Confession from a Former Jellyfin User

[Chyron 256]

52 minutes ago, RSVR said:

many of the opensource software that I use, I donate $$$ to the cause,  because even though people develop it for free,  I appreciate their effort

See also:

1 hour ago, Chyron said:

I'm sitting here waiting for audiobooks to actually work. As of this moment, on Stable, they don't for either JF or Emby despite my bugging the Emby devs for years.

There is a new audiobook app in development called Bookcamp. It currently uses Plex as a backend but will eventually support its own fully-fleshed out cloud media server. The dev has the app set up on a recurring payment plan of like $1/month or whatever, but I straight up paid $50 for the first year to support the dev, such is my want for a good audiobook app for Android.

I have straight up said I'd pay real money if Emby had proper audiobook support. It's been years since I said that.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Chyron

[darkside40 107]

Regarding Audiobooks i just bought Cloudbeats which is backed by an old fashioned WebDAV Server in my case.

[Chyron 256]

2 minutes ago, darkside40 said:

Regarding Audiobooks i just bought Cloudbeats

*looks up Cloudbeats*
...Well, damn. They don't have an audiobook app for Android.

[darkside40 107]

Yeah thats a pity, for the Android devices of the kids i use booksonic https://booksonic.org/

[Deathsquirrel 745]

14 hours ago, RSVR said:

For £5.99 I could have netflix. 

For £4.00 a month I could have the use of Emby theatre to play my OWN content. Well that deserves a LOL right there.

To me this is a deeply stupid and pointless comparison.  And sure, I get that we're supposed to be nice but good lord, that's asking a lot sometimes.  If you aren't an Emby user then I don't get the point in posting here at all honestly.

Emby doesn't compete with Netflix so comparing prices is a waste of time.  I have 2000 movies, several hundred TV shows, and a couple thousand albums on disc.  Emby compares to buying shelves to hold all those cases.  Emby compares to standing in front of several walls of shelves and scanning tiny sideways titles trying to pick something to watch.  Emby compares to not being able to effectively benefit from my media collection.  Emby's freaking cheap compared to that.

If you don't have a significant enough media collection to need a media manager then you don't need ANY product like this.

[artstar 17]

17 hours ago, cayars said:

But for many of us, a one time payment of $125-$150 for a lifetime license that opens up the system to many high end features and all clients as well as provide great support is worth a lot more than that. JF can't even run a forum and had to shut it down.

For me, I will merely state that I didn't really need any of the higher end features but I don't see a problem with paying a one-off fee to help support a product. Particularly if I want to see the longevity of that product stretch out for as long as is reasonable.

So many want so much for so little but there is a middle ground that we can all meet on. If the product does what you need and you want to see it live a good life in your ecosystem, support it in any way you can.

[RSVR 5]

7 hours ago, Deathsquirrel said:

To me this is a deeply stupid and pointless comparison

I'm not comparing the product per se,  I'm comparing what you get for your money when you only want Emby Theater as a basic media player.  My point is regarding cost,  in that instance,  you get a mass of content with new media added quite regular for £5.99 per month.  For £4 a month I get a media player,  that's the point. 

I fully appreciate all the bells and whistles of Emby Premium, I only recently ended my subscription, but the cost was the reason I ended it, it wasn't value for money for what I wanted.

Emby have lost a premium user,  but could have get me on board if their Theater desktop had been improved with a reasonable level of updates, or if Theater desktop was half the price for the basic functionality,  I would still subscribe.

So no,  it's not a dumb comparison when we're talking value for money in my usage case.  And for the record,  I don't have Netflix anymore either,  as I felt I never used it enough when I too have a very large media collection. 

[RSVR 5]

1 hour ago, artstar said:

For me, I will merely state that I didn't really need any of the higher end features but I don't see a problem with paying a one-off fee to help support a product. Particularly if I want to see the longevity of that product stretch out for as long as is reasonable.

I don't disagree with this.  But, the price has to be justified with what you want and not necessarily what you get. If it costs me £150 for a lifetime license,  that technically could be a short lifetime,  then I need to be using many of the premium features,  which I wasn't.  A cheaper option, or rather a tier system would work better in my opinion, which,  as an ex emby premium user I'm entitled to.

[artstar 17]

2 hours ago, RSVR said:

I don't disagree with this.  But, the price has to be justified with what you want and not necessarily what you get. If it costs me £150 for a lifetime license,  that technically could be a short lifetime

That's the gamble I chose to take. It could be a short lifetime, it could be a long lifetime. Then again, without anyone funding its development, then the possibility of a short lifetime is all but guaranteed. I didn't pay for what I needed. I paid for a product that started off on the right foot with my requirements, and I paid in the hope of its longevity. Call it an overzealous donation, if you will. I don't use the theatre-style trailers of existing media, etc. At most, it's the configuration backups (I'm a backup Nazi) and the dark theme for the config dashboard.

Is it worth all that money for those two premium features? Obviously not but I haven't narrowed my view down to that. Bigger picture, I hope to see some really nice innovations that never even crossed my mind, and that takes dev time, which means resources, which means cost. You do make a fair point about the subscription cost when you compare it to other commercial services out there but with this, I am in control of my media, I have it stored locally so internet be damned if my ISP has an outage, and I don't have to worry about a bunch of angry alphabet-rainbow people getting outraged enough to have my media cancelled and no longer accessible. (yes, Dave Chappelle is funny and Hannah Gadsby is definitely not)

Each to their own.

[TeamB 2438]

you should never buy a product on what it might be, only purchase a product for what it is, never ever believe the hype and never pre purchase.

[artstar 17]

5 minutes ago, TeamB said:

you should never buy a product on what it might be, only purchase a product for what it is, never ever believe the hype and never pre purchase.

I've never pre-purchased anything. That is throwing even more caution to the wind, like a blind investor who would be better off spending it on strippers.

Still, if something is already impressive from the start, fulfilling its purpose and the support is solid, it's not going to last forever without some reasonable degree of financial support.

[GrimReaper 4739]

6 minutes ago, TeamB said:

you should never buy a product on what it might be, only purchase a product for what it is, never ever believe the hype and never pre purchase.

I tend to disagree there, as that'll certainly lead to any product being stale and innovation smothered. Although it is kinda OT for the current discussion, and not related to what Emby is or isn't or what it should or should not be, since you generalized it like that: any product needs funding, whether coming from self-sustainability, attracting investors or crowdfunding. Latter is the exact example of opposite of your statement. 

[TeamB 2438]

1 hour ago, artstar said:

I've never pre-purchased anything. That is throwing even more caution to the wind, like a blind investor who would be better off spending it on strippers.

Still, if something is already impressive from the start, fulfilling its purpose and the support is solid, it's not going to last forever without some reasonable degree of financial support.

Exactly, if the product is what you want then pay but dont expect there will be huge innovation just around the corner because that will only set you up for disappointment.

1 hour ago, GrimReaper said:

Although it is kinda OT for the current discussion

Not really as the post above was talking about future improvements

2 hours ago, artstar said:

Bigger picture, I hope to see some really nice innovations that never even crossed my mind, and that takes dev time

I was just posting my rule of acquisition

[Chyron 256]

50 minutes ago, TeamB said:

I was just posting my rule of acquisition

Free advice is seldom cheap.

-- Rule of Acquisition #59.

[pir8radio 1312]

8 hours ago, TeamB said:

you should never buy a product on what it might be, only purchase a product for what it is, never ever believe the hype and never pre purchase.

My crypto account balances would disagree..    

Edited November 5, 2021 by pir8radio

[artstar 17]

10 hours ago, TeamB said:

Exactly, if the product is what you want then pay but dont expect there will be huge innovation just around the corner because that will only set you up for disappointment.

I agree which is why I clearly stated "Bigger picture, I hope to see some really nice innovations that never even crossed my mind."

The keyword there is "hope," which is not the same thing as "expect". After all, how can you expect something that you haven't thought of in the first place? That would be asinine, to say the least.

[monotok 7]

On 03/05/2021 at 19:05, RSVR said:

The speed at which Jellyfin devs are implementing features and fixes bugs is bizarrely fast and in a different league to Emby devs.

I find it pretty hard to believe the emby devs use this forum to manage feature requests, bug fixes etc. They must internally use an issue tracker such as Youtrack (jetbrains) or github, it would be nice if such a thing was exposed externally. Jetbrains expose this to the public for bugs etc in their products and it works well. Would be so much easier to find and add support for feature requests; currently they just get lost in the noise and forgotten about.

The devs could then change the status of items to "being worked on", "more information needed", "not doing" etc and people would be able to see changes; I'm sure this would be easier to manage than a forum for this purpose.

[darkside40 107]

I dont think the devs want the developement process to be transparent.

You said it by yourself, most of the stuff that suggested by the community or bugs get simply lost in the forums. With feature request the standard ist that you are told it is a great idea, and after that nobody cares about it, for example Webhooks for newly added content.

The same with bugs. The Wake on Lan function of the Android TV App was bugged for at least 3 years. Nobody really cared about it. After i gave the team a detailed bug description it took them more than nine moths to solve a problem that was already solved in the normal Android App. Beeing honest without me aksing nearly every month in the Thread if there is a fix for it there wouldent be any till today.

Another example, the LG Web OS App.

And i think if you would crawl the forums you would find many others.

[Abobader 3464]

Emby team dev's use github and other to tracking the problem as well the fix, the community here for reporting the problem as well the support.

[Guest reetp]

Confession from a former Plex user. And shortly to be former Emby user.

I finally went to upgrade my old Emby install and buy a lifetime membership, and then found Emby had gone all Plex.

I gave up Plex (where I had a lifetime membership from a long time ago) because closed source, devs with fingers in ears despite proven bugs in their awful (closed source) code which they ignored even when given a fix on a plate, etc etc etc, but the final straw was the forced cloud logins (WTF is this nonsense) for my home only media server with login panels that automatically dropped tracking cookies wherever you went. I could block them at home via a browser, but not through the apps. So I then had Google and Feckbook and Plex (and who knows who else) all following me around through the Plex cloud login.

Sorry. Ain't happening.

I migrated to Emby and it did all I wanted - played a bit of music, and showed pictures & videos. Nice and simple. No messing about.

But clearly the siren call was heard and answered. And now Emby is essentially just another Plex with all the reasons I left Plex.

If I can't untangle all that privacy invading nonsense then I am out. As I do some open source coding myself, and knowing how difficult it can be, I am no a fan of closed source but can live with it. But. Once 'features' are forced on me with no way of removal then I am out. eg make privacy grabbing SSO or cloud logins 'to share with my friends' (why - I set can set them up as a user on my server myself.....) optional plug-ins. But don't force me to go through your site like http://app.emby.media. I don't want to see it in my app or server. But the problem is that is how you raise cash - through the data.

After a read around I found Jellyfin and it does all I want. So I'm packing my bags, have shutdown my Emby server, and am riding off into the sunset.

Very sad, but such is life. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[Luke 42077]

Hi, actually, we don't collect any data, and you're not forced to use our hosted web app (http://app.emby.media). Your emby server includes a built-in web app that you can use instead.

[RSVR 5]

12 minutes ago, reetp said:

Confession from a former Plex user. And shortly to be former Emby user.

I finally went to upgrade my old Emby install and buy a lifetime membership, and then found Emby had gone all Plex.

I gave up Plex (where I had a lifetime membership from a long time ago) because closed source, devs with fingers in ears despite proven bugs in their awful (closed source) code which they ignored even when given a fix on a plate, etc etc etc, but the final straw was the forced cloud logins (WTF is this nonsense) for my home only media server with login panels that automatically dropped tracking cookies wherever you went. I could block them at home via a browser, but not through the apps. So I then had Google and Feckbook and Plex (and who knows who else) all following me around through the Plex cloud login.

Sorry. Ain't happening.

I migrated to Emby and it did all I wanted - played a bit of music, and showed pictures & videos. Nice and simple. No messing about.

But clearly the siren call was heard and answered. And now Emby is essentially just another Plex with all the reasons I left Plex.

If I can't untangle all that privacy invading nonsense then I am out. As I do some open source coding myself, and knowing how difficult it can be, I am no a fan of closed source but can live with it. But. Once 'features' are forced on me with no way of removal then I am out. eg make privacy grabbing SSO or cloud logins 'to share with my friends' (why - I set can set them up as a user on my server myself.....) optional plug-ins. But don't force me to go through your site like http://app.emby.media. I don't want to see it in my app or server. But the problem is that is how you raise cash - through the data.

After a read around I found Jellyfin and it does all I want. So I'm packing my bags, have shutdown my Emby server, and am riding off into the sunset.

Very sad, but such is life. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

I'm running JF client on 4k firestick at present and have not bothered with the phone apps recently.  It does all I want and is very fast loading up my media.  

If you're used to a bit of open source coding, you can always chip in with features or bug fixes with JF. Open source is ace. 

[chef 3810]

I'm sure you don't have to use the app.emby.media to access your sever at all.

I never do. I believe it is out of pure convenience that it even exists.

 I just contact my server directly, through apps, by typing in the local url, and port number. My server is accessable through the internet for my family, but they don't use app.emby.media, they contact my private domain which I have full control over, emby.media has no idea what my private domain is, and I doubt they even care.

 

[BAlGaInTl 288]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi, actually, we don't collect any data, and you're not forced to use our hosted web app (http://app.emby.media). Your emby server includes a built-in web app that you can use instead.

 

19 minutes ago, chef said:

I'm sure you don't have to use the app.emby.media to access your sever at all.

I never do. I believe it is out of pure convenience that it even exists.

 I just contact my server directly, through apps, by typing in the local url, and port number. My server is accessable through the internet for my family, but they don't use app.emby.media, they contact my private domain which I have full control over, emby.media has no idea what my private domain is, and I doubt they even care.

 

 

This.

I also do not use Emby Connect.  Everything is on my own domain, on my own server, in my own basement.

Everything works as it should.

[ebr 16169]

4 hours ago, Guest reetp said:

But clearly the siren call was heard and answered. And now Emby is essentially just another Plex with all the reasons I left Plex.

Hi. Why do you think that? You can have complete control of your users with us. No global login required and no tracking of anything.