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Plex to Emby... (how did it go?)


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Chyron

@@boldphoenix, devices only count toward the the Premiere device limit when that device uses a Premiere feature, and then the number of device slots used are reset from week to week. There is a table somewhere that lists what features on which devices are Premiere features, but the devs say the vast majority of single-household Premiere accounts won't ever hit the limit.

 

Apparently the reason for device limits was because the Emby devs wanted the software limited to single-households, but having a Premiere device limit was an easier solution to enforce.

Edited by chyron8472
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boldphoenix

So basically, the device count is for any device connecting from outside of my home network? If so, then that helps a lot with tracking how many are being used.

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Happy2Play

So basically, the device count is for any device connecting from outside of my home network? If so, then that helps a lot with tracking how many are being used.

 

No you can have device in your home network that will/can count.

 

And here is the matrix previously mentioned.

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boldphoenix

So again, how do i know which devices are using the Premium features? it appears that streaming on any device outside of my own network, for more than a minute is using a license. Other obvious things like syncing, etc will use one, but most of my users are just watching a movie on their Roku devices. What i was trying to determine is if that is the basic usage of a license, then fine, if not, I wanted a way on the dashboard to be able to distinguish whether or not a device is using a premium feature, rather than consulting a large matrix everytime i want to do a count. Consulting the matrix though, it appears that any roku streaming is completely free, whether inside my network or not.

 

BoldPhoenix

Edited by boldphoenix
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Happy2Play

So again, how do i know which devices are using the Premium features? it appears that streaming on any device outside of my own network, for more than a minute is using a license. Other obvious things like syncing, etc will use one, but most of my users are just watching a movie on their Roku devices. What i was trying to determine is if that is the basic usage of a license, then fine, if not, I wanted a way on the dashboard to be able to distinguish whether or not a device is using a premium feature, rather than consulting a large matrix everytime i want to do a count. Consulting the matrix though, it appears that any roku streaming is completely free, whether inside my network or not.

 

BoldPhoenix

 

Currently there is no way to see what devices are using device licenses/Premiere.  But they are working on this.

 

Unless something has changed a Roku only uses premiere if viewing Live TV.

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legallink

Just to further elaborate, the Roku app is free whether in network or remote. The app becomes a premiere device when it utilizes a premiere feature such as live tv.

 

Some other apps, regardless of how you use them are premiere devices. For instance all the mobile apps (android and iOS) are premiere devices.

 

Remote vs local has no bearing on whether a device is premier or not.

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Chyron

For instance all the mobile apps (android and iOS) are premiere devices.

Unless you pay to unlock the app, then playback is not a Premiere feature anymore. Correct?

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legallink

Unless you pay to unlock the app, then playback is not a Premiere feature anymore. Correct?

Playback of local content, yes that is correct. Live TV, as far as I understand it, would still make it count as a premiere device.

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Charlie117

I've used Plex for more than 7 years, but decide to switch to Emby about a year ago. I didn't like the more corporate culture Plex had adopted in recent years and when the PMP release fiasco made it painfully clear they were not interested in the HT community anymore and instead made mobile devices their focus it was clearly time to move on. The Plex for Kodi plugin was a short lived renewed focus on HT users but was ultimately abandoned last time I used it.

 

The switch from Plex to Emby was relatively painless. Practically speaking it had one significant upside and downside for me personally. The upside being that Emby allows extras to be stored simple in a folder called "Extras" like Kodi allows it to compared to Plex that requires you to put it in specially named folders per extras category. The downside being that Emby fails to index a lot more movies in my library than Plex did. Hardly a real issue as they're easy to fix but still noteworthy. 

 

All in all, I'm very happy to have made the switch to Emby. That being said, Emby's decision to dump their open source model has made me start to look for open source alternative for the future.

Edited by Charlie117
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JaScoMa

Made the switch to Emby this weekend and I don't see myself going back to Plex.  Mainly because they do seem to be moving more corporate and with the latest update, I have to FORCE direct play just to have my movies play in their true encoded format (using a PC and Handbrake) instead of what Plex "thinks" my hardware can handle.  Which to them was only DVD quality; so it was decoding an already encoded movie to a lower resolution and bit rate by default, everytime and couldn't be changed in any server setting, etc.

 

Of my library, I'd say only 10-15 movies weren't found in the metadata search.  But as a previous poster said, it's very easy to fix; I looked up the movie in IMDB and entered the code in the identify field and it found the movie without any issues.  One odd issue was the movie Nanny McPhee Returns.  It's original name was Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang.  Even after entering the IMDB, it defaulted to The Movie DB entry with it's name and cover art.  I can live with this since it's been YEARS since my son last watched that movie.

Other than that, Emby seems very stable and runs quick.  Running the server on a Pi3b+ and DietPI.  I did have crash issue where it'd stop out of the blue, but found in the forums to try turning off DLNA and since, there haven't been any issues.  I haven't a need fro DLNA since I'm using a Roku for playback.

Thank you again for an awesome alternative to Plex.

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Chyron

@@Charlie117, why would Emby being only partially open-source bother you when Plex has long since been closed-source?

 

I really don't see why certain features' source code being closed for financial reasons is incentive in and of itself to go elsewhere.

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Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Let them have their say. It is fine that we disagree. More variety makes others try harder. Competition isn't necessarily a bad thing. We need to be able to measure ourselves and the best way to do that is compare against the closest thing. They are just comparing apples to oranges but since both are fruits and provide nourishment we can compare them. I prefer oranges since they promote healing better than apples. Others would say otherwise. We need to be okay with users being unsatisfied with choices made. They need to be able to vent what they believe in their own language without having us judge them.

 

I see it as they are just not educated about the full benefits of Emby outside of being able to see the source code. You get a dedicated team of people who will happily enjoy working with you to resolve your issue. You are treated as important and this shows. The source code being open or closed did not change this. The reason for this change is simply economics. When you dedicate time to a project it might be okay to give it away for free. People are happiest when they get something free. But sometimes when you dedicate your own funds to the project it hurts you to just give it away. You suffer. These others who object to the code going closed source have never worked coding for free while having to scrape together change to buy food while people never donate. It is a reality. The world is full of those who expect something for free and that causes others to suffer. There is no such thing as free as someone pays with time/resources/sacrifice in some way. 

 

This is less about being an open source project and more about theft of intellectual property to circumvent anti-piracy protections. It is in fact a crime and in certain territories could be pursued as such. But we aren't here to dicuss that. This is how did the migration go coming to Emby and should be more about that. We welcome everybody with open arms whether a refugee from there or simply curious and just here to look. Welcome. Feel welcome. Give us your honest opinions. Do not feel the need to reply to past posts in this thread even mine. Those posts that seem sour leave alone. They just cause others to suffer. Thanks. :)

Edited by speechles
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Charlie117

@@Charlie117, why would Emby being only partially open-source bother you when Plex has long since been closed-source?

 

I really don't see why certain features' source code being closed for financial reasons is incentive in and of itself to go elsewhere.

 

I believe you missed the part where I said that I switched from Plex to Emby? The fact that Emby was open source at the time was one of the reasons to make the switch. People change you know, some might start to care more about open source software and vice versa with proprietary software. I'm happy for you that this decision does not affect you, but it will definitely affect many: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/a3wcbg/emby_server_is_now_proprietary_only_select/

 

In my opinion, making Emby closed source is a major insult to the people that have been supporting Emby through paying for a premiere subscription. Especially considering that they never formally announced it and people had find out the hard way or through this GitHub discussion: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/issues/3479#issuecomment-444985456

 

 

 

This is less about being an open source project and more about theft of intellectual property to circumvent anti-piracy protections. It is in fact a crime and in certain territories could be pursued as such.

 

As always with counter-piracy measures, the good users suffer and the bad users will eventually find a way around it regardless. That's all I will further say on the topic.

 

Regardless, I'm still happy with my switch due to numerous other advantages Emby has over Plex.  

Edited by Charlie117
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@@Charlie117 Notice who started that reddit? It is comical that the traction he intended to start has lost steam already. Lets pretend I never said anything. They run on hot air and balloons to travel. Welcome to Wonderland where there is no Alice. The analogies they don't understand. Throwing a tea party and they are the mad hatter. Explains alot. Anyways, no riddles left. There is no honor among thieves. That is all I will say. Remember what the dormouse said, "feed your head". Know the truth.

Edited by speechles
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Copenhagen

I'm liking Emby pretty good so far. I was able to download and setup the server, and app on both my living room, and bedroom devices (Roku 2 in living room, and Roku TV in Bedroom) in under an hour. I was happy to see that my file configuration for Plex worked just fine for Emby. That made my life easier. I just set the path where my media is stored and boom!...I was up and running.

 

I have run into one issue though. Every time I use another one of my apps "TV Cast", (On my Roku 2 in the living room) it seems I have to reset the Emby server. I don't know if its something to do with Roku, the TV Cast app, or the server on Windows 7, but it certainly has to be reset periodically.

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Copenhagen

Well, I'll use Emby on the Roku 2 in the living room for a day or so streaming my local content. Then I'll use TV Cast for an evening, then when I go back to Emby it gives me an error saying it can't connect to the server, until I reset the server.

The Next time it does it I'll post the error it gives me.

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I've switched from Plex to Emby yesterday. Plex doesn't work as it should in Russia for half a year (since goverment started a war with Telegram messenger and blocked >3,5 millions of Amazon IP-adresses. Some of them are used by Plex). It seems Emby can do everything I need. I'm not going to do a subscription, only one-time purchase of iOS app to rarely cast media to my iPad. Most of the time I'll use iPhone and iPad as remote controls to cast media to one of my Chromecasts (2nd and 1st gen). 

 

P.S. It doesn't really matter for me but russian localization of Emby is pretty bad. Some sentences look like they've been done in Google Translate. Maybe I'll help with it later.

Edited by Tpyn
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I switched from Plex about two weeks ago.  Great experience overall with the exception of not being able to get my server working remotely (addressed in another thread), but that's not a deal-breaker for me.  We generally just access our media while at home anyway. 

 

Out of 500+ movies, only two were mis-recognized and were easy to fix.  My music collection had some issues, but that was due to missing tags on some mp3's, so I corrected those and all is fine. I did have to manually enter a lot of the artist photos, etc. but that wasn't surprising since a lot of my music is obcure and was ripped from vinyl several years ago.  It's actually been kind of a fun project pulling the photos from the net and reading some of the artist info in the process. 

 

I loaded 4 libraries:  Movies, Music, Photos and Home Videos.  My only gripe would be with how music is handled.  The Menu structure is clunky and some of the info you'd expect to see isn't there or you have to go into another menu page to see it.  My understanding is some of this will be fixed on the next update.  

 

Overall, I'm extremely happy with my Emby experience so far.  I do have to say, when I ask a question, it gets addressed right away.  There seem to be a lot of folks on here wiling to help resolve issues.

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Chyron

It doesn't really matter for me but russian localization of Emby is pretty bad. Some sentences look like they've been done in Google Translate. Maybe I'll help with it later.

 

I'm sure the dev team would appreciate the help.

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BillOatman

I believe you missed the part where I said that I switched from Plex to Emby? The fact that Emby was open source at the time was one of the reasons to make the switch. People change you know, some might start to care more about open source software and vice versa with proprietary software. I'm happy for you that this decision does not affect you, but it will definitely affect many: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/a3wcbg/emby_server_is_now_proprietary_only_select/

 

In my opinion, making Emby closed source is a major insult to the people that have been supporting Emby through paying for a premiere subscription. Especially considering that they never formally announced it and people had find out the hard way or through this GitHub discussion: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/issues/3479#issuecomment-444985456

 

 

As always with counter-piracy measures, the good users suffer and the bad users will eventually find a way around it regardless. That's all I will further say on the topic.

 

Regardless, I'm still happy with my switch due to numerous other advantages Emby has over Plex.  

 

There is a open source project starting up that is based on the last open source version of Emby called Jellyfin (https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin) .  I haven't tried it, and Emby and Plex both have grown since that source.  But it is open source and available now.

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I've switched from Plex to Emby yesterday. Plex doesn't work as it should in Russia for half a year (since goverment started a war with Telegram messenger and blocked >3,5 millions of Amazon IP-adresses. Some of them are used by Plex). It seems Emby can do everything I need. I'm not going to do a subscription, only one-time purchase of iOS app to rarely cast media to my iPad. Most of the time I'll use iPhone and iPad as remote controls to cast media to one of my Chromecasts (2nd and 1st gen). 

 

P.S. It doesn't really matter for me but russian localization of Emby is pretty bad. Some sentences look like they've been done in Google Translate. Maybe I'll help with it later.

 

They haven't been done in Google Translate, but if you're like to help translate, we'd be happy to have you. Thanks.

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Gilgamesh_48

I have Plex and Emby running side by side and I have been having trouble making a final decision BUT I am strongly leaning to Emby at this time. It should be noted that I primarily watch my media on my Roku and that the new Plex interface for Roku has not influenced me one way or the other as I pretty much like said interface.

Emby is faster in almost every action that matters to me including both  the startup of video playback and the startup of the app on the Roku and Emby is very stable for me.

Plex is a bit easier for me to preform maintenance actions but that could be due to familiarity rather than any actual superiority.

 

The speed advantage of Emby is even more impressive when you add in the fact that I have Emby running on a slower machine than my Plex system and my Emby setup accesses my Video files over the network while my Plex system is running on the same computer that is hosting my media. (My library is currently at over 30,000 TV Episodes, about 3000 movies , 700 other videos and 1200 audio files (mainly audio books) taking about 35 TB total.)

 

Plex has one ability that makes it better in one category than Emby and that is that Plex can flawlessly play, on Roku but not most other platforms, audio files (mp3) that have been renamed to m4v with no other conversion. (That creates a video file with no video part) That allows audiobooks to be played correctly with full control like FF, RW and resume. Emby will not play such files at all as the server will not process them at all. If Emby adds true audiobook support that may become a non issue but for now for me Plex is superior for audiobook playback. In fact I actually would prefer that Emby adds such support as I have found it easy to play my audiobooks in that manner.

 

I also have a Plex server running on my Shield TV as well as my fast computer and that server is set up to be my audio only server.

 

One more thing: Plex is MUCH faster at generating Roku thumbnails. When, some time ago, I rebuilt my Plex server it took only about six/seven days to generate all thumbnails for all my video files but my new Emby server is at two weeks and it is at a little less than 50% done with the thumbnail creation. It is progressing steadily but it is slow. That is the only area where Plex beats Emby in speed.

 

If Emby adds full (at least resume, FF and RW) audiobook support I might well drop most of my Plex usage but, for now, I am running both although I use Emby quite a bit more than Plex at this time.

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Guest xterminal

I am in the process--or attempting to be in the process--of switching from Plex to Emby. This is, of course, a result of the UI "upgrade" that entirely broke Plex on my GF's Roku 3, freezes under certain easily-repeatable conditions the few responses from the dev team refuse to acknowledge, etc.

 

1. Since I've noticed a bunch of people mentioning this as a metric: between 30 and 40 percent of my library doesn't auto-match correctly. I rush to add I am very used to this (they didn't match in Plex, either, so I'm not considering this a negative). In a lot of cases it's shorts, things that don't exist on IMDB, etc., so I don't expect them to match--and indeed, one of the other reasons I spent a while looking for a Plex replacement was that due to the lack of external metadata, every time I had to reload the database, recover from a hard drive crash, whatever, I had to tell Plex YET AGAIN that 1941 (1941) is not 1941 (1979), and I'm greatly looking forward to being done with that forevermore. Point: it's a draw atm, but I expect Emby to win as time goes on (I haven't had to reload the data yet).

 

2. So far I've only loaded my main movie folder as a test case and haven't expanded out to the music directories, etc., but my main movie folder is ridiculous enough to make a good edge test case (I have just over five thousand entries in it). So far, I've had zero problems with lag/freezing, and after a month of banging on it, I've yet to have it freeze, crash, and auto-restart the RokuTV, which happens with depressing regularity in Plex since the upgrade. Point: Emby.

 

3. Connectivity... well. Everything works a charm inside my home network. Remote is a different story entirely. I've dug through multiple connectivity threads on the boards, gone through the connectivity troubleshooter more times than I can count (with 100% success), done all the bells and whistles I've read about, and two remote machines still refuse to connect (a Windows box with Connect and a Roku using the Roku channel--this is the aforementioned R3 that's ALSO currently unable to use Plex), while a third (my Android phone) connects just fine remotely. (Phone and Windows box are sitting next to each other rn, phone is connected, Windows machine--which is currently streaming music through the Plex server that lives on the same machine at home, so it's definitely not an issue getting to the machine--still gets the "we're unable to connect to the selected server right now. Please ensure it is running and try again." message in the Emby app). Point: a pretty clear win for Plex so far.

 

I've been PlexPass for years, so if I can ever get the connectivity issues sorted, switching to Emby Premiere will be invisible, as far as my budget is concerned. At this point it's likely just a matter of time.

 

edit: holy COW the match feature is blazing fast in comparison. Point: Emby (like, x10)

Edited by xterminal
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