theusedversion
Member
https://emby.media/
So a year or two ago a gaffer introduced me to Emby because I really wasn't feeling Kodi or some of the other alternatives. I tried it out and instantly fell in love with it. Now I want to return the favor and share with the rest of you.
First of all, it's free! (I think only the Windows Store app is not free). It's more comparable to Plex in features than anything, I think. You can setup your media server and beam all of your movies, music, photos to all of your devices over WiFi or the internet. They have apps for just about everything. Windows, Mac, Linux, NAS Devices, FreeBSD, AndroidTV, Amazon FireTV, Chromecast, Roku, Windows Media Center, Xbox 360, Samsung SmartTV, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows Store App, and an HTML 5 Web app. No idea if they are working on current gen consoles. They also have a standalone media player called Emby Theater (only works with Emby) which is comparable to Kodi. They also have a plugin for Kodi so you can use Emby for your backend and Kodi for your frontend if you desire to do so. The plugin works flawlessly in my experience.
It's pretty simple to setup and it does everything automatically so you only have to point it to your media files and it will do the rest. They are constantly updating it. The community is fantastic. You can quickly get answers to issues you are having. On the forums you can get additional artwork and whatnot to spice up your experience. A huge update is in the works that will make creating themes really simple (so much so that even the average user can do it). So expect to see a lot of changes in that regard in the future.
One of the best features of Emby is how easy it is to handle your metadata. If you've ever used Kodi, you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to make metadata changes, especially to a large collection. Emby is fantastic in this regard and you will see in the photos at the end of the post. Emby has a Metadata Manager where you can make all the metadata changes in one easy location.
Let's see... what else? Emby has plugins that you can utilize. I don't have much experience with this but the ones I have tried seemed to work just fine. You can setup external access so you can access your collection from anywhere. Or setup profiles and share your collection with friends and family over the net. You can setup collections within your library. You can do this for titles like all the Star Wars movies or your favorite actors/actresses, studios, whatever. There are tons of sorting and filter options (I should probably add images of this). You can also setup the web client to launch VLC or MPC with some third party plugins.
So here is the web client which is probably how you will be accessing your media in the beginning to get everything setup. You can use this exclusively if you want. It's fully functional as it is and runs great in a browser.
1. Standard library view. 2. Title view. 3. Title view. 4. Title view. 5. Actor view. 6. Edit function within in title/library. 7. Edit function within in title/library. 8. Edit images. 9. Genres. 10. Studios. 11. Collections. 12. Suggestions. 13. Server settings. 14. Plugins. 15. Metadata Manager. 16. Playing movie
Here is the Emby Android app. It's really slick and works great. It's fully functional and you can do just about anything with the app that you can do with the web client (there's probably something but I can't think of anything at the moment..
1. Standard library view. 2. Title view. 3. Title view. 4. Title view. 5. Title view. 6. Edit images. 7. Actor view. 8. Actor view. 9. Title options. 10. Edit metadata. 11. Edit metadata. 12. Genres.
Lastly, here are some images of Emby Theater and one lone image of Kodi showing that the two do work together. Theater is pretty bare bones compared to Kodi. It's a really basic player at this point.
1. Home screen. 2. Title view. 3. Title view. 4. Playing movie. 5. Actor view. 6. Genres. 7. Kodi library view.
Note: TV, Music, etc are pretty much identical to movies to in all of these screens so I figured there is no need to show images of those.
Note 2: They do offer a premier subscription which offers a few features. But it's not much and I think it's most there to show your support for the developers instead of them trying to make bank off of sales. I haven't subscribed but it offers things like a cinema mode that will show trailers before your movie plays kind of like you are at a theater watching it. Also a few exclusive plugins. Some other things as well which you can find on the website.
Note 3: Sorry if my writing comes off as an advertisement or PR. I assure you that I am in no way affiliated with these guys and you can probably find the thread where Emby was recommended to me here on GAF if you really wanted to.
Extra links
Emby Community
Emby Downloads page
