Keeping Up with the Jellyfins

[Carlo 4560]

34 minutes ago, Spaceboy said:

Cayars you don’t understand what it’s like being in a non us non hdhr system so best you keep quiet on this one. It’s every fricking channel.

So if you can't use the Emby Guide data because it's not available to you then why did you say?

2 hours ago, Spaceboy said:

I still pay separately to get my guide data elsewhere due to the shockingly bad function of embys epg matching

Sounds like you haven't been able to use the Guide data provided by Emby and don't know how much better it is than 3rd party solutions, nor actually know how well it matches channels, so maybe you should head your own advice?

The simple fact is, I do help a lot of people remotely with setups around the world and I do know many of the differences and see it first hand, which is why I made that comment about the superior guide data that Emby provides. 

[vdatanet 1617]

6 minutes ago, cayars said:

I made that comment about the superior guide data that Emby provides. 

As long as you are in United States, Canada or United Kingdom

[Carlo 4560]

1 minute ago, vdatanet said:

As long as you are in United States, Canada or United Kingdom

Correct for now.

[Spaceboy 2573]

Sounds like you haven't been able to use the Guide data provided by Emby and don't know how much better it is than 3rd party solutions, nor actually know how well it matches channels, so maybe you should head your own advice?
The simple fact is, I do help a lot of people remotely with setups around the world and I do know many of the differences and see it first hand, which is why I made that comment about the superior guide data that Emby provides. 

You don’t know what you are talking about. Stop embarrassing yourself

[Carlo 4560]

OK, what ever you say Spaceboy. I'll take the embarrassment.  LOL

Have you ever used Emby Guide Data?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

8 minutes ago, vdatanet said:

As long as you are in United States, Canada or United Kingdom

There are other places that matter in the world? 

In all, or at least some, seriousness it is nearly impossible to support every possible configuration of guide data throughout the world. Even here in the US there is a HUGE number of people, some of which would move to Emby if possible, that are having to use other programs, like Channels DVR, because Emby does not support TV Anywhere. I use Hulu for my regular television and I have zero reception for any TV OTA channels. While my situation is not even close to a majority is does point to how hard it is to have everything supported. 

I do think that it is important but I am not sure I would trust JellyFin to continue to be better in this regard,

[Carlo 4560]

That is very true.  Not everyone lives near a metropolitan area with good OTA broadcasts.  There are lots of areas in the USA that might only get a few channels on a good day due to distance to towers and repeaters. Hell there are areas where a tower is 5 miles from you and you still can't pick up reception due to mountains and other obstacles.

It's really good for these people who do have good Internet to be able to get these commercial IPTV services even if proprietary and locked into a single app.

[Spaceboy 2573]

3 minutes ago, cayars said:

OK, what ever you say Spaceboy. I'll take the embarrassment.  LOL

Have you ever used Emby Guide Data?

yes cayars. i was using emby guide data when you were still a plex ninja.

 

you know there are some things that fingerrhea https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fingerrhea  just can't be the answer for

[Carlo 4560]

I used to run both Plex and Emby (well before name change) and have since 2012ish  time frame. I know both systems very well (Plex up to about a year ago when I removed it).  Both platforms use Guide Data from the same company so I'm more than familar with it. I've been using this data in Emby before it was official.

If you have a problem with Emby Guide Data why don't you ask for help? If there  is a problem with the guide data in your area, we can report it and get it fixed.

[TeamB 2438]

The only thing I see in the list that jumps out at me as new is the SyncPlay which I would have no use for and I feel would have limited usefulness but that is only my opinion but options will vary.

There are some interface changes, but I feel that is all personal, what looks good and works well for one person does not for another. Just look at how many skins Kodi has, all different and all valid.

Apart from that there is a bunch of engineering changes, and that is great for them, they are re writing a large part of the code base they dont like or are unable to maintain for whatever reason, good for them but from an end user point of view that is not a visible change. People will put their hand up at this point and say performance, yes it may help performance but in the time I have spent designing, coding and maintaining projects over the years performance is only an issue if it is causing problems, I dont see a lot of problems in the forums about speed.

To me it still just looks and feels like an older version of Emby. Which is fine as I have been happy with Emby for years and was happy with the older version as well so all good.

I am still waiting for them to fully find their feet, once they stop trying to replace large chunks of the code and system and start adding new and interesting things then it will be interesting to see which direction they head. This still might not happen, it may take years for them to get to that point and by then who know what the media server echo-system will look like. Who knows they might be trail blazers, but they have had 18 months or so and they are still trying to sort out what they are keeping and what they are throwing away so who know what is going to happen.

[Carlo 4560]

SyncPlay has been asked for by some, but it always seems like a novelty to me for some reason.  I try to figure out how exactly people would use this or why?  I mean I get with lock down with Covid 19 people would want to do a movie night among friends/family but do you need to watch it directly in sync to the second?  Are people doing conference calls during the movie and talking at the same time?  That to me would not be enjoyable and would be worse then the person yapping during a movie behind you at the Theater.

Something else worth mentioning is that a lot of code changes they are making Emby has already done in some form or another in the code we run here.  They are using an Emby 3.x version as their base while Emby went through something of a major change to V4 which included database as well as code changes and many speed improvements and refinements as well as new and changed API calls. Not just for the Server but changes to the clients to work with the new V4 server that improve speed and make more efficient use of resources.

So performance quotes you'll see from them won't mean anything to us as we don't have their speed issues as we are running on a code base already optimized since then.

With very limited functional clients they likely aren't thinking long term with changes they make now and how it will affect a Roku for example.  They just don't have that experience yet under their belts and don't have developers working across these different platforms that understand how something changed here affects something over there.

Yep 18 months of "serious" work and they are just falling more and more behind on core features. Just wait until Emby releases the Live TV that is currently in heavy development and nearing the finish line. That will set them back even further in the features department on core services.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

9 minutes ago, cayars said:

Yep 18 months of "serious" work and they are just falling more and more behind on core features. Just wait until Emby releases the Live TV that is currently in heavy development and nearing the finish line. That will set them back even further in the features department on core services.

I wonder where the really important stuff, to me, would be if Emby had not "wasted" so much time and effort on the "live TV" functionality. 

I know others, maybe even most but I don't think so, really wanted live TV incorporated in Emby with all the bells and whistles possible but I feel that Emby is a media streaming system and not a record TV system. It is a functionality that exists in many many other apps and Emby, I think, does not really need to bring everything under its umbrella. It is already quite crowded under that umbrella and much more is just excessive.

If people want "live TV" it should have been added as a plugin so that the code overhead and extra maintenance only impacts the people that want the feature. It may be dead code for those of us that do not turn it on but it is still code within the body of the program and the developers still have to take it into account whenever modifying Emby. I bet that less than 10% of Emby users actually use or want TV functionality inside Emby.

I do not think live TV or recorded TV is of enough real importance to make it part of this debate.

But those that want TV are a much louder group than those of us that think it is mostly a waste so it will go on and grow and envelope all that Emby has been until, eventually, Emby loses touch with its original user base.

JellyFin has already lost touch but they are not trying to be the media client/server system for all users but rather just for their rather limited user base.

[Carlo 4560]

Sure we all have different wants and needs from our media servers. Things that appeal to me may not to you and vice versa. That is natural of course!

But Live TV is something a large portion of users wanted and use daily and is part of cutting the cord mentality that many have and want.  Being able to manage all your video media on one platform is also something many want.  They don't want one platform for "static" content and another for TV/DVR and have to switch apps.

Live TV is crazy complicated to do right. Cable providers and broadcasters use their own version of "specs" and codecs that often times break things since the streams they produce are technically out of spec.  To the providers it doesn't matter much if what they do works with their equipment. There's mismatch of interlace and progressive to mpeg2 and h.264 with some providers using h.265. Different frame rates galore as well. There's a similar thing with audio using all kinds of different formats but audio is even worse as it can change during the broadcast.  5.1 for the show with stereo during advertisements not to mention CC (closed captions) and the different ways of doing this.

What comes out of development for Live TV and transcoding is a much more robust transcoder for both software and hardware across the board even if you have no use for Live TV. Numerous enhancements have been added to the platform because of Live TV.  If Emby hadn't added Live TV directly into the product it would still be dealing with many of the same issues anyway as people would use 3rd party programs to record shows/movies then just move them over to an Emby library where the issue would show up anyway.  That was getting pretty common even before Emby directly added Live TV.  So if you have to deal with these issues anyway you might as well try to control it from the start and make a better overall experience.

Of course as most know already there is active work on a new Live TV project for Emby that will build on everything already learned.

So while you may not think Live TV is important is really is because it affects you anyway even if you don't realize it.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

30 minutes ago, cayars said:

But Live TV is something a large portion of users wanted and use daily and is part of cutting the cord mentality that many have and want. 

To me live TV as part of cord cutting is as much an contradiction as going camping to get away from technology and taking TV and Tablets with you.

33 minutes ago, cayars said:

So while you may not think Live TV is important is really is because it affects you anyway even if you don't realize it.

I know it affects me and that is a large part of why I do not think it belongs in Emby. 

I think the adverse feeling toward "switching apps" is somehow wrong thinking. It is easy to switch apps to do different things but it is hard to shoehorn everything inside one wrapper. I still do not believe that the majority of user want live TV inside of Emby and some, maybe most, of those that do do not see that the more that is forced inside one wrapper the greater the chance of bugs and real performance problems. Improvements are also easier if there is less under the hood to go wrong.

In a lot of ways I miss the days when speed and small size were some of the most important parts of a program rather than like now where programs are allowed to bloat with little consideration for how much load they place on the system they run on.

But I am clearly in the minority and I will just content myself with the fact that Emby continues to function pretty well. I am just emotionally opposed to cramming a lot of functions into one wrapper. Just Like I believe that "smart" TVs are a mistake. The smarts belong outside the TV as far as I am concerned.

[Carlo 4560]

Cord cutting isn't just about cutting the cord from the Cable company but also about reducing costs if using Cable. For me it's more like "cutting the boxes".

As a personal example, with 4 TVs in the house with access to cable I'd have 3 cable box fess of $10 each.  I get the first cable box or cable cards for free.

Xfinity also has a $10 digital subscriber fee if using their boxes.

So I got rid of all 4 cable boxes. Told them I have a dual card DVR that requires 2 cable cards.  I got the 2 cards instead of the first cable box.

So by "cutting the cord" I reduced my cable bill by $40 (plus tax and fees)  per month thanks to using Emby. The HDHomeRun Primes and OTA Quatro I have as well as Emby lifetime was easily paid for in short time and now I've got a much better system and save roughly $45 per month and have a system I can use not only on my TVs but from phones, tablets, PCs both locally and remote.  It's more convenient, more powerful and far more usable as a whole with virtually no storage limits or risk of loosing shows if the box dies.

You TOTALLY missed the point of what I was getting at on advancements in Emby transcoding due to Live TV. Try re-reading it. Emby needs to be able to play back all types of media and DVR is one of them REGARDLESS if it did the recording or NextPVR did the recording.  Emby still needs to be able to handle the peculiarities of DVR sourced material.

I agree some users may not want to do actual recording of Live TV inside Emby and may want to use a different app but most will want the recorded media inside Emby for easy playback to all their devices.  They will want Emby to be able to play back that media for sure and that's the point.  Live TV/DVR isn't just about the recording but what happens with the media after it's recorded (regardless where it took place) and how to handle it since it most definitely different that a disc rip.

Just like you, I have my own opinion of things I'd love to see removed from Emby so a dev never need touch it.  Games for example are something I've never used, nor ever will. Music is something I can do without in Emby as well as I personally use it for videos. I'd be fine if they stopped making server build for all kinds of devices and only built a server for Windows.  I don't use apple devices so those clients get the boot as well. Xbox, Theater, LG and Samsung TVs, blah, free up that time as well.  Oh I can do without my Roku clients as well as MiBox S is "better" so Emby can just focus on PC and Android.  Obviously making a point that we all have personal feelings of what's useful and not.  We all tend to care about things that we personally use and not so much what other people use or want.

On another note, I have no factual information to back this up but if I were to wager, I'd think that Live TV/DRV is one of the main reasons people subscribe to Emby Premiere which helps fund the development of everything. So it also factors in from that standpoint as well.

BTW, everything just posted is nothing but a personal opinion.  We all have one. LOL

Edited July 22, 2020 by cayars

[WilhelmStroker 102]

I installed Jellyfin the other day and pointed it at a few movies. Their clients are miles behind emby and the few movies I tried playing were transcoding, using 100% cpu. Both emby and plex direct play the same file with no issues. 

[vdatanet 1617]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

Cord cutting isn't just about cutting the cord from the Cable company but also about reducing costs if using Cable. For me it's more like "cutting the boxes".

As a personal example, with 4 TVs in the house with access to cable I'd have 3 cable box fess of $10 each.  I get the first cable box or cable cards for free.

Xfinity also has a $10 digital subscriber fee if using their boxes.

So I got rid of all 4 cable boxes. Told them I have a dual card DVR that requires 2 cable cards.  I got the 2 cards instead of the first cable box.

So by "cutting the cord" I reduced my cable bill by $40 (plus tax and fees)  per month thanks to using Emby. The HDHomeRun Primes and OTA Quatro I have as well as Emby lifetime was easily paid for in short time and now I've got a much better system and save roughly $45 per month and have a system I can use not only on my TVs but from phones, tablets, PCs both locally and remote.  It's more convenient, more powerful and far more usable as a whole with virtually no storage limits or risk of loosing shows if the box dies.

You TOTALLY missed the point of what I was getting at on advancements in Emby transcoding due to Live TV. Try re-reading it. Emby needs to be able to play back all types of media and DVR is one of them REGARDLESS if it did the recording or NextPVR did the recording.  Emby still needs to be able to handle the peculiarities of DVR sourced material.

I agree some users may not want to do actual recording of Live TV inside Emby and may want to use a different app but most will want the recorded media inside Emby for easy playback to all their devices.  They will want Emby to be able to play back that media for sure and that's the point.  Live TV/DVR isn't just about the recording but what happens with the media after it's recorded (regardless where it took place) and how to handle it since it most definitely different that a disc rip.

Just like you, I have my own opinion of things I'd love to see removed from Emby so a dev never need touch it.  Games for example are something I've never used, nor ever will. Music is something I can do without in Emby as well as I personally use it for videos. I'd be fine if they stopped making server build for all kinds of devices and only built a server for Windows.  I don't use apple devices so those clients get the boot as well. Xbox, Theater, LG and Samsung TVs, blah, free up that time as well.  Oh I can do without my Roku clients as well as MiBox S is "better" so Emby can just focus on PC and Android.  Obviously making a point that we all have personal feelings of what's useful and not.  We all tend to care about things that we personally use and not so much what other people use or want.

On another note, I have no factual information to back this up but if I were to wager, I'd think that Live TV/DRV is one of the main reasons people subscribe to Emby Premiere which helps fund the development of everything. So it also factors in from that standpoint as well.

BTW, everything just posted is nothing but a personal opinion.  We all have one. LOL

I am a satisfied user of Emby's Live TV but I think it is a risk that Emby allocates so many resources on Live TV. I speak from the point of view of what happens in Spain, I do not know if the situation is similar in other countries.

Free live television in Spain is pure rubbish. We have several options to contract pay television packages, IPTV, satellite, cable ... But most require using the software and hardware of the providers. DRM, DRM and more DRM.

The only provider that allows Emby to use Live TV, using multicast RTP, is incorporating DRM in the channels.

Therefore, although Emby's live TV is great for me, I think that in a couple of years or less, I will no longer be able to use it.

Can you confirm if this scenario is repeated in other countries and if Emby has taken it into account?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

12 minutes ago, vdatanet said:

Free live television in Spain is pure rubbish. We have several options to contract pay television packages, IPTV, satellite, cable ... But most require using the software and hardware of the providers. DRM, DRM and more DRM.

Commercial television is pretty much crap everywhere. In the immortal words of Mr. Hitchcock, "Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs."

and from another source:

"I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called 'brightness', but it doesn't work'" Gallagher

[Carlo 4560]

I can understand why some people would say that if all you care about is TV Shows and Movies as there are other ways to get and build up content.

I've got a pretty massive system storage and content wise, but still watch a lot of live TV or near live TV but not normally for shows or movies.

I'm a sports junky so any football (american), baseball, hockey, basketball or racing (F1, Nascar, etc) and I'm either recording or watching it.  During football season I watch every game every week and have 3 large screens in the living room just for NFL. I've got close to 8 years of complete coverage stored away and that's only NFL. That's only professional sports but I also love many college sports as well.  This year due to Covid-19 things are sucking.

But that's besides the point.  If you are into sport and like to watch live stuff then live broadcasts are the thing and there really is no substitute if into sports especially for the home team if you can get coverage via OTA.

So the importance of Live TV depends on interests and how you use it.  If it wasn't for my interest in sports I'd likely not have cable at all.  Probably still OTA but likely not cable or IPTV.

[Carlo 4560]

1 hour ago, vdatanet said:

I am a satisfied user of Emby's Live TV but I think it is a risk that Emby allocates so many resources on Live TV. I speak from the point of view of what happens in Spain, I do not know if the situation is similar in other countries.

Free live television in Spain is pure rubbish. We have several options to contract pay television packages, IPTV, satellite, cable ... But most require using the software and hardware of the providers. DRM, DRM and more DRM.

The only provider that allows Emby to use Live TV, using multicast RTP, is incorporating DRM in the channels.

Therefore, although Emby's live TV is great for me, I think that in a couple of years or less, I will no longer be able to use it.

Can you confirm if this scenario is repeated in other countries and if Emby has taken it into account?

TV is wildly different across the globe.  In one area you may get 5 to 10 channels while in another over 1000 via cable all DRM free.

DRM is a killer to 3rd party DVRs like Emby that stream to multiple clients, no side-stepping that. DRM basically limits you to playing back content on the device that recorded it assuming it can handle DRM or an authorized client that supports DRM.

We live in an ever expanding global market where things will change.  Live TV/DVR will get worse in some areas and will get better in other areas. Some DVRs are able to make use of TV Everywhere to record content, even some channels that have DRM on the local cable subscription.

I doubt anyone can do more than an educated guess as to what things will look like 2 years from now in most areas.  I've stopped trying  and only worry about year out.  So if I can break even or better on what I want to do vs cost I'm good.

Emby has Live TV/DVR for those that want to use it and can be ignored by those that don't want to use it, admin prerogative!

But keep in mind a lot of people subscribe to Emby Premiere just for Live TV/DVR functionality so it's only right that Emby spend time working and improving a part of the system that was the "hook" for them to get Premiere. Development on other parts of the system continue as well.