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General Feedback about Emby's direction


ChoromPotro

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ChoromPotro

I am an avid user of Emby. In fact, I run Plex, Jellyfin and Emby on my setup and I have premium version of both Plex and Emby. I do not consider myself a fan of either services. I use Plex for online viewing, Emby for offline viewing (on LAN), and Jellyfin to test out various things like jellyfin-mpv-shim, syncplay and gelli.

I installed the latest stable version today and I discovered a plethora of changes and fixes, among them the fix about seeing server key as an user fix is my favorite. But that got me thinking, after about 5 months, we get a new version which when it comes down to it, contains only 2 new features , subtitle offset and playback speed control. It really made me sad. I like Emby for the way the devs communicate with us, for the quick fix that ensue on reporting major problems. But where is the big feature? I may be wrong, but did we get a single big feature on 2020? Jellyfin has syncplay (I use it extensively to study lectures with friends), plex has skip intro and skip commercial on livetv. What is Emby's big feature for 2020? Subtitle offset? The aforementioned products have them too.

Where is the feature roadmap? Where is the voting option on requested features? I know it's a small team but Luke has repeatedly said that they have more members that do not interact here. So we don't know for sure that Emby team is smaller than Jellyfin team. Jellyfin team is consistently pumping out new feature (their next big feature is HDR > SDR tonemapping while transcoding), whereas Emby is just lagging behind.

I would have loved to see the following features on Emby :

  • Skip Intro
  • Skip Commercial on livetv recording
  • Lyrics in music
  • Movie extra like Behind the scene the way Plex does it
  • A proper official app to monitor and interact with server for the admins like Plex Dash. Failing that , something like Tautulli. Embystat does not work as well as Tautulli and the functionality is really limited IMO.
  • Audiobook scrapping
  • Granular control over camera upload (what to upload, which resolution to upload, which location to upload etc)
  • Maybe a location where people can share custom CSS and vote on it.

I am willing to accept the hate that might follow for me being a karen or whatever. But I do want this project to thrive, and I was as respectful as I possibly could have been. If that's still harsh, I don't know what else to say except I did not intend to be so.

But anyway, I want Emby to thrive, I want to recommend Emby to my friends just like I now recommend them jellyfin if they dont use Tizen, WebOS or Roku (Roku app is improving on Jellyfin though). Let's hear the other user's opinion on what I wrote. Have a nice day.

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PenkethBoy

Yep - you are about spot on

last beta round was mainly fixing things broken earlier for a previous beta - although the release announcement would give you a different story

yes small things get fixed - but sevral bugs that have been reported and "ignored" have gone un resolved into the latest release - things already coming home to roost from the posts over the last couple of days

To be fair there have been more features added than just the two you highlight - but they are in the average user wont notice category - http2 as an example which is causing issues still and was pulled once before but now you cant turn it off - sigh

 

I to like Emby - generally its good - functions well - snappy etc

But the development in 2020 has become a crawl - last year updates/additions were coming out every couple of days - now its weeks for anything i care about pops up and thats been mostly minor changes - some just taking something away that was useful - no explanation - no warning - virtually no communication from the devs

As for a roadmap - been asked numerous times - but the answer is "its secret" as they dont want their competition knowing what they are up to........... so we get treated to Mushroom Management - its so counter productive but they cant see that

Next big thing is likely to be a major revamp of LiveTV - but dont hold your breath on that either as its going at a snail's pace currently from the bits i can see - its a big job apparently which i suspect might have overwhelmed them and if holding up most of everything else.

So in the end i will join you on the firing line when people say its not that bad etc and thats not true - even though i have been a little more on point.

:) 

Puts on Tin Hat!

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vdatanet
23 minutes ago, ChoromPotro said:

I would have loved to see the following features on Emby :

I would add to the list, HLS streaming using fMP4 container, to be able to direct stream HEVC content to Apple TV and avoid the problems that appear (gitching) when some HEVC content needs to be remuxed.

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Spaceboy

i mentioned a few months ago that Jellyfin had implemented far more new functionality in 2020 than emby has. received pelters for that although its 100% true.

the functionality plex has implemented this year with no response from emby should embarrass the dev team, but won't

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The devs need to be more open with their users, even if that means letting the cat out of the bag,otherwise users will drift off to JF for the new toys they have.
 

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3 minutes ago, Zodler said:

I had never heard of Jellyfin. Where does it come from? Did they steal Emby's code? It looks awfully like Emby.

It's based on our code from a few years back.

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Personal opinion here.

I see things far differently and see a lot of progress and new things that are focused on better playback of local media in general.

Before even mentioning the backend, what about client app releases in the last couple of months?  There has been what seems like  a lot more app releases lately with lots of new features and fixes and even new app releases for Android (can be ran on mobile, auto and TV) which bring a LOT of new advancement to the party. A lot of dev time has been going into trying to simplify audio playback and being able to direct stream transport files (as used with Live TV). Sure some pain in beta but that's what beta is designed to do and test.

There has been a lot involved in the last release of the server, just look at the list. Ask NAS users what they think! There is actually a lot of low hanging fruit in these fixes and sometimes it's good to go for lots of "small" things vs adding new functionality to clean up or fix things before building on them more from a core perspective.

Also what comes into play is part of the team is working on Next Gen Live TV which will be a HUGE release not just for TV but with some other changes that come along with it. You would/should assume this isn't just core backend but also some front end work as well. Next Gen has a new pipeline that's used for TV/DVR and not just a rework of existing code.

So while there may not be something you consider a stand out feature in this release it's by no means small or devs being lax. Sometimes it's wise to cleanup the yard before you do new landscaping. :)

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ChoromPotro
8 hours ago, cayars said:

Also what comes into play is part of the team is working on Next Gen Live TV which will be a HUGE release not just for TV but with some other changes that come along with it. You would/should assume this isn't just core backend but also some front end work as well. Next Gen has a new pipeline that's used for TV/DVR and not just a rework of existing code.

This is what I was expecting to see in a roadmap of sort. Sure the bugfixes are nice and everything but a regular user does not notice if the android backend is exoplayer or libmpv. They want new features that they can interact with. I am not saying we don't need fixes anymore. But there should be a balance between fix and new features.

About client reworks, I am sure they are not easy to get done. But they don't offer significant front side changes (except for roku). At that point, it's invisible to front end users.

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8 hours ago, cayars said:

Also what comes into play is part of the team is working on Next Gen Live TV which will be a HUGE release not just for TV but with some other changes that come along with it. You would/should assume this isn't just core backend but also some front end work as well. Next Gen has a new pipeline that's used for TV/DVR and not just a rework of existing code.

What about providing info like this more regular?

I've been around for 2 or 3 years and I think it's the first time I am reading about stuff that is being developed and not in the beta yet.

Keep your customers informed!

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3 minutes ago, neik said:

What about providing info like this more regular?

I've been around for 2 or 3 years and I think it's the first time I am reading about stuff that is being developed and not in the beta yet.

Keep your customers informed!

We can certainly start doing that. Thanks for the feedback.

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