Emby VS plex-mpv-shim

I used to use Plex until I found Emby. I find Emby easier to use and it does the same thing. Just putting this here as a fourth option for OP. :)

Media Server: EMBY

I use https://emby.media along with private trackers and Usenet.

You can find it here! I have both installed, but I generally keep EMBY turned off until I want to play around with it. You can have both running at once and both accessing the same folders. You can check it out for free.

Emby: Offers premium features with some behind a membership.

I went with Emby, personally. Plex, Jellyfin, etc are all good choices too! :)

For clarity: Emby is still mostly open source (the source code is right here: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby). Emby started incorporating closed source plugins that you only get with the paid version of Emby in order to try and get revenue.

I used Plex until I found Emby, which is far easier to set up and works very well with all my media.

You could also use something like https://github.com/iwalton3/plex-mpv-shim

My best client experience is nvidia shield, and using plex-shim-mpv. It uses mpv as the client and supports every format I watch, specifically ASS subtitles for anime get direct played.

I found this thread: https://github.com/iwalton3/plex-mpv-shim/issues/31 It seems that changing the config to use http (insecured connection) may solve this issue. I have remote access enabled and I'm signed in to the Plex server, so maybe that's why I didn't have those issues.

I just don't worry about it until I try and watch the movie and it has black bars, then I just use plex-mpv-shim to watch it, and handbrake it after.

Have you tried this? I use it all the time when watching stuff on Plex. It direct plays every thing I have minus 4K. Note it doesn’t offer the Plex gui. Instead I used my phone to find what I wanted using the Plex app and then cast it to the player

The plex experience in a browser was never great for me, whether it was transcoding or subtitles. Once I started using plex-mpv-shim, all those problems went away and it's a fast and seamless experience with directplay every time.