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Confession from a Former Jellyfin User


dannymichel

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pwhodges
55 minutes ago, Chyron said:

You also said in another thread that you hate popup animations in forums (specifically this one) because it wastes milliseconds of your time navigating threads.

In this new forum every click I make, to open a post, or to return to the thread list, takes a bit longer to respond than it did in the old forum.  If there had been upgraded hardware at the same time as the software, maybe I wouldn't have noticed, but in fact I find it a little irritating.  However, I have also been able to arrange my forum viewing so that I need less clicks anyway, which adequately compensates. 

But the thing is, it takes very little extra sluggishness to be really noticeable.  When I was first programming an OS in the 1970s I set myself a target that no command would ever cause a delay of more than a second before there was a response.  We now have processors 100,000 (up to 2,000,000, but I can't afford them) times faster than I was using, but I now routinely have to wait multiple seconds for a response.

There is a balance to be found between computer power and the glitz of an interface, and these days the glitz is getting a bit ahead...

Paul

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14 hours ago, pwhodges said:

If there had been upgraded hardware at the same time as the software,

We actually did upgrade the hardware.  However, there is a lot more involved than just the back end server.

I think probably the additional delay you are perceiving now is due to the fact that the forum now refreshes as you go back.  The old one did not -  you got stale data from the cache.

But, just like people work - software tends to consume the resources available to it.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'd still like to see the mock up myself.

There was a lot I did like in those screen shots.  To me they were mostly subtle things that could be done in Emby (if so chosen to do) that wouldn't be over the top changes.  To me many of the changes were just small refinements of what's already in Emby.  More like "tweaks" if you will.

Some things with a mix of poster and landscapes on the same page have always bothered me a bit but you have to factor in the meta-data (graphics) that you have to work with.  Posters are easy to get for Movies but landscape images are mostly used these days for TV Show Episodes.  That type of things often requires the design yo have to used mixed graphical content even if you don't want to.

As a long time user of both Plex and Emby I much prefer Emby over Plex 90% to 95%+ of the time.  What at first might seem more appealing in a Plex UI often has far less information on it than the equivalent Emby page requiring me to navigate to another page to see that info making the interface less usable.  I tend to have to click far more in Plex than in Emby to view the same info or to play media.  Trying to navigate my media is much easier in Emby which was a big draw for me years ago when I switched over to the green side permanently as my main server.  I actually used to run both at the same time and allowed my users to choose which they used on any of their clients.  When Plex wasn't getting used anymore the choice had been made by my users and I concurred...

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Riggs
5 hours ago, cayars said:

I'd still like to see the mock up myself.

There was a lot I did like in those screen shots.  To me they were mostly subtle things that could be done in Emby (if so chosen to do) that wouldn't be over the top changes.  To me many of the changes were just small refinements of what's already in Emby.  More like "tweaks" if you will.

Some things with a mix of poster and landscapes on the same page have always bothered me a bit but you have to factor in the meta-data (graphics) that you have to work with.  Posters are easy to get for Movies but landscape images are mostly used these days for TV Show Episodes.  That type of things often requires the design yo have to used mixed graphical content even if you don't want to.

As a long time user of both Plex and Emby I much prefer Emby over Plex 90% to 95%+ of the time.  What at first might seem more appealing in a Plex UI often has far less information on it than the equivalent Emby page requiring me to navigate to another page to see that info making the interface less usable.  I tend to have to click far more in Plex than in Emby to view the same info or to play media.  Trying to navigate my media is much easier in Emby which was a big draw for me years ago when I switched over to the green side permanently as my main server.  I actually used to run both at the same time and allowed my users to choose which they used on any of their clients.  When Plex wasn't getting used anymore the choice had been made by my users and I concurred...

I only want a theme without extreme contrast in between. An elegant and very care about colors. All Emby themes are too dark or too light. There's nothing in between. They have a high contrast between the color interface and the posters. Soft colors will be nice in the interface. 
Not all people can support that. All eyes are different, we just at least one option.

Thanks.

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Painkiller8818

Just a quick question to the custom CSS function.

This is just for the Web GUI or are the other devices (TV, Phones etc.) also pulling the customized designs from the server?

thanks

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2 hours ago, Painkiller8818 said:

Just a quick question to the custom CSS function.

This is just for the Web GUI or are the other devices (TV, Phones etc.) also pulling the customized designs from the server?

thanks

Just the web.  There is an entire forum section dedicated to this feature.  Thanks.

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  • 3 months later...
bonbonking
On 2/1/2020 at 11:27 AM, dannymichel said:

I confess I left emby for jellyfin for a few months, but all that did was make me appreciate how well written emby is. Jellyfin is an absolute alpha(beta at best) piece of software - it's a mess. 

Scanning on jellyfin was a mess. First it scanned too fast and missed things, then it scanned too slow and inaccurately trying to fix that. Not only that, but whenever you did scan, the rest of the app was rendered slow and useless... You couldnt even watch a video. Not to mention the random video stoping out of nowhere.

It was nice looking though.

While it's in my opinion that emby is one of the ugliest looking pieces of software out there, functionally emby does what they couldn't do effortlessly. It just works. It might not look great, but at least it works.

It's not very old yet. And they are adding new and improved features all the time. One of the best things I can think of is you don't have to pay for any of the features that Emby and Plex charge for  I can watch movie trailers and don't have to pay to use my antenna for live tv. You never got much for premium anyways. 

Its essentially a clone of Emby in almost every way. Same source code. Are you sure your not getting paid to say how horrible it is because the worst thing I can think of right now is how long the movies take to scan in the beginning when you are scanning in a bunch of media.

Other than that they pretty much have all the same plugins and many of the same features. And they are adding more and more all the time. Sure is nice to load up some YouTube, TubiTv or Pornhub videos through my server instead of having to go to the actual sites. Also by default they run on the same ports as Emby and are just as easy to hook up.

I went and tested it specifically because of this post and I find that Jellyfin works just as well in many of the same ways. If their is an issue they are open and transparent. We can't say the same about the creator here who is constantly being vague and never gives any real answers. But he is always polite I'll give him that. Unless it's about fonts which hes fond of.  

The app wasn't slow when I scanned in a bunch of media. It was just slow to scan. I watched a movie while it scanned my stuff. All you had to do is turn the transcode to a higher speed and you wouldn't have the skipping issue. 

Also they are open source like Emby once was. Emby let the open source community basically build their service and than kicked them to the curb when all the major work was done.

Make no mistake the open source community got screwed for profit. Unfortunately for Emby they got legally forked and Jellyfin was born to continue the now lost vision that Emby started with.

So thanks for your not so true post. I never take things for face value and I find your review to be false and wanting.

Now I don't have to spend any money but can still contribute my time to making Jellyfin better and better by contributing my code So long and thanks for all the fish. 

Edited by bonbonking
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47 minutes ago, bonbonking said:

Also they are open source like Emby once was. Emby let the open source community basically build their service and than kicked them to the curb when all the major work was done.

Make no mistake the open source community got screwed for profit. Unfortunately for Emby they got legally forked and Jellyfin was born to continue the now lost vision that Emby started with.

Now I don't have to spend any money but can still contribute my time to making Jellyfin better and better by contributing my code So long and thanks for all the fish. 

They have to be open source since that's the license they inherited with the source code.  They have no choice over the matter.

It of course will work ok at the server level as it's built on an older version of Emby. But Emby has improved many things from that version such is the transcoding engine, now customized version of Exo player, etc.  Jellyfin has some nice things for sure but it's no V5 Emby. Around the corner is a new Live TV that will be game changing for many Live TV users.

Of course those are server features.  Emby has really nice apps and clients which are in a completely different level of functionality to those from Jellyfin which falls way short in this regard.

Anyone using Live TV in the US, CA or UK is most likely paying for Guide Data which is included with Emby. The lifetime license of Emby for those users actually pays for itself. Some people also feel like purchasing an Emby Premiere License is a worthwhile investment and they feel it's worth compensating developers for the work they do.  Emby in turn is adding people to the project to help it's customers as well.  Heck we even do remote help with people.

As far as the last line I quoted.  My question to you is, why are you hear then?  Go do your work on Jellyfin and enjoy the Emby Fruits you got for free.  Maybe a thank you?

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Emby let the open source community basically build their service and than kicked them to the curb when all the major work was done.

@bonbonking that's really not true at all, and you can see for yourself by looking at the commit histories on the repositories. Let's take the server repository for example: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/graphs/contributors 

From some quick math, our paid staff was responsible for roughly 98% of the commits, and I am solely responsible for 95% of them alone. You'll see similar numbers in the other repositories. By the way, guess where the majority of our paid staff comes from: community members and volunteer contributors. Over the years we've rewarded and hired our community members who have shown interest, strong technical ability and initiative to get involved. So really, we are not bad people. We're just a team of software developer (and others) who are trying to earn a living.  

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Most of jellyfins GitHub commits have Luke's name on it. Like their APIClient for c#, has Luke's picture on the top of the repo.

 

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3 hours ago, bonbonking said:

Emby let the open source community basically build their service and than kicked them to the curb when all the major work was done.

Make no mistake the open source community got screwed for profit.

As Luke already pointed out but I want to re-iterate - this is absolutely untrue.

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2 hours ago, Luke said:

From some quick math, our paid staff was responsible for roughly 98% of the commits, and I am solely responsible for 95% of them alone. 

Pretty much paints the true picture.

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Gilgamesh_48
1 minute ago, chef said:

So just to get this straight... A couple developers snag the Emby core server code when it was open source, slap a new logo and a name on it, copy and replace some css colours, circumvent some paid options of the Emby server, post it on the internet, and finally slander the guys who wrote their entire solution. Geesh. This is why I feel contempt, and really have to stop my self from reminding people of this whenever I see YouTube videos or website write up for those guys.

Although worded pretty harshly that is pretty close to the jellyfin origin saga. As I said much earlier in this thread but will now say with a bit more force: Jellfin is a slight step up from garbage and is largely "stolen" from Emby. It is free and you get what you pay for although to make it a good value they would need to pay people to run it.

Now if that was not clear I will state that just playing from a simple browser using VLC is a better experience.

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Chyron
4 hours ago, cayars said:

Some people also feel like purchasing an Emby Premiere License is a worthwhile investment and they feel it's worth compensating developers for the work they do.  Emby in turn is adding people to the project to help it's customers as well. 

This. So much this.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to put food on the table for the work that you do. Wanting to provide for yourself is not the same as pursuing greed.

Additionally, I have witnessed the Jellyfin devs themselves using profanity on their own support forums. If I may say so, that shows a severe lack of professionalism.

 

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Not to mention that THEY are now profiting from code they didn't write.

Pretty IRONIC don't you think?

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Gilgamesh_48
22 minutes ago, cayars said:

Not to mention that THEY are now profiting from code they didn't write.

Pretty IRONIC don't you think?

They are profiting? I thought the use of all Jellyfin functionality was free. What part are they now charging for? If I thought that then I believe I would have to deduce that there is at least some marginal, if not actual, criminal type activity going on. While it is NOT illegal to profit from open source code it really does not "feel" at all ethical for profit to be derived from programs that have no independent creative part to make a profit from charging for the use of programs created from open source code.

However before I condemn the Jellyfin people I would like to know what they are charging for and how much they charge.

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"Donations" if you will.  But my point is that was part of the original issue they had with Emby in the first place.  They do not have a paywall and you don't get anything for the donation but still it's ironic

Maybe they should give 95% of the donations to Luke since he wrote 95%+ of it.  LOL.

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dannymichel
25 minutes ago, cayars said:

"Donations" if you will.  But my point is that was part of the original issue they had with Emby in the first place.  They do not have a paywall and you don't get anything for the donation but still it's ironic

Maybe they should give 95% of the donations to Luke since he wrote 95%+ of it.  LOL.

I'm not a fan of jellyfin. They still can't fix basic issues like horizontal scrolling javascript on laptops. 

But playing devil's advocate here, at this point emby was just a starting point. They work on it way more than emby does. The sheer number of people and commits is ridiculous. They've essentially started with a Toyota, gutted it, and now have a honda with a few toyota parts.

Sure, the honda isn't great, but it isn't a toyota anymore

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Chyron
31 minutes ago, dannymichel said:

They work on it way more than emby does. The sheer number of people and commits is ridiculous. They've essentially started with a Toyota, gutted it, and now have a honda with a few toyota parts.

First, I thought the reason why they "have a Honda" is because Emby blocked Jellyfin Server's use of Emby client apps, and so they *have* to use their own clients.

Second, greater number of commits is not necessarily equal to either greater quantity nor quality of work done.

However... I would give Jellyfin props if they had Audiobook support, since Emby's is the barest of barebones, but they don't. Jellyfin only has a plug-in for a third-party client that has similarly barebones audiobook support.

 

Edited by Chyron
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No way they work on it more then Emby does! What you may not realize is some of the "big" features they've just recently released with NET and database stuff was done in Emby around the time they forked it. A lot of the commits is stuff that was done 2 years ago in Emby and have since been improved as well. A team of people working 2 years on some things Luke did in a couple of months. So sure, lots of commits but positive progress? Not on the same time scale.

But a lot of the "improvements" just don't work well. There is no comparison of JellyFin to Emby in being able to direct play files and streams in apps.  Emby kills JellyFin in this respect. At the end of the day being able to play your own media correctly is all that matters.

I read and watch them talk about "cleaning code" as they try to replace SQL and C# code with ORM because it will make the code easier to read and work with, for sure, but they don't realize the implications of doing that.  Luke doesn't do some of this the hard way because he doesn't know better, but did this because it's faster and performs better at that point in time, either speed or async wise. So many edits are to "pretty" up code but can hurt performance or hardware it can run on.

Some of the changes being made for web "sound good" in the blogs but have people tried these on different devices and TV sets, phones, tablets, etc?  You can have cool functionality in a desktop browser, but if it doesn't work in every browser is that an improvement?

People on our forums, complain at times of slightly different looks in different apps or features missing on one app compared to another in Emby, but you know what?  You know you're in an Emby app.  Can't say that about Jellyfin. They are at least 3 or 4 years behind Emby in any type of consistency of look and feel (forget functionality) of Emby. Some of the apps are about as close as Hulu and Netflix in use and that's being generous.

Now let me switch gears a bit.  JellyFin has added a few cool features but they are niche. That tends to happen with open source and isn't a bad thing but if you don't have a solid resource with a team that's going to stand behind it then it could become abandoned just as quickly until another dev decides to pick it up.

With Jellyfin everything going on is announced upfront or can be followed nearly real time.  So for example I know where JellyFin stands and know where Emby release and beta stands but since I know of other things , I can say there are upcoming features that will make a some JellyFin users cry when released.

What I'm saying is there is a lot of development work going on behind the scenes the average user just doesn't see unless you're included as an early tester in some projects or understand what you have in a beta.  As just an example of something I can talk about, the Android Mobile beta app is what I'll call an "adaptive app" and by that I mean it will adapt to the environment.  Be it running on a small screen phone to a tablet size screen to a desktop or TV (480, 520, 720, 1080 or 4K)  interface.  How about communication with Android Auto thrown in?  See where I'm going?  These are things Jellyfin is no where near trying to accomplish as the apps they have still can't play simple HEVC correctly or 10 bit files let alone trying to adapt to the environment they run in or with devices near them correctly.

 

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42 minutes ago, Chyron said:

First, I thought the reason why they "have a Honda" is because Emby blocked Jellyfin Server's use of Emby client apps, and so they *have* to use their own clients.

Absolutely we DID! we did, we did, we did. We do not deny this, and it's not a secret. We most certainly banned their use because of piracy and support of our apps.

Think about this.  We have apps in many different app stores that go through a lot of scrutiny. If our apps connect to not only Emby Servers where we know content types to also connecting to JellyFin servers where a plugin could add any any data it wanted we could be viewed just like Kodi or Popcorn and get banned rather quickly.

This can not be allowed to happen to Emby Users!

It should be obvious that if Emby apps can connect to "the wild west" it would not be a good thing for Emby.

Besides that, let's be realistic.

Should I (Emby support person)  have to spend 20 minutes working with a user remotely using our Emby for Android TV app to only find out they aren't using our server but JellyFin? It's one thing if the problem is in the app but quite another if the server is far beyond the app in features and can't deliver the info requested and giving errors.

Same question in other context.  Should users on our forums need to try to support or help people not running Emby  but some other forked software? That's not fare to our users!

Hopefully you can see why this won't work. Emby apps are designed to work with Emby servers, not JellyFin servers.  We support our apps working with our servers and WILL DO REMOTE SESSIONS to help users but it needs to be our Servers we are testing against! We also force server upgrades of our own system via apps to make sure the server doesn't get too far behind.

Do you need more info or did I cover this enough?  I could go on and on and on and on.

Carlo

 

 

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PenkethBoy
37 minutes ago, cayars said:

I could go on and on and on and on.

 

 

Nah you never do that :) 

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Chyron
On 10/24/2020 at 12:19 AM, Chyron said:

I would give Jellyfin props if they had Audiobook support, since Emby's is the barest of barebones, but they don't.

@Luke I want to take this opportunity to say that I apologize if my continual bothering about this comes off as entitled. I don't mean to convey an expectation of certain features being implemented. I really do appreciate all the work you do and am very happy with the software.

...but at the same time, please don't stop working on this.

 

Edited by Chyron
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