Update

[sicarium 0]

So I went to start up Emby Theater. There's an update. Cool. I'm thinking maybe the built in filters will finally work right so I can stop using an external player. Or maybe artwork loading got faster. Or even just a slightly better UI. Sweet.

 

I update. Launch ET. Well that sucks, it's pretty slow overall. Oh man, setting up the filters has been dumbed down even more. Now there's zero support for Nvidia hardware decoding. But I stay hopeful. Dumbed down is fine, if it works. I go to play some self encoded HEVC bluray rips. What? Unlock with premium? Yeah, no. Hit back, but video starts loading. Well, maybe it's some new feature I need to disable. Surely Emby wouldn't pull a bait and switch without any warning. Oh look, the video is choppy as hell. Oh well, it's ok. I can just keep using an external player. Wait, there's no option for that. Hmm, let's try another one. What? I can only watch one minute? You kidding me? Umm...?

 

So, to summarize, ET works worse than before, lacks features necessary to play my content, lacks even basic setup options, and is slower than before. Oh, and you're trying to force me to pay now. There seems to be a disconnect there somewhere... 

 

And here's the kicker. I don't follow ET development everyday, I don't have time. But last I checked, things like improved Nvidia support and a smoother UI were being discussed for the upcoming version. And, oh yeah, there was no mention of ET going premium only. Actually, there was no mention of this in ANYTHING I saw before trying to play one of my videos. It wasn't in a dialog box, or a popup, or in the install. Nothing. No where. 

 

The only silver lining to the cluster fail is that the previous ET will remain free. Great. So development stops and we're stuck with the previous version that I only kept using because I, mistakenly, thought it would get better. Joy.

 

You want to get paid. Cool. I'm down with that. Add in new premium features, offer more eye candy, whatever you want. If it's something I'm interested in, I'll pay. What I am not down with is taking basic free features and suddenly making them paid features with zero warning to the average user, especially when not paying renders those previously free features, ie the whole freaking thing, completely unusable. And before anyone jumps on me for not keeping track of every change log and following the forum every day, average users do not do those things. I saw the promises for new versions and the promises that ET would remain free. Both have been broken in my eyes. For that, I am done with Emby. Afterall, I have no idea how long anyone at Emby will keep the promise that there will be a free version. No point staying with a platform that's simply going to try to milk me dry in three months.

 

And BTW, I saw in another thread where there was suppose to be a notification now that ET required a premium account. Yeah, that's not working as of January 22nd, 9:00pm CST. For some reason, I'm not surprised.

Edited January 23, 2016 by sicarium