Making the ultimate choice on which software I should use - Emby or Plex ? (I know this is a Emby forum)

[ng4ever 39]

Let me know why I should use Emby or the advantages of Emby over Plex on a NAS ?

 

Every time I tried Emby previously on a windows pc as server it was ok but never seem as polished sorry I am just being honest. Though don't get me wrong I like some of the features. Like being able to message someone if someone is going to go down, etc.

 

One last thing for now did anyone make a script for Emby to auto update on a NAS yet ?

 

 

Edit: I guess the biggest disadvantage is the mobile app but I could be wrong.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 17, 2021 by ng4ever

[Carlo 4330]

Hi, Let's start by asking what devices you have that will run either Plex or Emby client?

[ng4ever 39]

Just now, cayars said:

Hi, Let's start by asking what devices you have that will run either Plex or Emby client?

 

Sure.

 

Roku, Fire Stick, and Android phones

[Carlo 4330]

I think both software do justice to these devices but I personally happen to like the Emby UI better as I think it's easier for anyone using YOUR system to get to your media.  Plex makes your media secondary to the media it's pushing these days which is a big turn off to many people.

What kind of media do you have?  Movies, TV Shows, Music, etc?  Roughly how many of each?
What kind of server/NAS are you using to run the software on?
Do you have 4K media?

[clarkss12 295]

Camera upload is the greatest thing since sliced bread, IF you take photos on your cellular phone/s.  When I take a photo, or someone text me a photo (grandkids), it gets uploaded to my NAS.  I can view it on my big screen/s almost instantly........

Plex, however, chose to stop using it.

Camera Upload is being discontinued in June 2021. For more information see the forum announcement.

[clarkss12 295]

Security cam uploads is another great feature........  When someone enters my IP camera "zone", the resulting video is automatically and almost instantly uploaded to the server for viewing on the big screen.......

So::  Emby is NOT just a media player, it does everything EXCEPT wash the dishes and shines your shoes.........

This morning's cam capture screen shot.  

[ng4ever 39]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

I think both software do justice to these devices but I personally happen to like the Emby UI better as I think it's easier for anyone using YOUR system to get to your media.  Plex makes your media secondary to the media it's pushing these days which is a big turn off to many people.

What kind of media do you have?  Movies, TV Shows, Music, etc?  Roughly how many of each?
What kind of server/NAS are you using to run the software on?
Do you have 4K media?

Movies and TV Shows. Not sure how many I guess about 20 + movies and 2 to 4 tv series or shows.

Synology DS220+

Yes I have 4k media.

[Carlo 4330]

1 hour ago, clarkss12 said:

Camera Upload is being discontinued in June 2021. For more information see the forum announcement.

Why fix it if you can remove it and call it a day. LOL

Once the Emby team gives camera upload a little love it's overdue this will be another reason people migrate to Emby.

[Carlo 4330]

53 minutes ago, ng4ever said:

Movies and TV Shows. Not sure how many I guess about 20 + movies and 2 to 4 tv series or shows.

Synology DS220+

Yes I have 4k media.

OK that's a really light load for either platform.

OK now a couple of persona questions.
What do you like best about Plex?
What do you dislike most about Plex?

Same two questions about Emby.

[clarkss12 295]

3 minutes ago, cayars said:

Why fix it if you can remove it and call it a day. LOL

Once the Emby team gives camera upload a little love it's overdue this will be another reason people migrate to Emby.

What enhancements of the camera upload are you thinking of?

[ng4ever 39]

Just now, cayars said:

OK that's a really light load for either platform.

OK now a couple of persona questions.
What do you like best about Plex?
What do you dislike most about Plex?

Same two questions about Emby.

Ikr.

I like Plex GUI and how it seems to just work even on mobile devices.

I dislike Plex support how slow it is. Plus with how long it takes them to add new features sometimes.

 

Emby I like the quick support and how you don't have to be online to use it except remotely of course.

I dislike how there is no auto streaming quality settings like in Plex to increase or decrease stream quality based on speed you are getting at the time and the mobile app.

 

[Carlo 4330]

A big one that has been asked for is Admin control over who can upload their camera pics & videos.

So for example you may want to grant camera upload to direct family members but not distant family or friends you've shared your server with. 

[Carlo 4330]

1 minute ago, ng4ever said:

Ikr.

I like Plex GUI and how it seems to just work even on mobile devices.

I dislike Plex support how slow it is. Plus with how long it takes them to add new features sometimes.

 

Emby I like the quick support and how you don't have to be online to use it except remotely of course.

I dislike how there is no auto streaming quality settings like in Plex to increase or decrease stream quality based on speed you are getting at the time and the mobile app.

 

Do you find it difficult to help users of your system hide the "Plex" stuff and only have access to your server media?
Or perhaps do you like the added content they flood your apps with?  It's quite possible you might like this content right now since you don't have a lot of content but as your own content builds up it can become quite redundant and get's in the way.  It can be annoying having to watch the ads. A lot of their content is directly available in other apps like crackle for example.

Does it bother you that you don't "own" any users and can't manage them on your Plex server but instead give all this control to Plex where all users are managed by them?

You are correct, Emby does not have adaptive bitrate flow control which can be nice but comes at a premium.  In Plex land the only way to do this adaptive bitrate control is to transcode everything which does degrade the quality of the media as well as tie up resources on the server that otherwise would have been free.

In Emby you can manually control the bitrate used so you can direct stream from another WIFI network or drop the bitrate down on a cell network for better performance or less costly network costs.  This "feature" can be a blessing or a curse depending on your current hardware and/or your ability to want to control this manually.
 

[ng4ever 39]

2 hours ago, cayars said:

Do you find it difficult to help users of your system hide the "Plex" stuff and only have access to your server media?
Or perhaps do you like the added content they flood your apps with?  It's quite possible you might like this content right now since you don't have a lot of content but as your own content builds up it can become quite redundant and get's in the way.  It can be annoying having to watch the ads. A lot of their content is directly available in other apps like crackle for example.

Does it bother you that you don't "own" any users and can't manage them on your Plex server but instead give all this control to Plex where all users are managed by them?

You are correct, Emby does not have adaptive bitrate flow control which can be nice but comes at a premium.  In Plex land the only way to do this adaptive bitrate control is to transcode everything which does degrade the quality of the media as well as tie up resources on the server that otherwise would have been free.

In Emby you can manually control the bitrate used so you can direct stream from another WIFI network or drop the bitrate down on a cell network for better performance or less costly network costs.  This "feature" can be a blessing or a curse depending on your current hardware and/or your ability to want to control this manually.
 

 

Not really difficult but maybe a little.

 

We do not like the added content they flood us Plex.

 

That does not really bother me with not owning any users or anything else.

 

Really Plex only lets you do adaptive bitrate when you transcode only ? I did not know this sorry.

That a pretty cool feature of Emby being able to do it manually.

 

P.S. I did hear Plex is getting HDR hardware support on Synology NAS at least the + models sooner or later. Not sure if Emby is. Think it is called really HDR or just tone mapping. Forgot sorry.

 

 

[Luke 37060]

Emby Server supports hardware accelerated HDR tone mapping.

[ng4ever 39]

5 minutes ago, Luke said:

Emby Server supports hardware accelerated HDR tone mapping.

 

On a Synology NAS ?

[Carlo 4330]

15 minutes ago, ng4ever said:

P.S. I did hear Plex is getting HDR hardware support on Synology NAS at least the + models sooner or later. Not sure if Emby is. Think it is called really HDR or just tone mapping. Forgot sorry.

Scroll down a bit to "HDR Tone Mapping When Transcoding".  Not only do we have it but it's about 3 to 4 times faster.

So here is where I see some major difference.  Plex will work remotely out of the box if this is something that's important to you.  In some cases they use tunnels they provide when a server can't establish itself on the Internet by itself.  For Plex pass users they get a 2Mb pipe while non plex pass users get a 1Mb pipe which can be quite limiting.

Emby can use your router's UPnP ability to automatically setup port forwarding but if this doesn't work you need to setup port forwarding manually which isn't hard and we can even assist with a remote session if needed to setup.  But once Emby is setup for remote use it's much easier to use with your own domain, with reverse proxies, with CDN Networks, etc.  So Emby may be slightly harder to setup for remote access but once setup is typically faster and has way more options (Emby does in general for control).

All users on an Emby server reside on your server not some central server.  That means you can have a user named "Dad", "Mom", "Bob", "Sally" and not have to choose something like Bob1984 because "Bob" is already in use on someone's system who grabbed it first.  All users are on your server where you control their access rights, their passwords, etc.

In Emby you can have a lot of control over a user, from what libraries they have access to how much bandwidth they can use to time limits or even parental ratings to make viewing safer for kids.

[ng4ever 39]

1 minute ago, cayars said:

Scroll down a bit to "HDR Tone Mapping When Transcoding".  Not only do we have it but it's about 3 to 4 times faster.

So here is where I see some major difference.  Plex will work remotely out of the box if this is something that's important to you.  In some cases they use tunnels they provide when a server can't establish itself on the Internet by itself.  For Plex pass users they get a 2Mb pipe while non plex pass users get a 1Mb pipe which can be quite limiting.

Emby can use your router's UPnP ability to automatically setup port forwarding but if this doesn't work you need to setup port forwarding manually which isn't hard and we can even assist with a remote session if needed to setup.  But once Emby is setup for remote use it's much easier to use with your own domain, with reverse proxies, with CDN Networks, etc.  So Emby may be slightly harder to setup for remote access but once setup is typically faster and has way more options (Emby does in general for control).

All users on an Emby server reside on your server not some central server.  That means you can have a user named "Dad", "Mom", "Bob", "Sally" and not have to choose something like Bob1984 because "Bob" is already in use on someone's system who grabbed it first.  All users are on your server where you control their access rights, their passwords, etc.

In Emby you can have a lot of control over a user, from what libraries they have access to how much bandwidth they can use to time limits or even parental ratings to make viewing safer for kids.

 

Thanks a lot to think about!

 

First going to test it on my NAS then go from there.

[Carlo 4330]

5 minutes ago, ng4ever said:

 

On a Synology NAS ?

[ng4ever 39]

That reminds me will Emby mobile app ever improve any ?

[ng4ever 39]

Thanks. Will the Synology 220+ work or not powerful enough ?

[ng4ever 39]

Also did anyone make a script for Emby to auto update on a Synology NAS yet ?

They have that for Plex.

[Carlo 4330]

We've only touched the surface in differences or what may be considered better.  What I can say is we get a lot of people crossing over to Emby.:)

Yes the 220+ has a Intel Celeron J4025 which we can use for Tone Mapping.  If you still only have 2GB of memory I'd up it to 6 which will cost about $30 or so if you pickup the memory chip on Amazon (what I did).

[Carlo 4330]

1 minute ago, ng4ever said:

Also did anyone make a script for Emby to auto update on a Synology NAS yet ?

They have that for Plex.

What do you mean by this by "Auto update"?

[ng4ever 39]

When I go to download the file for Emby for my Synology NAS I get this error: 

404

Page Not Found

It seems that the page you were trying to reach does not exist anymore, or maybe it has just moved. You can start again from the home or go back to previous page.

 

 

Here is the link I use.

https://emby.tv/synology-server.html