Why does Emby make it so difficult to discover media?

[ebr 16169]

I don't want to promise a "silver bullet" but so much of all of this should be addressed by Smart Playlists - or, actually, what should be Smart Views.

I'm sure it will take multiple iterations and it won't all be there at first but let's see how this shakes out once we get that feature started.

Thanks.

[242Movies 26]

Is it still years away from being released?

 

In the meantime I'm glad we have the MDBList python script

That's made it easier to narrow down what i want to watch on my server with over 10,000 movies and almost 1,000 TV shows

 

 

[ebr 16169]

1 minute ago, 242Movies said:

Is it still years away from being released?

No, it is under active design right now.

[rbjtech 5284]

36 minutes ago, ebr said:

I don't want to promise a "silver bullet" but so much of all of this should be addressed by Smart Playlists - or, actually, what should be Smart Views.

I'm sure it will take multiple iterations and it won't all be there at first but let's see how this shakes out once we get that feature started.

Thanks.

Thanks Eric - The fact you are referring to it as Smart Views is really positive - so thanks for the update.

If you want Alpha/Beta testers - then please let us know.

[Jdiesel 1431]

Very exciting to hear! It sounds like you have been listening to what users have been asking for. Looking forward to testing this out when it becomes available.

[denebianslimemo 0]

You folks are all Emby Masters, so here I am, Emby grasshopper and I find this thread really intriguing. 

Can someone briefly explain what 

• Smart Playlists (for individual items)
• Smart Collections (for e.g. TV Seasons, Music Albums, etc.)
• Smart Views (for greater Home Screen customisation)

are envisioned to be in an emby context? And how I would set them up or how my users (family) would interact with them?

I always have the impression that all you folks have set up and networked umpteen different services such that on your machines the entire world of video is there from all services at all times as soon as they have been released.

But I wouldn't mind a row of "shows trending on other services" with a bunch of voting boxes of sorts that triggered the capture or downloading of those shows on my server, but I'd actually be okay if those votes could trigger a webhook and be made available in the dashboard. And for that matter, even a box somewhere (search page) that allowed users to tell me what other shows they'd like to see added, an emby wishlist of sorts.

I dislike how hard it is to find content on many video services, like Amazon Prime where they push tons of craps I have no interest in, but they have interest in pushing, and this is after I have spent time adding things to watch lists, and watching stuff, etc.

Hey, is there room for an LLM to look at a user's watch history and then look at the emby catalog on a server and make recommendations from that?

[ebr 16169]

17 minutes ago, denebianslimemo said:

Can someone briefly explain what 

• Smart Playlists (for individual items)
• Smart Collections (for e.g. TV Seasons, Music Albums, etc.)
• Smart Views (for greater Home Screen customisation)

are envisioned to be in an emby context? And how I would set them up or how my users (family) would interact with them?

Hi.  None of it exists yet but is in the planning stage.

Stay tuned.

[arrbee99 1815]

As opposed to TVNext (or whatever) which does exist in its entirely and we still don't get it.

[user24 313]

2 hours ago, denebianslimemo said:

Can someone briefly explain what 

• Smart Playlists (for individual items)
• Smart Collections (for e.g. TV Seasons, Music Albums, etc.)
• Smart Views (for greater Home Screen customisation)

are envisioned to be in an emby context? And how I would set them up or how my users (family) would interact with them?

"Smart" functions typically means being able to customise Emby to dynamically show your media how you want to see it, based upon rules that you set up. Apart from the Emby team themselves, no one really knows how this is going to be implemented, but many of us are waiting with great anticipation!!!

An example could be that you want a Collection of Science Fiction Movies from the 1980s. Now you need to set up a standard Collection yourself and manually add the movies into it. A "Smart" Collection would allow you to select (e.g.) Genre: Science Fiction and Year Range: 1980-1989. Then Emby will magically create the Collection for you and keep it updated when you add more movies to your library that correspond to the Smart Collection rules.

There is a Smart Playlists 2.0 plugin that you could check out to learn a bit more. I'm not sure if it's currently working, but there is lots of info on the forum about it here: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/99885-new-plugin-smart-playlists-20/ 

 

[ebr 16169]

16 hours ago, arrbee99 said:

As opposed to TVNext (or whatever) which does exist in its entirely

Incorrect.  There is still a lot of integration and testing work to be done there.

[arrbee99 1815]

I don't doubt you knowledge on this (and most other stuff) is vastly superior, but far as I (the rest of us ?) know, TVNext is written, as in coded, but needs adding and integrating, while smartlists, is non of those.

[ebr 16169]

14 minutes ago, arrbee99 said:

TVNext is written, as in coded, but needs adding and integrating

That statement underestimates the work involved in "adding and integrating" .  Its possible that work would be more than the initial implementation of the smart views.  in any case, the smart views should definitely benefit a wider audience.

You wouldn't know it from forum activity, but Live TV is actually only used by a (relatively small) minority of Emby users.

The new TV stuff, however, is the next major thing on the list.

[arrbee99 1815]

Fair enough. Its just, you know, the waiting...

[bandit8623 213]

41 minutes ago, ebr said:

That statement underestimates the work involved in "adding and integrating" .  Its possible that work would be more than the initial implementation of the smart views.  in any case, the smart views should definitely benefit a wider audience.

You wouldn't know it from forum activity, but Live TV is actually only used by a (relatively small) minority of Emby users.

The new TV stuff, however, is the next major thing on the list.

What's the new TV stuff? I must be one of the minority live TV users

Edited December 9, 2024 by bandit8623

[arrbee99 1815]

14 minutes ago, bandit8623 said:

What's the new TV stuff? I must be one of the minority live TV users

It completely (at some point) completely replaces existing Emby TV features. You can set up tuners from scratch with it, including satellite eg pick your satellite, choose LNB, have a tuner on a remote PC, works on Linux. There's a feature matrix for new vs old which I can never find - hopefully somebody else can.

[arrbee99 1815]

Found it -

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTtWQwRLBTPp5TNh8KmtSH3Rvz9Zm6ovUL__YL9Ax1ikzGLCzdfhryjMJ6-g5N1rJIf5LrDGjE5jqds/pubhtml?gid=1930489182&single=true

[Tigga5 39]

On 12/9/2024 at 1:32 PM, ebr said:

You wouldn't know it from forum activity, but Live TV is actually only used by a (relatively small) minority of Emby users.

It's like seeing an old, broken, and neglected slide on the playground and saying we shouldn't spend time fixing it because nobody uses it anyway.

Lack of use isn't surprising considering the state of live TV in Emby. The whole reason I purchased Emby Premier 4+ years ago was because Plex had a few bugs that made their live TV experience practically unusable, but Emby at least worked at the time. Now though it's been over 2 years since I've used Emby's for anything more than testing or a quick glance. Plex has improved and works great, plus there are other offerings like Channels DVR. When I want to watch live TV then Emby is 3rd in line at best for the app I'd choose to view it with.

So of course only a minority of users are going to use an offering when there are much better choices out there.

[ebr 16169]

5 hours ago, Tigga5 said:

It's like seeing an old, broken, and neglected slide on the playground and saying we shouldn't spend time fixing it because nobody uses it anyway.

Hi.  No one said we shouldn't spend time on it.  In fact, we stated it was the next major item on our list.  It just isn't the first.

[Spaceboy 2573]

history tells us that devs will deliver 25% of requested functionality on smart playlists, declare it a success and the best thing since sliced bread and them move onto the next shiny thing while ignoring any requests for what would be considered to be basic function anywhere else and respond with comments like "it's wet ain't it, drink it!"

[rbjtech 5284]

2 hours ago, Spaceboy said:

history tells us that devs will deliver 25% of requested functionality on smart playlists, declare it a success and the best thing since sliced bread and them move onto the next shiny thing while ignoring any requests for what would be considered to be basic function anywhere else and respond with comments like "it's wet ain't it, drink it!"

Sadly, this is my primary concern as well.

We have been waiting a LONG time for 'smart views' and the fact that recent posts suggest it is still in 'planning' stage is really disappointing as the target (4.9) started back in May I believe (some ~6 months ago).

I do feel the best solution for this functionality is to actually provide an API to do it - rather than implement a 'replacement' for community driven projects such as smart playlists and top picks for example.    If the 'tools' were available to easily build 'channels' from existing content, then we could probably leave the actual 'creation' to external tools - as we have those today.

I hope this is what emby are doing - rather than a 'smart' but limited set of views with no way to interface with them outside the core code...

[Tigga5 39]

On 12/14/2024 at 9:48 AM, ebr said:

Hi.  No one said we shouldn't spend time on it.  In fact, we stated it was the next major item on our list.  It just isn't the first.

That might be a lot easier to believe if you didn't make statements like the one I quoted. Or if "tvnext" hadn't been on the back burner for over 2 years now.

[C.S. 93]

On 12/9/2024 at 11:32 AM, ebr said:

You wouldn't know it from forum activity, but Live TV is actually only used by a (relatively small) minority of Emby users.

As a member of the relatively small minority, I'd be interested to know how you know this.

[TMCsw 248]

On 12/9/2024 at 1:32 PM, ebr said:

You wouldn't know it from forum activity, but Live TV is actually only used by a (relatively small) minority of Emby users.

How else would you know this? 

You say you don't collect data on us (your users).

How else would you determine this reddit?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

I think I said earlier in this thread that I do not understand the problem. I have a quite large library (Not the humongous size some have but pretty large) and I have never had any problem fining content to watch. 
Of course, since I either bought or recorded or inherited my content, i have a good idea what I have so, maybe, I am quite the exception. But I do not think  my viewing habits are much of anything special. 

As far as finding content on "Live TV" I have no problem there either. I do not really use live TV much, except for sports (mainly soccer) as I record most of the "new" shows I want outside of Emby using CH-DVR or some other recording service. 

But I am not one of those people that want one app to do everything. It is perfectly OK for me to use different products for different functions. 

I do use Emby's Live TV functionality, because it is there more than anything else, I would be equally happy to use another app.

Given how much time the developers seem to spent on a redundant function, I would be quite happy if the Emby team decided to remove all the live TV functionality from Emby and concentrate on the primary Emby functionality of curating and playing already recorded content. 

But Emby is NOT my property it is Emby's and Emby can do as they wish with their product. I may, and sometimes do, disagree with choices Emby has made but the only thing i think they have gotten completely wrong is their incessant attempt to be the "One app to rule them all. " I think they are short changing some users of the main functionality by their ongoing attempts to make everyone happy. 

FWIW: I would be perfectly happy with Emby if they simply froze everything where it is and then worked on refining and optimizing the current feature set. 

There is not and never will be:
"Three Apps for the Emby developers under the sky,
Seven for the Super Testers in their halls of glittering lights,
Nine for regular users doomed to use the app,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne,
In the Land of Media where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Media where the Shadows lie."

Again I do not understand the value of having just one app do everything.

Edited December 15, 2024 by Gilgamesh_48

[darkassassin07 652]

1 hour ago, C.S. said:

As a member of the relatively small minority, I'd be interested to know how you know this.

I don't use live TV so I'm not certain; but isn't tv guide data something Emby provides as a service?

 

At the very least, they'd have stats on how often that data is requested, what IPs/server IDs/Premiere IDs are used to retrieve it, and probably some similarly related metadata.