Plex Watch Together

[Carlo 4543]

2 hours ago, Vidarr said:

I don't know the developpement recently feel very akward.. I don't see much feature, many things that doesn't work for a very long time (Transcoding on the Android version often crash and don't load anything.) aren't correct. As a early supporter it break my heart to see how it is evolving..

1 hour ago, Waffull said:

I hope advancements will be made...  maybe there is behind the scenes work going on.  As a lifetime membership holder, I certainly hope to be able to use Emby for a long time to come.  The advantages over plex are a lot, the major one being it's not turned into some commercial application  with bloat and poor usability.

Have you guys seen this?
https://emby.media/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/527-emby-server-47-release-many-new-features-improvements-and-fixes/
https://emby.media/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/528-emby-server-471-point-release-round-1-fixes/

This new version of our server has a ton of new features, improvements and fixes.

8 minutes ago, BillOatman said:

1) This last server release brought their code up to a current level of technology, and I suspect that was a pretty big effort.

2) As far as I know there are 2 developers. And they also are here doing support.  There are only so many hours in a day.

That hasn't been true for quite a while. There are quite a few people involved in development these days.

[Carlo 4543]

3 hours ago, mlwane said:

I have been silently following this thread for around a year now, checking it every few months. I suppose that wasn't helping, and I should've posted to show that I am interested. So here I am, posting to show that this is a feature that I am even willing to get the life-time membership if it would offer it.

Yes, that is the only way we know people are interested in a feature.

[jspanitz 14]

17 minutes ago, cayars said:

Yes, that is the only way we know people are interested in a feature.

It would be nice to have a FR voting feature here and / or in the apps.  You guys can tag features being considered and allow the community here and on devices to vote. 

[ertagon2 44]

2 hours ago, cayars said:

Yes, that is the only way we know people are interested in a feature.

It's time to leave the caves and join the evolution.
Or stagnate and see how long people will put up with your crap.

https://features.jellyfin.org/?view=most-wanted
 

 

[sydlexius 262]

4 hours ago, BillOatman said:

1) This last server release brought their code up to a current level of technology, and I suspect that was a pretty big effort.

2) As far as I know there are 2 developers. And they also are here doing support.  There are only so many hours in a day.

I think that's a big part of the factor.  Because there are 2 major developers/supporters, Emby is stuck with a small piece of a very big pie (while conversely, they revenue are big pieces of a small pie).  Perhaps it might be a worthwhile sacrifice to hire or contract out work?

My other assumption about the slowdown in features is, and this is no slight against @ebr and @Luke, that they've spent years chasing the "easy" and "obvious" features to implement.  The level of difficulty with incrementally improving existing features has gone up, as has maintaining an ever-expanding codebase.  Additionally, they've recently chased after some ambitious improvements (I'm sure the reimplementation of the DVR back-end wasn't trivial).  There are probably some relatively low-hanging fruit out there with the feature requests/fixes, but ultimately they need to address what does the most good for the most people.

[ebr 15574]

5 hours ago, jspanitz said:

It would be nice to have a FR voting feature here and / or in the apps.  You guys can tag features being considered and allow the community here and on devices to vote. 

Hi.  We do.  And instructions are at the top of this forum.

 

However, we have to go on more than just the small subset of people who actually interact and respond on this forum so that is only one of the factors involved.

Thanks.

[jspanitz 14]

@ebr That's why I said something in each app to vote as well would be ideal

[Skyfay 19]

Is something already planned? I would be extremely happy about a Watch 2 Gether function in Emby!
The only reason I still use Plex from time to time is this feature.
Of course you can also start at the same time, but with plex you can simply take a break and you're always in sync.
The intro skip plugin is something I was really excited about and I hope watch 2 gether could come soon too.

[dannymichel 103]

Just now, Skyfay said:

Is something already planned? I would be extremely happy about a Watch 2 Gether function in Emby!

i doubt it, but here's to hoping, brother

[Waffull 2]

5 hours ago, Skyfay said:

Is something already planned? I would be extremely happy about a Watch 2 Gether function in Emby!
The only reason I still use Plex from time to time is this feature.
Of course you can also start at the same time, but with plex you can simply take a break and you're always in sync.
The intro skip plugin is something I was really excited about and I hope watch 2 gether could come soon too.

Unfortunately this feature doesn't appear to be one of interest to the devs.  I hadn't realized how small a dev team Emby has, so I can understand why a feature that would take extensive development and have an impact on a small % of the users, isn't on the road map.  Disappointed.  It's one of only two reasons I still use Plex.  Recently some files haven't been playing properly in Emby, but in Plex, when you tell it not to direct stream, they do play.  So far these have only been shows from ITV, for some reason.  And I haven't spent any time trying to figure things out.  That said, I've love to turn Plex off, save the resources and the time to maintain the same library in two applications.

Still hoping

[Skyfay 19]

1 minute ago, Waffull said:

Leider scheint diese Funktion für die Entwickler nicht von Interesse zu sein. Mir war nicht klar, wie klein ein Entwicklerteam von Emby ist, daher kann ich verstehen, warum eine Funktion, die eine umfangreiche Entwicklung erfordern und Auswirkungen auf einen kleinen Prozentsatz der Benutzer haben würde, nicht auf der Roadmap steht. Enttäuscht. Das ist einer von nur zwei Gründen, warum ich immer noch Plex verwende. In letzter Zeit wurden einige Dateien in Emby nicht richtig abgespielt, aber in Plex werden sie abgespielt, wenn Sie sagen, dass es nicht direkt streamen soll. Bisher waren dies aus irgendeinem Grund nur Shows von ITV. Und ich habe keine Zeit damit verbracht, Dinge herauszufinden. Trotzdem schalte ich Plex gerne aus, um die Ressourcen und die Zeit zu sparen, um dieselbe Bibliothek in zwei Anwendungen zu verwalten.

Immer noch hoffen

Yes, unfortunately the Emby team is not that big. Nevertheless, they are doing a very good job, especially with the new Intro Skip Plugin, which took a long time and is a great update.
I think Emby is much better than Plex in many ways, but there are a few points where Plex is clearly ahead. At the same time as Emby, I also maintain a Plex database, simply because Watch2Gether with Emby is not that great. I would like to only work completely with Emby, but this feature is really essential for it. I would also like to program the whole thing myself if I could, but unfortunately I haven't started programming yet. Well, we have to hope that the Emby team will come around and see these requests as relevant.

[emiyakir 2]

Just moved to emby from jellyfin, I really love the syncplay feature of jellyfin which makes me able to watch movies with my girlfriend, however jellyfin was a little bit buggy and didn't respond very fast sometimes. I'm mostly satisfied with emby currently while it's disappointing there is no such kind of feature for me to watch medias together with my girlfriend. Currently I'm on subscription, I will definitely buy lifetime premium if emby has anything like syncplay/multicast/watch together feature.

[ertagon2 44]

3 hours ago, emiyakir said:

Just moved to emby from jellyfin, I really love the syncplay feature of jellyfin which makes me able to watch movies with my girlfriend, however jellyfin was a little bit buggy and didn't respond very fast sometimes. I'm mostly satisfied with emby currently while it's disappointing there is no such kind of feature for me to watch medias together with my girlfriend. Currently I'm on subscription, I will definitely buy lifetime premium if emby has anything like syncplay/multicast/watch together feature.

Yes, I have the exact same problem, I cannot watch movies together with my very real girlfriend. To be blunt me and my very non-imaginary girlfriend have grown more apart because of this missing feature.

Edited June 12, 2022 by ertagon2
Grammar edits

[Carlo 4543]

Just curious, but for only 2 people  I would think you could both start a show/movie at the same time do a pause or two if needed to get things synced up and it would probably work pretty well from that point on unless you had commercials to cut.

[Spaceboy 2565]

well you could both also just use vlc and shout very loudly so the other person knows when to press play if we're reducing things to the lowest common denominator...

[Carlo 4543]

Don't forget the "instant messaging"

[Raelone 4]

53 minutes ago, cayars said:

Just curious, but for only 2 people  I would think you could both start a show/movie at the same time do a pause or two if needed to get things synced up and it would probably work pretty well from that point on unless you had commercials to cut.

What about when one might get a phone call and you have to resync partially through something, or one wants to back up a bit cause they missed something or one has network issues and starts buffering throwing you off sync if the server isn't keeping both in sync etc.  There are lots of reasons why Plex and others have this even when it is just two people.  I've tried the old 1 2 3 press play through a text type of starting, people are usually off by a few seconds at worst (and if you have ever watched something with subtitles a few seconds off it does disrupt the experience of watching something with another person remotely.

[Carlo 4543]

Yep, that wouldn't be ideal.  

[ertagon2 44]

4 hours ago, cayars said:

Just curious, but for only 2 people  I would think you could both start a show/movie at the same time do a pause or two if needed to get things synced up and it would probably work pretty well from that point on unless you had commercials to cut.

Or you know... you could also travel x km to that person and watch together.

I'd say we should go one step further and shut down emby altogether. I mean you can just buy a Blu-ray player. That should also work pretty well.

[dannymichel 103]

10 minutes ago, ertagon2 said:

Or you know... you could also travel x km to that person and watch together.

I'd say we should go one step further and shut down emby altogether. I mean you can just buy a Blu-ray player. That should also work pretty well.

Couldn’t have answered that better myself 

[sydlexius 262]

7 hours ago, cayars said:

Just curious, but for only 2 people  I would think you could both start a show/movie at the same time do a pause or two if needed to get things synced up and it would probably work pretty well from that point on unless you had commercials to cut.

I know you couched this in the form of a question, but your tag indicates your hear to support end-users.  You should focus your efforts on asking the clarifying sort of questions, and maybe dial back the snark.  You'll just end up covered in snark otherwise (as seen in other replies)

[Carlo 4543]

It happens.

If you look back you'll see questions asked to get an idea of what people are looking for.

[jspanitz 14]

Interesting article on various services added this feature - seems like demand is still there.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/amazon-prime-video-just-upgraded-a-feature-that-netflix-still-doesn-t-have/ar-AAZd5or

Seems like we're the netflix of media players

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by jspanitz

[BillOatman 568]

38 minutes ago, jspanitz said:

Interesting article on various services added this feature - seems like demand is still there.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/amazon-prime-video-just-upgraded-a-feature-that-netflix-still-doesn-t-have/ar-AAZd5or

Seems like we're the netflix of media players

 

That article mentions something called Teleparty that people could use to watch Emby content as a group.  Not using the Emby client (except for the party host), but it's something anyway.

[dannymichel 103]

59 minutes ago, BillOatman said:

That article mentions something called Teleparty that people could use to watch Emby content as a group.  Not using the Emby client (except for the party host), but it's something anyway.

Yup, as I pointed out to earlier, just because people don’t feature request, it doesn’t mean people don’t want it.