Plex VS Emby Media Server on a Synology NAS in 2021

[Music] hello and welcome back and today we want to look at plex media server versus mv which should you use as your media server of choice on your nas in 2021 now it's worth highlighting that i have talked about one of these more than the other i've talked a lot about plex over the last couple of years i've talked about transcoding abilities and extra features and this that and the other but mb is a subject i've touched on very very lightly over the years now a lot of that has had to do with the idea that i've made a lot of these videos and there's only a finite amount of time to cover certain topics i have picked plex overall in the last few years but it has to have been said the number of you more and more have been raising the subject of mb whereas places become a probably a little bit more corporate feeling i think that's arguably correct uh for a number of you mb has kind of stayed a lot more to its roots over the years and more and more of you who have been utilizing plex and and more and more features have made their way behind klex pass have wondered about the viability of switching to mb on their nas now a few things about today's comparison i think it's very very very important to get off the bat early doors number one we are using a synology nas we're using the ds 920 plus this nas here we're going to be utilizing throughout the course of this video it's not hugely important um because mb does run on the majority of nas systems and although it's not readily available in the app center you can go directly to mb and download it and get the app yourself and manually install it plex media server on the other hand is still readily available both in dsm 6.2 and the sm7 moving forward but it's just mb is not in the app center and a number of users aren't even aware they can use mb uh because they have to download it independently and there's only people that have been using mb for a number of years previously have decided uh to stick with it on the nas system so although we are using a synology you can largely ignore that the next thing i want you to bear in mind is this is not going to be some fully fledged 1000 movie comparison setup of these media servers i've tried to keep things as user friendly and understandable as possible and this video although a number of you are going to want to are going to have used mb or plex previously i'm trying to make this video aimed at people that have either used neither of them or have only used one of them so sometimes i'm going to tell you things that you already know and i apologize in advance for that the next thing to bear in mind is i've tried to create these setups as day one as possible i've set both of these up i'm using the 920 you can see it's trying to connect to an old nas there on plex media server but i am using uh plex media server on the 920 with a relatively fresh build i've put the media on it i've used the default directories uh and to scan for the metadata and set it up and i've pointed it at exactly the same directories um here on plex as i have done on mb on mb i've directed all of those different databases to the exact same directories i've enabled all of the default settings so all of the metadata you'll see on screen are the ones that are available uh you know to you immediately but what i will say is that i have not tinkered with this setup a lot so there might be things where you'll say to me oh well oh i can see there's something in that setup why didn't you go into library and then go into movies and then re-enable some of the options i've enabled the default options i've not played beyond that the reason being is i think one of the biggest criticisms a lot of people have with mb is it has got a little bit more of a learning curve than plex not a huge learning curve but it does require a little bit more tinkering to get the most out of it but arguably you do get a better more customizable user interface uh on nb than you will on plex and this is that whole feeling of individuality versus corporate business versus indie that sort of thing and on plex media server here on the left on the 920 we've got um we've got tv shows we've got some movies and we've got some of that testing we use for plex media server videos in the past but another disclaimer i'm really sorry to have an elongated intro on this i am using plex pass here on the nas server for plex and a standard free service on mb now a number of you will highlight that is a little bit unfair to use the paid subscription on plex and the free service on mb i will highlight as much as possible every single thing that i point out on plex that is behind uh plex pass the paid premium service um all the way through this it's just the fact i can't disable the plex pass features i would have had to create a whole new account and i think a lot of this i'm going to use the sub and the media we've used before and given this nas is linked it was just a lot more um hassle and reversal and cancelling of contracts to remove the plex path so when i talk about things that are plex pass related such as hardware transcoding i will highlight that later in the video also i'm only using the web-based guis so we're not using amazon fire stick roku mobile phones we're only looking at the web interface today so this doesn't really represent the whole service of both of these as a whole so that was that incredibly long intro what what's obs telling us we've been knocking on for a good four or five minutes right now let's have a look so let's first talk about these two devices and their user interface um i will say straight off the bat that i believe plex is the better looking user interface at least on the graphical user interface there's a lot of customization it has to be said but i think whether you're coming into plex um via the web browser or the desktop even on the home service there i think it just looks better overall i think plex has got a nice slicker design you can customize um the the layout on mb if you go into the settings on display you can change the display mode if you like to see how it's going to look on mobile how it's going to look on desktop but again for the sake of this video i'm going to keep it on the desktop view and also you can play with different uh themes on mb but again that is behind a paywall there so do bear that in mind that that is part of their premium level service there let's uh with the premium services open up in another tab we can have a little look uh at the cost structure there you can see it's five dollars a month fifty four dollars a year or lifetime for 120 so again very comparable a pinch less i'd say in some cases than plex and some of the services that we talked about are going to need premium features there on envy as you can see they're on screen lots of it there all the stuff with cinema mode and the trailers at the beginning all of them slightly behind paywalls there and the same thing goes for plex as well so there's a lot of i would say uh similarity on both of them there in terms of what you have to pay for in terms of services but the customization of that user interface is one of those features plex on the other hand can't be customized the user interface is pretty much what you see what you get there's very little you can do in terms of design you can change the layout you can change the order of things you can change some of the things that are available on screen if you make your way directly into the nas server there we've got listings there and you can change the order and what you can see on screen but that's about it the actual aesthetic in the background is pretty much fixed on plex media server so yes in terms of design even though plex is less customizable um on the free service i would still say it looks better overall with or without plex media servers uh pass plex pass there um i would say an installation as well plex obviously has the upper hand on most of the nas brands given that they still list plex media server in their available app center whereas mb you do have to go the kind of unofficial installation route and i do have an installation video coming up very very soon on that um but another thing i would say definitely in terms of mb and i've already touched on this early doors i think it's highlighting it again the customization of mb is first class whether you go into the settings here the the sheer level of customization is just unbeatable if we go into the the nas settings here of customization we'll manage this server settings we'll look at the user interface of both of these i might zoom in ever so slightly there on the s1 the options can seem a little intimidating uh it has to be said here on mb if we go for the options we'll talk about users as well in a moment but with regards to the library options there's a lot thrown at you um as i say can be a little bit intimidating and it does make a point of highlighting which options are behind the premium uh um mb premiere service whereas when you look on the plex side of things it will gray out i know you can't see it here but it will gray out options that are behind the paywall of uh plex another thing i will say um you do need the uh premium service from plex in order to enjoy the dashboard for real-time information about your system whereas on mb you can just scroll straight on down and go to the plugins section and there are absolutely loads of analytical options absolutely loads of services extra add-ons and server add-ons as well drive health statistical information absolutely loads plex has kind of pulled away from the plug-in side of things they've they used to support a lot more third-party add-ons and although there is work around largely you cannot take advantage of plug-ins and add-ons on plex they've really closed a lot of the doors on that um so not only is uh mb significantly more customizable i would argue it also is a lot more open in terms of what you can do and what you get out of it and enjoy particularly some of the the services that you can install some of the services that you can enjoy and so again if we go ahead and install that app there this will install that application as you can see it's installed and as soon as that server's restarted we're able to enjoy that application there and some of those extras there's just loads of stuff there and the customization is unparalleled um another area of customization and individuality that i think uh mb brings to the table that's significantly better than plex is its handling of metadata um so if we go into the library settings there and we go into uh back into the server there so we'll go back into the user interface we look at it then we'll go into the film section there's our film section there and we go back into envy and we look at the film section here so we're going to latest movies straight away one of the earliest things you immediately see there is more metadata has been scraped by mb if we look at the matrix there the matrix it's got the information there in the background it's got the scores it's got the length it's you know got information on it you can scroll on down find out more information about it there in the background you can even watch a trailer if you choose select the trailer option and make sure obs isn't recording the audio no it's not as you can see there is a trailer for the matrix all there in the background we can flick between it and that's because it's found it from those online resources and again this is the free version of envy there's even the stuff with the actors there all the way along the bottom you can scroll along if you choose a good old keano there because keanu reeves um is only in one movie on this on this nas server could have not fully populated it with different movies you can go to the imdb pages and find out more about the actor there now if we go back to that user interface there we can scroll down we've got lots of analytical information about the files that we're utilizing there if we flick over to the plex server the matrix there it's got a little bit of information it's building some information there in the background but it wasn't able to find the trailer poster uh the background there and although we've got some extras and behind the scenes some lovely stuff there we don't actually have the one most important information the the bit that we want the most we want to see the poster now it's not you know it hasn't failed utterly if we look at say for example uh pulp fiction and we go on to pulp fiction here on this one we can see there pulp fiction it did have the thumbnail generated image for the poster there we've got information i would argue there's a little bit more information on mb there's even the images of the actors there so we can look at what it says about old johnny t there john travolta john travolta was one there it didn't immediately give us real-time information about the actor it didn't feel very intuitive i would have expected to click on that and it would have immediately shown me more about the actor as you can see there on mb that said a lot more background information has been scraped here by plex some of that has to be said are behind the plex pass but still nonetheless it was still able to pull that information very quickly and very readily there in the background for us now it's worth highlighting once again that both of these are pulling from exactly the same source if we go into the back end there of our server go into the settings go into the library go into movies go we can see that both of them are pulling from exactly the same folder so it's the same file all the way through but if we go into the advanced tab here for what it's pulling where it's pulling information from you can see that the trailers the extras and the automated stuff is behind that plex part it's all paid for there also with the cast list and the sources you've got different sources there but you can't pull from all of them at once and then choose the best one whereas on mb you can choose metadata downloaders from multiple sites and then it says about lowest priority downloaders will be used to fill in the missing information so you can actually select multiple sources rather than the one but what's really cool is how much of it can be saved locally a lot of this information is not saved locally in plex in plex a lot of this information is held in temp but not saved in any formal way a lot of the information is saved on the server inside the plex files but it's not readily saved so you can a lot of information about the library there you can go in some of it's held in the background you look at the metadata sorry wrong one let's go back and if you go into the nas for the metadata in the movies there is the information stored under library files contents and there we go there's some information being stored there but it's still not as customizable as it is on mb which allows us to select where we want the data saved same goes all the way down to the subtitles too and once again all of this in the free package you can even have the metadata saved as an nfo file which is always useful because then you can package that data together for using another media server later so yeah let's save our work save it bang saved it's that straightforward and now we're saving all of that information quite easily and if we go into the even advanced settings there's even more settings and again i'm not going to play with these because the agreement was we're looking at the default setups here but still nonetheless there's a lot more background options there readily available for information there in the background on the mb server and ultimately a more creative and better looking user interface overall now another thing i'm going to take issue with um on the plex side of things tv programs once again we're going to tv programs we'll go into it there we'll go to manage library we'll go into there same goes on mb we're going to look into the management server we're going to go into the library we're going to go into tv shows as you can see they are exactly the same directory volume 1 ds 920 share plex media server plex test media tv shows exactly the same location and again there's all the ticks all that stuff that happens there on mb on uh the plex i'm using the plex pass so it is the paid for version as you can see all the stuff with trailers there we can add stuff all of that stuff's all built in but we're only seeing three shows there's only three shows listed whereas if you go onto the nb server and we go into tv shows let's go back we don't want that we want all the shows we've got four shows listed not three it has managed to pick up uh the tv show black books all three series with the metadata all scraped there in the background whereas on the plex media server it only selected three which is a real shame because clicks is generally held in very high regard for its metadata scraping indeed it's a far more established platform i believe um than mb yet it still didn't scrape that data in the way that i would have assumed if we go into uh the fathertech file there we can look at how these two platforms deal with it as we see we've got the casting information there at the bottom but what we can also see is it's only seen one series it's still not selected all of that media whereas if we go back into here it's not only found all of them but it's also separated into individual series not seasons very important we can go into it there we can go ahead and find out more information we can look at a trailer for it again this is the free version on the right hand side and the paid version on the left is still pretty impressive indeed that it's managed to do all of that on the envy side of things in the freemium version be it the plex pass on this nas didn't seemingly pull all of that so again if we go in we can have a look we can see on that share we can go into the plex media files we can see all of that data is there we can go into tv shows and wallop there is our four shows all the data's there but for some reason it wasn't sourced there by the plex side of things so again that's another home run there for mb over plex now how does plex claw this back well one of the ways in which it claws things back i think quite significantly is the idea that klix arrives with a number of key background services that you can add lots of live tv stuff lots of online streaming platforms lots of music platforms lots of add-on services now this is both a curse and a blessing for many users because a lot of people have moved on to private media servers precisely to get away from all the stuff on the left-hand side of the screen there so whereas some people might quite like having access to all of these streaming services all of these different um extra bits of content generation some of it is locked behind plex pass payables and some of it is just unnecessary it feels a bit bloatware to some people so it's very hard for me to say it's a good or a bad thing because there's a different audience for this kind of thing um and some people just like the idea of an access to all of this but of course you can't download this media you're only watching it as a streaming platform the return of the street fighter my god that sounds awful um but all of this stuff here on plex is something a lot of users quite like but definitely not all of them and certainly not users that are moving away from third-party streaming platforms like netflix um and prime video and stuff like that a lot of the um kind of vr services arcade rom emulation and streaming support of plex a lot of people like it but it has to be said that not everyone does and i think plex could really do themselves a favor and steer away from that because it is starting to make them look a bit too bloaty as a platform overall now of course you come all this way you want to see how media is played so what we're going to do is we're going to select reservoir dogs on both of these platforms we're going to play them side by side and then i'm going to show you how each player utilizes the graphical user interface to play back these files because obviously this isn't going to be the same as if you're using an amazon fire stick or if you're utilizing the likes of your mobile phone to watch this media the web gui admittedly is not ideal to show off how these files are going to be played but i still think it's important to show it off bear in mind two things one of course that the um the trailers and the reviews and a lot of this extra stuff on plex once again is behind the plex pass but for now let's go ahead and play both of these files and show how each of them playback media let's go for it there again we can't really remove that background of that clicking that full screen button there so again i'm not 100 and i quite like that if i move that mouse off screen and what we're going to do is leave it for a moment to see if that background stuff disappears which it does so again both playing back nice and easily nice and straightforward it's like a a second or so difference between them from when i clicked play and they're both being played back so let's have a look at options on both of them so they're both um playing back in original format if we have a look it's going back to direct quality there so why don't we transcode on both of these in real time one cool little feature i am going to highlight very very quickly is this lovely feature stats for nerds it's attached on mb and allows you to see real-time information about the playback something that i think is missing in a big way on plex for people out there that like to see we've got this option here but still nonetheless there's a lot more ready information available within the window here here on mb then there is on plex which is showing us just this screen here at the bottom showing us the original playback quality so for now let's transcode on both of these um relatively simultaneously we're going to switch both of these now down to 360p file let's go back there 360. there isn't an option for 360. we're going to go for 328 what an absolute pain i'm going to see how both of these react once again bear in mind while it's doing all of this that in the case of the plex one we are using a plex pass membership so if we go in to 920 then obviously the resources now are being battered pretty hard we've got two media services right now that are both transcoding at the same time using the system although arguably the uh the synology in plex is utilizing hardware transcoding and software transcoding on mb so we're not really looking at the extent of the transcode because the extent of the transcode is more about the nas than it can possibly be about both of these programs but i might argue that things seem to be a little bit uh quicker on the uptake there on the mb side but once again because we're performing both these actions simultaneously that's not really a fair test overall so now we're going to um go back into the original quality flick back between them to original so again we'll go to quality again we'll go back to auto sorry took me an extra second there as we can see but they're seeing such a great film and again the plex uh the nerd information they're reacting quite beautifully again there's lots of little options one option that i couldn't really seem to get working in what i would argue as an aposite way was the picture in picture mode so if we go into uh this side of things on plex and we go to the mini sidebar there the pictures the film's still playing there at the bottom as you can see they're still playing along there in the background and again we can flick back into there but picture in picture on the web browser if we go for it there we can sync we can download the file we can do all these sorts of things but that's about it whereas on the nb server what we can do is enable picture in picture allowing us to move it around and you keep the tab open on your desktop but then it allows you to leave that playing there and flick onto other services there in the background all of that happening in real time with the mb side there playing in its own private window while you can do work on your pc and do all that sort of stuff that's quite a neat little feature i've got to say we can flick back to there now um of course if you do go picture-in-picture and then go back something we found out in our testing the file stops you can't play anymore so again i think in terms of playback i think the plex media server and the plex client there on the web browser certainly has the um more understated interface and certainly is a lot more intuitive on mb it is still intuitive we go back to letting that continue playing and we'll fast forward a little bit through both of them let that carry on and again we are screening something here that's probably not hugely youtube appropriate um we'll let that play on there if we look at the other options and they're all pretty similar from that point you can change the playback speed rotation that sort of thing skip forward and the same goes on this side of things it's probably a bit more button chewable on mb i will say i prefer the transcoding menu here on plex i think it's a little bit more intuitive overall i think playback quality on here although it differentiates between them all it doesn't really tell you much more it doesn't tell you enough about the picture quality and what it's performing so in terms of the user interface of the player i would definitely say that uh plex wins but i would say in terms of overall output and particularly that picture in picture mode as well as handling of subtitles i'm and the fact that it's included in the free side of things i would definitely give an edge there to mb in terms of general output of what they can both do so if we come out of it there we'll try a different show now we'll go into uh the tv shows just to make sure it's not a fluke uh we're going to file the ted so they've both got that we'll go into the first series of each of them both of them are using different graphics it's worth rla as well um i quite like the user interface of the tv shows being listed in this fashion i quite like that we can enable the background there i should have mentioned that soon if we go into that if we go into the listing mode we can make the images bigger we can even list by detail view and then they've got that but i just i do generally find it to be a little bit nicer there on the right hand side of the screen remember both of them even if i zoom in or out on both of them it doesn't make a blind bit of difference it doesn't show as much information i think it's presented just that tiny bit better here on screen on the mb side if we go into a file here we're going to the first one on both of them and again that's all the information readily available there on screen so if we go ahead and click play on both of them and again if you're not hearing the music to file pretending in your head while this is playing you're not bloody human um it's also worth highlighting again that there's love things like skip intro these can be enabled in mb but they're not enabled by default so that's something plex arrives and provides very early doors with a lot of ease gobby said um and one thing a number of you may have noticed already is the fact that when i click the file on mb it seemingly played quicker than it did on plex what i will say is of course we are playing them one after the other and the server has to handle the instruction in real time when that's happening so what we're going to do is just very quickly stop both of these files stop the both we're going to play a different file but this time we're going to start the plex one first because i think that's only fair that we go ahead and start plex first just to show that it's not one off so i'm going to select flex and then select mb go so again even in that play order it's still played first on mb mb seemingly played that file faster overall and if we go to the picture quality it is having to convert it down to 416 whereas here on the envy side it's had to auto convert it down to 480 due to the recording so this time we're going to use an original file we're going to use one that doesn't require transcoding at all and we're going to do that by going into the test file so let's go here let's go back back into the home area go into the test files and we're going to go with the three megabits per second hd file there we're not going to take advantage of hevc we're going to go with the standard h.264 file there so we're going to go ahead and select play now so we'll bring them both up there on screen and again i do think mb started a might bit faster the fact that both of these videos are seemingly running exactly the same frame almost effectively but i started the plex one first should give you a little idea so let's go and come out of that one we'll try a different file we're going to move up to the 10 megabits per second so that's the earliest 10 megabit version there so that'll be that file and it's 10 megapixel hd so we're going to get ready there to click play 10 megabits per second one two three go and again straight away the mb server played first even though this is the plex side it has to be said that mb seemingly opened that file faster with and again no conceivable advantage both on the same nas both using the same hardware both using the same directories and plex is even the premium version with it being played in the original picture quality on both of these systems auto direct by the way does mean original picture quality as you can see even finished the file first there so let's come out of it there we'll do one final test and this time we're going to run sort of slow more heavier file let's go into some 4k shall we so let's go into this one we're going to go into the 100 megabits per second h264 so that's that one there 100 megabits per second h.264 file there is the specifications there same goes here and again we're going to play this time are we going to play the plex version first 23 go oh no sorry absolute false alarm there one two three go moving my hand across the screen not quick enough there and again we are already seeing the nas struggle a little bit there with these denser files but once again the mb file had a faster uptake overall and now i'm interested to see if we go for our heaviest file what happens so let's go back there final testing let's go back come out of it there we're going to go for some real hefty file stuff so once again we're going to go straight down to 4k this is the file that generally never gets played we're not going to try and play these simultaneously because that's just going to be too much hard work actually let's be fair let's go with the 200 megabits file here h264 and then afterwards we'll try the heavier file so once again 200 megabit h264 and again we're using um obs so that might affect the picture quality there but for now let's see how long it takes plex to play back this rather heavy 4k h.264 file it's getting ready it's caching there at the bottom it's probably going to need to cache to about here hopefully it won't just kick us out of this bear in mind while we're doing this i will flick over to the nas if and when this plays but it does seem to be struggling with this format remember this is the plex pass so he has access to hardware transcoding as well and it's not even choosing to transcode it's trying to play the original file and if it does struggle it should automatically switch over so it wasn't able to play back the file so we're going to do the same test now if if we have a look at the nas we can see that the cpu just could not instruct it so now we can do the same file this time on mb let's see one if it can play and two how long it takes to play so we've got the spinning circle we've not seen that before on mb yet generally mb has gone straight into playback every single time it looks like the nas limitation but have a look at that it managed to play the file it has had to transcode it down but it has played the file not a huge amount and it has been interrupted and the caching is stopping pretty weakly and again this is more of a limitation of that synology nas than anything but now it intrigues me that this has managed to play back this file when plex was unable to so now we're going to go and try that heavy file that i just talked about so we're going to go for the heaviest file overall this is an h 2 6 5 so uhd 10 bit um hevc 4k 400 megabits file this file here is around 1.4 gigabytes in size it is absolutely huge for 30 seconds of footage that is an enormous file and generally this file has broken many nas's in my nas testing so let's go ahead and click play and see how long it takes because now the nas should switch over to transcoding it should try to automatically transcode over so as you can see it is giving it a jolly good try we're seeing the caching there at the bottom the conversions happening let's see if one it can cache beyond four or five seconds where it failed last time and two can it maintain the transcoding and uh encoding of that file there in the background to outpace playback my thoughts are thinking absolutely not right now if we flick over we can see cpu generation utilization is massive but as we can see it's still trying to play the file is not getting anywhere fast i think it is going to play it but it's barely going to play it for a few seconds there we go but look at the cashing the cashing is far far too slow to outpace out of playback and it is gonna hit a wall any second now and bang but it did still convert it so if we come out of it there now we're going to switch over to the alternative so let's go back and we're going to go for the heaviest file here on mb because at the moment in this comparison mb has won most of the comparative elements of plex versus envy right now but how it plays back this enormous file is going to be very intriguing because it has to be reminded that on plex we had access to hardware transcoding so it was able to play back that file thanks to it having access to hardware transcoding whereas the mb side has had to rely on software transcoding and if we have a look obviously utilization is going absolutely bananas but it is still trying on mb it's trying it it's still never going to outpace um playback is not going to uh be outpaced by caching but i'm still impressed that mb with only software transcoding as an option has managed to play back that file and i do think in terms of overall performance you've got to give this round to mb as well i think it kind of really showed its legs there and now we're going to bring things in and just talk a little bit about the services because another area of difference really the last one we're going to talk about today is what these two bring to the table in terms of services so this can be broken down into two things we go back into the server itself on both of them we go into the settings it's worth highlighting that there are certain things that plex has that no one else doesn't i mean for example i mentioned earlier on plex arcade uh not something strictly limited to nas use it's only used in third-party use and it is an additional payment but it does allow you to play old emulated rom games on plex it's still an extra paid service outside of plex pass so it's very hard to use that as any kind of comparative feature but it's still a nice little extra on the other hand mb on the other hand as touched on earlier on does have all of those lovely plugins still readily available stuff you can really tailor and change a lot of the features and functionality of your device as you see here we can get playback reports we can get real-time information um about our device all of this pulled by using these tools so as you see we've installed that tool that allowed us to monitor the system the breakdown of time playbacks real-time analytical information in that plug-in and remember it's the free usage device now yes you've got dashboard here on plex but again dashboard is a plex pass feature you have to pay for this analytical side of things and even then i would argue it's not as good as this free plug-in that comes with mb i know it seems like i'm really coming down on the side of envy throughout this whole video but what i will say with mb is it does still seem to keep that indie community spirit when it comes to when there's problems in the lifetime of your product it's worth highlighting that plex although there are lots and lots of solutions and it does have a premium support service time for time when you look online if you encounter problems with your server if you have a plex pass account you have access to uh premium services but a lot of those services aren't really as um comparable to that of the community support of mb yes it's um a little bit flakier maybe you're relying on humans um a little bit of their own personal support which isn't for everyone but i think overall the mb community if you move away from paid you know a 24 7 support staff on a phone line i think the mb general community is a little bit more active and more helpful than that of plex plex has a lot more going on in its development and background and i think that's why it's on more platforms it's a lot more evolved as a client platform for many many users and ultimately why a lot of users know a lot more about it overall and again as mentioned the business of the transcode quality and everything that happens in the background we can see that the customization options are generally more readily available on plex pass than they are on that of uh the paid the free service and mbe still gives you a lot more in terms of that encoder and transcoder in the free service it does highlight again for hardware transcoding you need to use the paid service but most of the options are readily available straight away um even the cinema intro stuff as you can see you do need the nb um premium account to take advantage of it but you can use your own trailers if you choose to which is good whereas on plex you have to have a plex pass service and a paid service i should say to take advantage of any kind of trailer support on plex i'm going to wrap things up on the final note to do with dlnr in other words enjoying media on the local area network because a number of people when you do take advantage of a media service system and again whether that synology qnap whatever it's worth highlighting that dlna support on clicks is still very very good but still requires an active internet source sometimes you can enable the dlna media server option on there but a lot of people have reported that if you don't have at least a semi active internet connection occasionally plex loses contact with your server um which can be difficult whereas mb seemingly has a lot more configuration a lot of that um white listing ports and not white listing ports but i'm opening up preset ports um with a lot more configuration than there is here on uh plex which although it has a lot of those options i think it's presented a lot more um intuitively on plex i think it's a lot more understandable they go to a lot more links to explain things whereas mb although a lot more analytical and a little bit more intimidating does give a greater deal of control and maybe security configurations externally and on the internal network ultimately what i'm saying is between these two it goes back to my earlier point that on these two platforms plex is far more user-friendly i think unfortunately it's less customizable it allows a lot of the options to be preset early doors and i think it does a better job of presenting information to you readily immediately but then when you're within the confines of that user interface the amount that you can stretch and change and make it unique to you and your media set up it's just not as readily available as it is on mb but it's arguably more um ambitious and um higher learning curve day one setup options it seemingly found more information and i haven't even touched on uh areas such as adding users for those of you that aren't aware when it comes to adding users and groups on both of these services both of them allow you to add lots of users that have got access to your servers but plex put that behind um another wall unfortunately so when you add other users or create users who have got control or whether they're just guests or more some of these options still need plex pass out account so the paid for services to really make most of it whereas mb provides these by default very early nice and simple you can just create an account any any time say if they've got access to everything or preset folders really change everything they can and cannot do and that account then is activated very fast on the free service something that's kind of missing there on plex and again this leans into just how much of plex's development they've been sticking behind that plex pass but i'm gonna wrap things up now hopefully on screen right now uh there's pretty much what both of these two got right which ones they got wrong and ultimately what they do well individually when comparing between the two of them of course this is only based on the web graphical user interface and it is not based on if you're using third-party external client devices you know your phones and firesix and roku and the like and i will be doing a video after this comparing plex and video station synology's own application as well as another video comparing mb and video station coming soon and of course other nas brands to follow but perhaps you disagree with me perhaps you agree maybe you've got your own uh point of view on mb and place that i haven't touched on or you disagree with me let me know in the comments if you did enjoy this video click like if you want to learn more about these media platforms network attached storage media servers and data storage in general click subscribe and if you are interested in getting hold of a new media server solution for you your family your business your whatever but you don't quite know what to buy use the free advice section at nas compares below there's a full detailed breakdown there that will help you every step of the way of different services and different hardware considerations it's not a paid service it's free advice there is a human being to talk to there we're not doing it for profit we're doing it to help we may be a bit slow an extra day or two to answer we will get there in the end so do visit the contact us section and free advice section of nas compares otherwise thank you so much for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 21,515

Keywords: 1080P PLEX, 4K PLEX, 4K PLEX NAS, 4K SYNOLOGY PLEX NAS, PLEX, PLEX NAS, PLEX NAS DRIVE, PLEX NAS ENCODING, PLEX NAS HEVC, PLEX NAS SERVER, PLEX PASS TRANSCODING, SYNOLOGY NAS PLEX, SYNOLOGY PLEX NAS, 1080P Emby, 4K Emby, 4K Emby NAS, Emby, Emby GUIDE, Emby NAS, Emby NAS DRIVE, Emby NAS ENCODING, Emby NAS HEVC, Emby NAS SERVER, Emby Premiere TRANSCODING, Emby SERVER, SYNOLOGY NAS Emby, SYNOLOGY Emby NAS, plex vs emby, emby vs plex 2021, plex vs emby for nas

Id: 7567yRx_ghk

Length: 46min 8sec (2768 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/kami77]

Plex, but only because I can't be arsed to try anything else. I got the lifetime plex pass on sale years ago. I have a large library (about 65TB) and Plex on Synology has never had an issue with it. I enjoy newer features like the TV show intro auto detect and skip button (I'm assuming Emby and Jellyfin have that?), Dolby Vision in MKV support, I'm happy enough with the options in terms of organizing libraries/collections/artwork, and I like the broad client support. A couple family members I've shared the library with are also used to Plex, and since they're remote and my upload capacity is limited, the hardware transcoding has always been excellent for that. I've seen them use my server on everything from a PS3 to PS4 to Firestick to mobile. Also Tautulli is awesome but I am guessing the others have an equivalent to that.

One of these days I gotta install Emby and Jellyfin, import the libraries and see how it is. One thing I'd ask is... what's like 3 cool things a "casual power user" might want to do that I can't do on plex? Someone evangelize this for me without me having to watch a 46 min video.

[u/Pancake_Nom]

I use Emby over Plex primarily for three reasons:

1) Plex has slowly been shifting towards ad-supported streaming content instead of self-hosted media. Emby is just your own content and nothing else.

2) Plex is trying to force all users to have a plex.tv account, whereas Emby supports local accounts. Additionally, Emby supports LDAP, so I can run the LDAP server on my NAS and use it to share credentials between the NAS and Emby for users.

3) I prefer Emby's interface for music (JellyFin doesn't have this UI yet).

[u/guardian87]

I run both, but use Emby primarily (90%).

[u/ahbi_santini2]

• Plex w/ Prologue is a fantastic audiobook server
• Emby (and the fork Jellyfin) is a far better video player.

For Emby docker setup you can see my other post here.

[u/Monotst]

Jellyfin

[u/mefistos]

For some reason Plex stopped working for me one day and it never worked since. Never changed any settings or anything. The server just disappeared. So I installed Emby and never looked back.

[u/e2zippo]

Switched from Plex to Emby maybe 3 years ago and haven't looked back either, sure Emby have had it's quirks but it works so much better. And the devs are very active and their forums is a great place!

[u/Paraesthetic]

Plex mainly for the apps on all platforms

[u/rexel99]

I like Plex because my OLED TV has the associated app. Seems to make sense only for that reason.