can tell by the poster art each site uses);

two are behind-the-scenes featurettes;

and one is an experimental "The Strain Andromeda" film which runs the 1971 film backwards shot-for-shot, or so imdb says.

 

It doesn't list the 2008 TV miniseries at all.

Edited by chyron8472
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BAlGaInTl

Two of them are the 1971 film, with one entry from imdb and the other from themoviedb (you can tell by the poster art each site uses);

two are behind-the-scenes featurettes;

and one is an experimental "The Strain Andromeda" film which runs the 1971 film backwards shot-for-shot, or so imdb says.

 

It doesn't list the 2008 TV miniseries at all.

 

Ah... so is it "mis-classified" as a "movie" then and should really be in a "TV" library?

 

When I performed the same experiment in my TV library, it identified the 2008 version.

 

ETA

 

I wonder if the physical files were copied to a TV library location instead if it would be properly identified.

Edited by BAlGaInTl
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In trying to fix a match in Emby (identify) you are presented with an empty screen where you have to fill in everything while in Plex (Fix match) the screen gets populated with Plex's best guess and you only need to alter/fix what might be wrong. From that it is much easier to fix a matching issue with Plex than it is with Emby. But this is fairly minor as my naming is nearly perfect so mismatches are very rare for either system.

 

We actually used to do this but stopped due to feedback.

 

If the item was mis-matched, that means that our "best guess" is incorrect - perhaps wildly so.  Therefore, populating the screen with this incorrect data just made people have to go blank it out in order to get any result other than what had already been found (and was wrong).  So, starting with a blank screen should actually be quicker in these instances.

 

You can just type in part of the title or one of the provider IDs (if you know it) and off you go...

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