Media Manager that Works - Emby

Channels Apple TV
#1

Mid summer I posted a workaround to be able to use Infuse/Plex to aggregate/view all recorded files. Recorded TV Filenames for Media Managers and Metadata.

Over the last several months I have tried & tried to convince Plex to change their methodology to be able to to playback mpegts files with an appropriate ffd/rew schema. Not happening…and only continues to get worse.

My libraries consist of: Recordings from: SDDVR (100’s), Channels DVR (almost 1,000) and other DVR file types (100’s). I wanted a Media Manager to combine all in one view with appropriate metadata & images, etc. Mostly we just use Channels playback (it’s the best-either iOS or tvOS), but there are times we want to pick from all available recordings.

Yesterday, I finally decided that Plex has so many problems with playback of recorded broadcast programs, compounded with their unusable DVR implementation, that it will possibly (probably) be months before resolved. Also, there was substantial delay when using Plex as a backend for other players (Infuse, MrMC). So I went in search of another solution.

Loaded Emby on my iMac (2011) and it is fantastic. Like Plex, it aggregates files from multiple libraries and file types (not quite as elegant with duplicates as Plex), however it is capable of playback for ALL of these files (notably mpegts) with proper ffd/rew…no hesitations, spins, stalls, transcoder failures as seen via Plex playback.

Emby can also serve as a UPnP backend to MrMC (and probably Infuse) without excessive load times (as when using Plex)…almost instanteous.

I still have more testing to do, and I would rather be able to run this on Nvidia Shield (Emby is now actively looking at this capability)…my Qnap 251A NAS is probably too under powered, no capable Windows PC, so for now iMac will be on 24/7.

But FINALLY, I think I have my ideal solution with Channels DVR and Emby. :clap:

#2

Emby seems to be maturing nicely. I’m still using Plex but agree with you about the issues they have.

One thing that Emby can’t do yet, I think, is iOS syncing. It’s been promised for a while. Is that still the case?

Also agree that Channels is the best :smiley:

Thanks

#3

Quick Update:

NOTE: Emby isn’t working yet with tvOS Beta 11.2

However, I found that on ATV 4th gen, it does have Siri (Voice) search enabled for recorded shows. Channels hasn’t added this feature (see: Feature Request: Siri Search), but this capability is a fantastic addition for us.

What a relief to find a full featured Media Manager and player for ALL (pre-Channels & Channels DVR) recordings after struggling with Plex (1 year) and it’s continued inability to properly playback mpegts & H.264 recordings (can’t properly play it’s own DVR recordings…what a failure :rage:).

#4

Still enjoying using Emby as a media manager (vs Plex…which is still unuseable for proper playback of mpegts files).

I was able to setup on ATV 4K, however, Emby is solely employing the Apple TV player for tvOS. Therefore, when utilizing FFD/REW one is limited to ‘blindly guessing” commercial breaks in order to skip. There is no capability of setting 30sec ffd/10rew or other. You must ffd and then start replay by judging the timeline incremental time. On Apple files, one can view the forward progress on screen…but not on Emby.

As this is not really acceptable, I’ve started using MrMC for playback on tvOS (using Emby as the backend aggregator). This works OK.

Of course, nothing compares to native Channels playback for it’s own recorded files (with comm skip), but for viewing ALL files this solution is the closest to the ease/precision of Channels playback that I’ve been able achieve.

Still haven’t been able to re-record all our previous years of DVR recordings in Channels. Looking forward to the day that ALL files have a recording in Channels. :grin: