Emby

So much of this app works great and far better than Jellyfin, where I just migrated from. The player and media loads up far faster, and you can actually change transcoding quality on the fly without waiting 30 seconds for the player to reset as is the case with Jellyfin. But the UI still has jank that doesn’t feel right for a service asking for over $100 to fully take advantage of your own media and hardware. Most obvious and constant is the top navigation bar, which: -When scrolling down: instantly flashes and hides the logo and buttons, turns gray, and slides to the top of the screen at a different rate than your scrolling. Doesn’t seem intentional. -When scrolling back up: slides the logo and buttons down smoothly along with a gray background that nicely blurs images behind it only instantly/jankily hide said background and shoot the scroll bar to the top of the screen when you get back to the top of the menu. It seems nitpicky, but these are the details that makes the experience feel polished and satisfying, and what Plex offers that Emby doesn’t. Or they can fix this issues and others like it, I would find no reason not to recommend Emby over all others TL/DR: Many things work well, but jank and lack of polish hold this back from feeling worth the extra $$$ over Jellyfin.

With Microsoft dropping Windows Media Center and the advent of Windows 10, I have been searching for my Media Center replacement for more than two years. I began with Plex, but have abandoned it in favor of Emby as Emby’s interface is more configurable and easier to use. I like Emby’s clean and simple design over Plex’s “never-ending movie poster” theme. Emby works very well for me on iPhone X, Surface and an Intel NUC which is now my primary media room device. There are occasional issues (stream won’t initiate on rare occasions, scrapers could be a bit better, content downloads sometimes don’t kick off) and there are some features that I would like to see implemented (Apple CarPlay client, ability to watch protected content e.g. PlayReady, ability to restart computer from within Emby, etc.) but all-in-all, I’m very pleased with the functionality and, again, the interface. I started as a monthly subscriber, but am changing to lifetime as I believe Emby to be the better choice for the future. I also respect that the apparent lead developer, Luke, is very active in responding to complaints, concerns and requests. Kudos on directly supporting your user base! So in summary, I am not seeing the issues that others complain of and so far find Emby to be a great Media Center replacement. Good enough that it has now become my sole home infotainment solution and, given the developer’s customer care ethic, given me confidence that the product will continue to be meticulously developed in the future.