Create A Media Center Solution – Thecus N4810

Emby Media Server and Player

Emby is another media server and player which allows you to bring all of your home videos, music, and photos together into one place. Your personal Emby Server automatically converts and streams your media on-the-fly which make them a joy to play on any device.

Just as with Plex, there is a premium model which will unlock more features. It is called Emby Premiere and users will receive additional bonus features such as Cover Art, Mobile Sync, Cloud Sync, and free Android apps when they purchase it. It is a cheaper alternative to Plex as it only costs $4.99 a month or $99.99 for a lifetime.

The setup of Emby is as easy as Plex was, if not easier. You need to enter which language you want the interface in, a name, and you can optionally link it to an Emby account for easy connection from Emby apps.

The Emby account is free and it’s made in no time.

All it requires is a username and an email address – and of course also a password.

Once you’ve verified the email address, you  can link the account with your NAS.

The next step is to add our media library and we do that in much the same way as we did before.

Select the type of content you’re adding, set a name to be displayed, and select the folders to be added. You can optionally let it download artwork and metadata from the internet.

Once added, it will look something like this. You can naturally add more depending on your setup and library design.

A couple more steps and we’re done. We can define the metadata language and country that we prefer.

We can also set the N4810 with Emby up to support Live TV if you have the proper devices for that.

As the last point, we need to accept the terms of service for the server.

And now we’re done, as the app so kindly tells us. It also offers links here to apps for various devices from Amazon to Kodi.

We can now sign in and have a look at this media server and its features.

Once logged in, we’re presented with a server dashboard which contains all relevant information to the server. As we can see, there are quite a lot of settings to choose from too – it’s a comprehensive application.

I won’t dive too much into the various settings as most will be fine the way it is, but there are a few things worth showing here and before we get to the playback part.

A cool feature is that it can detect DLNA capable devices on your network. For example, it detected the Toshiba TV in my bedroom, but it didn’t detect my living room TV as that comes without smart features. But here we can connect the NAS directly, so that’s totally okay.

The playback settings are one of the places to check out. You can enable cinema mode as well as the method of trailer inclusion and parental controls from here.

Transcoding is a vital feature when you use the NAS to stream to your mobile devices. Why should you transfer 4K media files stored on your NAS if your phone only has a 720p display? And the CPU inside the Thecus N4810 supports hardware transcoding too, so it’s an optimal NAS for this kind of usage.

Just as with Plex, Emby also has its own DLNA server built in which can be used for streaming to smart devices where you can’t get dedicated Emby apps.

The Expert and Advanced settings are useful for those who have multiple media servers running and want to adjust the port usage. Casual users don’t need to worry about these things and should spend their time watching all their wonderful stored media instead.

Enough with the settings, time to take a look at the playback features. When I added my shows, I added them all into the same library and therefore both my Sitcoms and my SciFi shows are mixed together here.

Emby grabbed thumbnails and information from the web in record time and quickly showed me all the relevant information to all my favourite shows.

There are various view methods such as thumbnails, covers, or post cards.

You can also view your collection with a simple list view that still contains cover art for easy recognition.

There are plenty of sorting and filter options too which will come in handy as your library grows. I have about 6TB recorded videos on my own NAS and navigating the library without filters and sorting would be a pain.

Emby also has a media player built directly into the system which allows you to play your content directly in the browser.

Last but not least, the home page features suggestions on what to watch next based on the added content.