New Premiere member, why I chose Emby and few wishes

[x-cimo 23]

I am a cord-cutter for over 5 years, running over Kodi + ArgusTV PVR backend, HDhomerun tuners along with Steam BigPicture and Windows 10 Netflix app on a main Windows 10 HTPC.

I am also C Dev.

 

I've been looking at Plex and Emby for a while; and I finally chose Emby.

 

I like Emby because:

 

LiveTV + timeshifting is available now

 

It's opensource

I can fix thing myself. In fact here is my first (small) pull request ( https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/pull/2276 )

 

Not force to the cloud:

Emby Connect and Plex Pass are great for people who don't have strong networking knowledge.

Unlike Plex, Emby always allow you to connect manually with an IP or domain, which work great over VPN. This matters a lot to me.

For me it's important to keep my network mine; and rely on my own network security. I don't want to connect to someone else cloud.

 

Wishes:

 

Simply the UI: ( Web GUI and Emby Theater and Android App )

I run Emby for me and my familly, a 5 and 6 year old and my wife (I would place all three in the same category lol).

I think with minimal tweaking; things could be a lot better:

 

When my kids want to find a movie, clicking on multiple button is complicated.

For example to find a movie:

Click on movies, which open to the suggestion page, then click on movies, scroll down, then go through multiple pages.

 

I would recommend that you take the Netflix approach for the first page. Basically having featured content by row and have all content in one page.

 

For example for a movie:

Click on movies, which bring you directly to the all movie pages.

"Resume" (currently in suggestion tab) on the first row

"latest movies" (currently in suggestion tab) on the second row (could span multiple row)

All subsequent row would be all you movies (from the movie tab); remove pages (1-100 of X), so you only need to scroll to find your movie.

 

Leave more advanced things like trailers, collection, genres where they are in the tab at the top.

 

Improve time to start the stream (when transcoding, especially for liveTV)

Transcoding TV to the web client take 10 ish seconds. The tuners start streaming almost instantly, but there is some delay starting ffmpeg, and then long delay to play.

It feels like this could be optimized, I think something is either waiting too long or buffering too much.

 

Emby Theater:

I wanted to stay with Kodi, but the lack of TV integration is a show stopper. (Hopefully maintainer of the Kodi addon are working on it).

I gave Emby threater a try, and to be honest I am pretty surprised, it's fairly simple, fast and beautiful.

 

However, there are a few major annoyance:

I wish there was shortcut to open the Recording and TV guide (I would program them to my Harmony Remote)

I wish page up/down would change channel, yup there is no way to quickly change channel.

I wish timeshifting was working (I bet that this is coming soon).

 

Keep up the good work, that project is fantastic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ebr 16184]

Hi.  Thanks for the feedback.

 

On the UI, I think the direction we are moving with our TV based apps may be more what you are looking for as the home screen has rows for your library, Continue Watching, Next Up TV, Latest Movies, What's on Live TV now, etc.  But, also, in your example, if your son just wants to go directly to a specific movie, there is always a search icon where you can hit that and just start typing the name...

 

On the live TV stream starting, I'm sure we can improve here to some extent but I believe much of the delay is due to us needing to analyze the incoming stream so that we know whether or not the requesting app can play it, or if it needs to be converted.  This is where the fact that we can deliver pretty much any video to any device costs us a little bit.  Apps build directly for the live TV stream on a particular device already know exactly what the stream is and what they can do with it.

[puithove 209]

 

Emby Theater:

I wish there was shortcut to open the Recording and TV guide (I would program them to my Harmony Remote)

I wish page up/down would change channel, yup there is no way to quickly change channel.

I wish timeshifting was working (I bet that this is coming soon).

 

I wish for these as well - and also for PageUp/PageDown to actually move the selector in the guide.

 

Welcome aboard.

Edited November 14, 2016 by puithove

[x-cimo 23]

On the UI, I think the direction we are moving with our TV based apps may be more what you are looking for as the home screen has rows for your library, Continue Watching, Next Up TV, Latest Movies, What's on Live TV now, etc.  But, also, in your example, if your son just wants to go directly to a specific movie, there is always a search icon where you can hit that and just start typing the name.

 

Thank for responding ebr, please keep in mind that my kids are too young to read, and write (5 & 6).  Which make the search un-accessible for them. (However they can use netflix just fine, because everything is on one screen).

Having all content on one page (basically using more vertical space) and deviding them by category would be more intuitive. 

 

This change would be welcomed in all your ui (to keep them consitent), Emby Theater is actually not too hard navigate because you can scroll through all the moving by going right. It dosen't have the concept of pages (1 of x....).

 

Thanks

[legallink 187]

On the live TV stream starting, I'm sure we can improve here to some extent but I believe much of the delay is due to us needing to analyze the incoming stream so that we know whether or not the requesting app can play it, or if it needs to be converted.  This is where the fact that we can deliver pretty much any video to any device costs us a little bit.  Apps build directly for the live TV stream on a particular device already know exactly what the stream is and what they can do with it.

 

@@ebr forgive my ignorance here, but I think this could possibly be sped up based on acquiring that data at login/startup, no?.  Emby should know what the client can and cannot play once the client has logged in, and similarly, you could pre-load ffmpeg with the necessary attributes for the anticipated stream, aka if they log into Live TV, load ffmpeg immediately, do a network test for throughput, and then just wait for them to pick a stream (similarly with local content).  If they navigate away, shut it down?  Just thoughts, as I know that Netflix et al do a lot of pre-loading of content to get that instantaneous feel.

[Luke 42078]

@@ebr forgive my ignorance here, but I think this could possibly be sped up based on acquiring that data at login/startup, no?.  Emby should know what the client can and cannot play once the client has logged in, and similarly, you could pre-load ffmpeg with the necessary attributes for the anticipated stream, aka if they log into Live TV, load ffmpeg immediately, do a network test for throughput, and then just wait for them to pick a stream (similarly with local content).  If they navigate away, shut it down?  Just thoughts, as I know that Netflix et al do a lot of pre-loading of content to get that instantaneous feel.

 

The analysis is specific to the tv stream that you choose to play.

[legallink 187]

@@Luke Got ya.  I assumed that it was device sreaming specific and not channel specific.  I assumed that all hdhomerun's streamed in the same format, but I guess that would/could be differentiated on what the channel is streaming.  Sorry for the waste of time.