Emby on Asustor is not the real Emby experience

[itdaboyz]

Hi,

I just want to tell you that if you find Emby really slow on your Asustor's NAS, it's not Emby's fault.

I have an AS302T, and I used Emby on it. Loading time was horribly long, UI was really slow and when I played a movie with my PI it was laggy (and sometimes don't even play until I reboot NAS and PI). On my phone, Emby would never load a movie or a TV show because of loading times. Overhaul my experience with Emby was bad.

Recently, I moved the server part from the NAS to the PI (and kept files on the NAS) and I discover a new Emby. Everything is fast and works like a charm, even on my phone ! Updates come in real time (no need to wait months before the new release from the maintainer) and there is no total data wipe when you update.
And wait, there is more ! My NAS is also now faster for other tasks (like torrents and apps like Sonarr, CouchPotato...).

This message is not a blame against Asustor or the maintainer doing it on his free time, but just a answer to the problems you can find on this plateform. A PI is not expensive, don't wait and use this instead !

https://emby.media/community/index.php? ... xperience/

[Tarl Cabot]

Hi,

I just want to tell you that if you find Emby really slow on your Asustor's NAS, it's not Emby's fault.

I have an AS302T, and I used Emby on it. Loading time was horribly long, UI was really slow and when I played a movie with my PI it was laggy (and sometimes don't even play until I reboot NAS and PI). On my phone, Emby would never load a movie or a TV show because of loading times. Overhaul my experience with Emby was bad.

Recently, I moved the server part from the NAS to the PI (and kept files on the NAS) and I discover a new Emby. Everything is fast and works like a charm, even on my phone ! Updates come in real time (no need to wait months before the new release from the maintainer) and there is no total data wipe when you update.
And wait, there is more ! My NAS is also now faster for other tasks (like torrents and apps like Sonarr, CouchPotato...).

This message is not a blame against Asustor or the maintainer doing it on his free time, but just a answer to the problems you can find on this plateform. A PI is not expensive, don't wait and use this instead !

https://emby.media/community/index.php? ... xperience/

Yep, you pretty much nailed it... My AS5102T can't run Emby Server worth a damn either, even with 8GB RAM. Eventually I migrated it to an old decommissioned duo-core laptop with only 4GB of RAM, tested Win7 and Linux builds, and Emby Server ran like a champ with both! I then tested a Linux build on a small $25 Pine64 board with only 2GB RAM, and it ran Emby Server so well that I left it up just as it is, and it's been smooth running ever since. And like you said, bonus, no late or busted updates to worry about, no need for odd-duck workarounds, it simply runs.

However, I disagree with the part about attribution. If Asustor is going to continue marketing its products as "premier world-class media servers," then it's high time their execs took ownership of these lingering performance and compatibility issues, and fix them! And before some admin gets trigger-happy with the delete/ban button, I am NOT being disrespectful here. Whether you "like" what I say or not, it's simply cold hard objective fact. Even a blind man can see serious platform issues afoot when old low-power laptops and small Pi and Pine boxes can run Emby Server exponentially better than an Asustor NAS with 4x the horsepower! In fact, if anyone reading this has the contact info for an Asustor exec, please forward a copy of this note to them. Perhaps it's time they got a dose of reality from an actual end-user, rather than the carefully "messaged" briefings they get from mid-management.

Also, just because a dev is volunteering their time, doesn't give them a pass on due diligence or the responsibilities associated with their "maintainer" titles. When you commit to something like this, either do it, or see that it gets handed off to someone who can. Asustor really need to up their game in this area as well. If they're aggressively marketing their products as media servers, then they should also be exercising some basic QC and oversight of App Central's content to ensure customer access to timely and reliable updates for apps like Kodi and Emby.

Case in point, Kodi 18 (Leia) is already in alpha; Kodi 17 (Krypton) was in beta and RC status for months, and officially released over a month ago... yet Asustor customers are still stuck with an old stale Kodi 16 (Jarvis) build. Worse, as the OP noted, unwitting users who applied recent Emby updates, lost gigs of critical cache and metadata files, destroyed by a routine in-version update! This started way back in September, yet no notice was ever added to its App Central GUI page warning users of the imminent data loss, nor an apology to those who were burned. And yes, of course users should back up their critical data, but that neither excuses nor justifies its negligent destruction by an update, EVER! I wasn't affected, but I'm still mad as hell that this sort of thing is allowed to happen to fellow customers. Extremely bad business, Asustor.

As much as I'd like to leverage my Asustor as a media server -- that's why I paid the extra $200 for it in the first place -- itdaboyz's performance analysis is spot on, "Emby on Asustor is not the real Emby experience," and it is absolutely no fault of Emby or its devs. The problems rest exclusively on Asustor's shoulders.

[MikeG.6.5]

I truly wish there were a like button on these forums as I see on so many other forums. I'm a moderator here, and have voiced similar thoughts time and time again. Asustor needs to step up its game, not only to keep customers that have the products happy, but to also fulfill their marketing hype.

A Media Server means just that. It's able to serve media to a wide range of clients, regardless of the type of media stored. Plex Media Server is capable of doing this, but only on a few models. I have never tried Emby (And not likely to, as I have one of the models that Plex runs brilliantly on...) And I posted a lot of tips and tricks for Plex. (Many of which could also be applied to Emby, BTW...) Those tips and tricks are what I had to do to make my 202T work even remotely close to a media server. Now on a 7004T it not only works well, it is absolutely FLAWLESS.

BUT I seldom ever use the HDMI out for anything on the NAS. Even though @father.mande has made the excellent desktop and ported over PMP, it's still somewhat of a pain to use, without a remote control for selecting, starting or pausing media.

Plex has recently started a beta of their version of HW Trasncoding, which I have to say could be HUGE on the smaller models of NASes. On my 7004T transcoding without the HW it took about 300% of the CPU to do a single 1080p 12Mbps down to 720p. The same file with HW turned on now takes 20-25%. Of a single core! This means, conceivably I could run as many as 16 transcodes at one time! (That could be 16 remote sessions if I had the bandwidth to support it!) What a HUGE difference!

Asustor has a problem with keeping apps up to date, like few platforms I have ever seen. I had @father.mande take a look at the info provided me by one of the official employees regarding an app the employee was listed as a maintainer, and he made it up for me. (NetData.) But this is now almost 3 months old, and new updates are out. And no one has pushed out a new update since. Other apps have stagnated and withered away to the point of unusability... (Try updating anything that uses it's own update mechanism and it works, anything that relies on App Central's repository, forget it.)

I'm not sure what's happening with Asustor... Perhaps the market share is too small, and the brand is starting to fail in the marketplace. It really would be a shame if that were the case. I've used other brands of NASes and they aren't nearly as refined as Asustor is for many thing. But there is so much just falling of the edge with Asustor that I'm really beginning to wonder...

[Tarl Cabot]

Good post, Mike. Thanks.

And yes, it puzzles me too. Except for being a little stingy with base RAM, the system looked great on paper, at least back when I bought it. I cracked it open to max out the RAM and the hardware looked solid too, clean boards, good design, etc. By all accounts this box should scream as a media server, especially with my minimal household load. LOL, and it likely would if Asustor would cowboy up and get their OS and software house in order!

But it appears that day is still a long way off.

Cheers

[dkobelak]

I agree as well.. I love the asustor brand but I do have a problem with how long it takes them to keep apps up to date.. the ones they maintain take just as long for 3rd party apps.. emby is extremely slow and on top of that every single damn update to emby wipes the saved data! i backup every time but this is ridiculous.. at least 2 times I had it not recognize my backup and I needed to do everything manually all over again.. I am itching to buy another NAS from asustor but I am holding back to see if anything will improve on the apps end first.. and another thing i don't understand is why asustor does not keep regularly checking these forums.. I do see someone pop in once in a while, but there should definitely be continuous asustor presence on these forums..

[FOZI]

I totally agree and might add following.

I just do not see the point of having "APPS" in Asustor to having to click then go to a web browser to see my pictures. Not only that but home mp4 videos play-stop-play-stop-play and pictures takes long time to open.

I mean I could just double click on my computer and see and watch videos no problem. When I had Kodi it was much better. Same with " LooksGood" , I mean come on guys . Why have an app icon to click then go to a web browser and read series of instruction how to configure and watch my photos.

Just does not make sense. Hey developers out there...Just because you can does mean you should.

[itdaboyz]

I don't know if the NAS is not powerfull enough or if Asustor implemented Emby badly (i think it's this) but when you use a Raspberry Pi or else, you have something totally different and really enjoyable.

[Drosophila]

The Emby server runs fine on my as-6404t, I have some hick-ups sometimes, but I think it is due to the my (shitty) router and sometimes the android app (since it runs smoothly from my chrome browser but not on my phone at the moment)...

[itdaboyz]

The Emby server runs fine on my as-6404t, I have some hick-ups sometimes, but I think it is due to the my (shitty) router and sometimes the android app (since it runs smoothly from my chrome browser but not on my phone at the moment)...

Well, that's not a suprise. With 8go of ram and a Quad-Core 1.5 GHz that would be a shame if it's not working flawlessly!
The issue was on low end devices, such as AS304. They still are more powerful than a Raspberry Pi on paper but they are doing a shitty job with Emby in practice when rPi can do it without any issue.