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Comment on Plex’s crackdown on free remote streaming access starts this week - Ars Technica

Years ago I decided to go with Emby over Plex only because at the time plex didnt support kodi integration and I enjoyed using that at the time for my front-end user experience. Within 6 months they started supporting it and I was upset since I did want to go with plex. Lately I feel like I made the perfect decision. It’s gotta be close to 10 years now and I paid one $100 lifetime fee for Emby and still use it everyday along with some family and friends I gave access to. Also gotta remember I dont believe jellyfin was even an option at that time. I tried it not to long ago and although it was fine, I actually think I liked emby a little more.

As for the remote access, how do they block it? Do they not allow you to setup your own remote connection that does not involve plex? Thats how I do it, I do not use emby connect to make it easier to go through them I just setup my own domain, use ddns, and configure the ports I want exposed and thats it. If plex doesnt allow that then thats already crazy, if they do and even thats now blocked then thats even crazier.

Emby may be simpler, and i heard about plex having a music AI feature that I was actually jealous of, but overall it just works and not paying anything in forever will always be my preferred method over awful monthly subscriptions anyday.

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Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Plex centralizes authentication at plex.tv

When a user wants to connect to a ‘private’ plex server, they must first sign into their plex.tv account, which then provides the auth token needed to login to the users server (even if both the client and server are on the same lan)

With this system, Plex can monitor and control every single connection to every plex server; limiting access to whatever they want. Even your own local content.

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- HeyJoe@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Dam thats what I thought. Emby has something similar but doesnt force you to use it so I don’t.
  
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  - Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Emby has what they call ‘Emby Connect’ which is entirely optional and is basically a glorified DNS service.
    
    It doesn’t proxy connections, it just passes on the hostname to the client. The server is still required to setup port forwarding or other routing like tailscale or a proxy on a vps.
    
    Emby Connect will let you sign into your local server using your emby.media credentials, but unlike Plex it’s completely optional and only works once explicitly linked to the local user of an Emby server.
    
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Know_not_Scotty_does@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I bought the Emby lifetime license about 2 years ago when the plex remote streaming stuff first started getting talked about. It coincided with my server refresh so it ended up working out. I have been really happy with Emby so far.

One thing to note is that music streaming on remote devices is WAY better on plex, Emby behaves more like a mapped network drive running over the internet to a local music player that then forgets your position on pause or when you move away from the remote app/device whereas Plex is actually functional as a modern music player. I keep a local copy of my music library on my phone anyways and okay through Gonemad so it is a non-issue for me but Emby should work better than it does in that case.

Plex also allows/provides “live” tv (with ads) which can be nice if you are into that, and there is the “free” streaming library too which Emby doesn’t offer. I’ll keep plex around for those features but non-of my stuff is/will be hosted on Plex.

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- HeyJoe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yeah, as a big music fan I have always been disappointed in Embys music functionality. I followed the discussions around this on there site and I was a bit disappointed by the response. They were getting the same feedback around how bad it is and it should be revamped or even have a dedicated app just for music and they just dismissed it basically saying we’ll it can be something we may do later on but dont hold your breath and that they believe it works fine the way it is and dont agree it will help.
  
  Luckily I really didnt care to use it for music anyway. I already had a Subsonic (now Navidrome) server for that. It would have been nice for a few things, but ultimately it was fine. The cool part is the android app Symfonium is the best music app I have ever used and it connects to all the servers to pull data. I obviously still use navidrome, but I could just pull from emby as well with it.
  
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