Is Emby for Me? Quick Questions

[OasisCurator 0]

I've been using Plex for a while now and it seems to work pretty well.

However someone around the internet has said Emby is worth looking at, particularly in my situation.

I have a HTPC running Windows.
Basically, it's a PC that holds all my media files.  These are split into sections, such as Films, TV Series, Documentary...

I boot up my Android TV, choose the Plex app and it's a little bit like Netflix - all my media nicely organised and sorted.

It streams from my PC to the TV, although there seems to be a little confusion whether it transcodes it or not.  Doesn't seem to but as I'm getting into 4k now, and thinking about some films with subtitles, there seems to be a big risk of it happening.  I don't have a Plex Pass and the PC only has it's processor to play the files.

Would Emby give me a nice GUI with different sections?

I do not use it for live tv, pvr recording or anything apart from playing local content.
I don't need to be able to access it anywhere else outside of the home (perhaps to an old Samsung TV if there's an app available - which is why I chose Plex as the Tizen (?) OS has an app).

Thanks for pointers and help.

[Abobader 3464]

Hello OasisCurator,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[nospotify 184]

I am a happy Plex refugee. You can download and install Emby and have it run on your same libraries to test it out, without interfering with your Plex installation at all.

[kikinjo 281]

Yes it would be good, try it, it will replace plex really good.

 Dont expect much from IPTV / Livetv part...except mental breakdown and 500 issues, live tv is in year 1995, still.

[BillOatman 596]

On 2/3/2022 at 9:01 AM, kikinjo said:

 Dont expect much from IPTV / Livetv part...except mental breakdown and 500 issues, live tv is in year 1995, still.

But a least Emby allows IPTV native and doesn't make you use a proxy like Plex does, but the OP isn't planning on using it for that anyway.

For your use case either would be fine.  Both applications came from the same code base. [Emby shares no code or history with Plex] In recent years they have grown apart but you will notice they are very similar. A third choice to consider is Jellyfin.  It started fairly recently from a old version of Emby code so it also has the same lineage as the other 2 applications.  But it is free and open source, so no Plex Pass or Emby Premiere to pay for should you wish to expand your use cases.

Like someone mentioned earlier, it's easy enough to try Emby and Jellyfin and see if one meets your needs more than the others.

Edited February 5, 2022 by ebr
Correctness

[mirdragon 15]

I'm a lifetime subscriber to both Plex and Emby . I stream to two Shield Pro devices (2015 + 2019) and two Apple TV 4K (old and new models) as well as a Roku 3, various tablets and mobiles. I was previously using Linux for hosting, but when Ubuntu started updating it kept updating the gfx card drivers so hardware transcoding got disabled. I also had HDHomerun DVR and Channels DVR installed (for comparison of TV against all 4 products)

I then switched to Windows 10 Pro setup (earlier this week) and not installed Plex as yet, but do have Emby installed and TBH at the moment I'm not really missing Plex. I don't stream from my server outside of the house so have remote networking off. With Plex one of the biggest issues is if your internet goes down you can loose access to your local media, even when on the same local network. Also constantly wants you to reclaim your server or loose it once you loose the connection. So far not had any issues like this while using Emby.

Another thing with Plex is they keep removing stuff from premium features, they're not always quick at doing fixes and i don't think their support is on par to Emby (Emby staff active in the forum and do help to diagnose issues)

Emby layout is different to Plex but is a lot simpler for users to get up and running and each user can have their own theme layout and settings.

Overall, give Emby a go, if you don't like it then try another product or go back to Plex, but for me I am probably sticking to Emby now and started removing plex from my devices.

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by mirdragon

[schmittty 2]

I'll chime in while I am waiting on another request in another thread.

I have to concur with mirdragon, I have both premium versions and I find Emby much more intuitive than Plex (Plex gets worse with every update, IMO) whereas in the beginning Plex was easy, not sure what happened there. The only reason I keep my one Plex server running is for a couple family members who still have Vizio smart tvs and there was no Emby app.

Beyond that Emby just makes sense in what they are doing, when you need help someone around here can usually get you straight if you listen. 

I run Emby Servers (2) on stripped down versions of Windows 11 Pro with only the necessary windows components running for Emby to do it's job, they read and serve a 21 TB media library and live TV from a HD Homerun duo. I have had really good results through upgrades and even recovering or moving Emby to new hardware, I cannot say that for when I had to move Plex (that was painful).

Emby is a wise choice, but it's also personal preference.

 

[mirdragon 15]

1 hour ago, schmittty said:

I'll chime in while I am waiting on another request in another thread.

I have to concur with mirdragon, I have both premium versions and I find Emby much more intuitive than Plex (Plex gets worse with every update, IMO) whereas in the beginning Plex was easy, not sure what happened there. The only reason I keep my one Plex server running is for a couple family members who still have Vizio smart tvs and there was no Emby app.

Beyond that Emby just makes sense in what they are doing, when you need help someone around here can usually get you straight if you listen. 

I run Emby Servers (2) on stripped down versions of Windows 11 Pro with only the necessary windows components running for Emby to do it's job, they read and serve a 21 TB media library and live TV from a HD Homerun duo. I have had really good results through upgrades and even recovering or moving Emby to new hardware, I cannot say that for when I had to move Plex (that was painful).

Emby is a wise choice, but it's also personal preference.

 

I thought I was bad with my setup on my Windows 10 Pro I have 14TB overall for media, I've reconverted a lot from H.264 to H.265, but still use full audio passthrough - I then have 2 x HDHomeRun Quatro's running for all Freeview TV - I still have my older unit connected but powered off which also has 15TB storage and only use if for now backing up my media to it as a precaution.

One feature on Plex I used all the time was the camera upload as it meant photos were instantly available, but they removed that feature which was another reason to look at using Emby but not tried the upload feature yet.

I agree about Plex if you needed to upgrade it was a pain in the neck to do

[ebr 16185]

23 hours ago, BillOatman said:

Both applications came from the same code base.  In recent years they have grown apart but you will notice they are very similar

What two applications are you talking about here?

[schmittty 2]

Presuming they mean Emby/JellyFin

[BillOatman 596]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

What two applications are you talking about here?

Plex and Emby in that case.

[BillOatman 596]

1 hour ago, schmittty said:

Presuming they mean Emby/JellyFin

But since JF came from old Emby source, that too

[Deathsquirrel 745]

@OasisCurator it sounds like we have pretty much the same use case, consolidating all our media to one place for playback in the home.  I've been using Emby for that for many years now and I'm quite happy with it.  It's free to setup and try and doesn't conflict with Plex so I'd say give it a go.

The Android TV app is $5 to unlock playback or you can spend $5 on a month of premiere access that would allow playback on all the official client apps for testing, so the investment of money is pretty low to find out if you like the tool.

[seanbuff 1318]

5 hours ago, BillOatman said:

Plex and Emby in that case.

Plex evolved from an XBMC fork, completely unrelated to Emby code base.

[BillOatman 596]

27 minutes ago, seanbuff said:

Plex evolved from an XBMC fork, completely unrelated to Emby code base.

If you say so, but If true I have never in my life seen 2 unrelated applications look and feel so much alike. 

[ebr 16185]

16 hours ago, BillOatman said:

If you say so, but If true I have never in my life seen 2 unrelated applications look and feel so much alike. 

I say so.  We share absolutely zero history with them.  Where did you get the information that we came from the same original code base?

[BillOatman 596]

3 hours ago, ebr said:

I say so.  We share absolutely zero history with them.  Where did you get the information that we came from the same original code base?

Just in random comments, plus I have worked in software development for a long time, and I have never seen 2 applications so visually and technically similar not have a common ancestor (or 1 be the ancestor of the other such as JF from Emby).  You certainly would be in a position to know for sure though.

Edited February 5, 2022 by BillOatman

[frankmb 41]

To my knowledge:

Emby and Jellyfin split from a common source.

The original Plex Windows Client was forked from XBMC (now Kodi). However that original Plex Windows Client has been abandonned for a long time and was replaced by a new Plex Windows Client years ago.

[Junglejim 385]

Yep this is correct, Plex forked from XBMC back in 2008 to focus on Mac OS X, but today it's a totally different app to what it started out as..

As stated above Jellyfin is a fork of Emby.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_based_on_Kodi_and_XBMC

[ebr 16185]

22 hours ago, BillOatman said:

I have never seen 2 applications so visually and technically similar not have a common ancestor

Really?  I see it all the time - when the two applications are serving the same basic purpose.  (help desk software, forum software, Financial management software, etc.)

Having said that, I don't think our interfaces really look all that much alike (other than broad functionality and presentation but then we look like a lot of other video apps in that regard).