Emby Support

Forum Features
1

Ok - I’m really having a struggle. I have multiple devices that support media feedback and scrubbing via UPNP, however, they are not supported for feedback in Roomie, while other devices are… Is there any solution?

Devices are:

  1. Dune HD Max Vision (Android Based) - I understand it’s available via Kodi integration, but Kodi doesn’t support Dolby Vision or even 4K, depending upon firmware
  2. Emby (works on AppleTV but not on anything else)
  3. Panasonic DP-UB9000P1K 4k Bluray Player

Can anyone suggest something that might help?
I use EMBY as the media server for everything but the Panasonic.

Thanks!

2

Android TV by itself doesn’t support media feedback at all.
Dune is controlled by the Dune HD device type and does support scrubbing there.
Not familiar with Emby. Based on quick Google, it looks like another Kodi clone, so again our Kodi support has extensive media feedback and scrubbing assuming they kept the control protocol.
Pana 9000 has no media feedback in the official control protocol.

3

Will,
As usual - thanks for the response.
I appreciate the confirmation on Dune scrubbing, but no media directory or other feedback (like cover art)?

I just reached out to Panasonic to see if they can or if there’s already a way to get feedback.
I learned that voice control support is being phased out effected 6/13/2023!!!
I’m not sure if they’re going to release a firmware update that removes the feature, or what else they may do - it’s extremely unclear about how they’ll handle it, but the support site noted this “end” date.
Any thoughts on what will happen if they actually remove this feature???
I’m going to turn off automatic firmware updates just to be safe, for now…

4

Sure, as documented our Dune support piggybacks off Kodi for a full media guide. Which would be totally separate (might also apply to Emby if it is basically Kodi). See Setup Guide which documents this.

Another way to interpret that is they end the Voice Control but release a firmware update to just let it work normally like everything else. It is by far the most convoluted control hack ever. However, multiple control systems including us rely upon the same thing, so I doubt they’re just going to go dark without a path. The problem with Panasonic for literally 12 years has been finding any human being that knows any path or anything about their products. We’ll see.

5

Kodi and Emby are similar, if not the same. Kodi plays the part of endpoint and media server/organizer, whereas Emby has an endpoint and a server component that are separate. I can follow all media streaming from the Emby server and get scrubbing and feedback at the server or HTML level… So I know it supports feedback and scrubbing via UPNP… In fact, you can get KODI plug ins for Emby and vice versa (no idea why).

I understand the reliance on Kodi and its very powerful, but it’s VERY bulky for each endpoint for people that have a separate media server. Kodi, for example, has its own SMB browser and can even have individual databases at the endpoints, if necessary. They can share the databases between Kodi versions running on other streamers, which again makes it very bulky and often slow(er)…

Unfortunately, Kodi is not going to work in my case. Kodi and its various builds seem to be poorly supported and there are many different versions, each with varying levels of support for Dolby Vision and ATMOS - from zero to some. Dolby vision has multiple profiles and the Kodi support seems to be somewhat focused on DV5/DV6, the profiles Netflix, AppleTV and other streamers use… not DV7 which is what is used for media on media servers.

Kodi support on the Dune is even further problematic and appears that many available settings appear dependent upon versions of Dune firmware… I will test this again using a new Dune firmware, but it’s horrible to navigate: Later versions of firmware don’t necessarily provide newer features on Modi’s latest versions, and vice versa. Meaning, that even on builds that supposedly fully support DV, various firmware versions prohibited it and without explanation. Earlier versions of Kodi worked better, but not completely. I need a freakin’ map…

I have tried Kodi on the Nvidia Shield TV Pro with the EXACT same result. In an act of pure desperation, I even side loaded some “other” builds of Kodi. Some sorta worked, some didn’t but it was impossible to get consistency.

IMHO, Kodi is great but it’s far too loose in its support and ability for individuals to do independent builds for anyone to use it without significant manual intervention.

The reality is that to best support DV and ATMOS, the most Kodi should interact with the media is to connect the endpoint to the raw file - and then bow out. Instead, KODI retains control of the streaming itself.

6

This is somewhat off topic, but I will reply to some basics that end up relevant to Roomie’s support for these things.

Definitely the idea is not to run Kodi on the Dune box. It is assumed Kodi runs on some appropriate, separate system, and that both Kodi and Dune target the same SMB location most commonly located on a NAS. Examples of the Kodi box might include a PC that exists simply to provide Kodi indexing, or an nVidia Shield (I use the latter most commonly to index media, but rarely use the Shield to play something.)

Dune’s internal media browser isn’t powerful enough for us to build a full Media Guide. Fortunately, Zidoo came along and provided an interface that was powerful enough to build what is probably the second best Media Guide after our Kaleidescape guide. Dune still works great if you use an outboard indexer like Kodi. As far as playback, the differences between Dune and Zidoo are difficult to distinguish and vary periodically. I would consider other paths to integrate with Dune, but they do not themselves provide it, so for now Kodi was the most obvious choice.

Any media client used as a playback device like Kodi, Plex, Emby, etc. seems like a uniquely questionable choice to me if the priority is DV HDR. I would stick with either Zidoo or Dune on those fronts, it’s mostly about the hardware/chip, and I’m sure you know that’s just the beginning of that topic.

7

Will, thanks for the response, again.
It might be off topic, but it is a feature request, nonetheless…

In the use case you suggest for Kodi, it functions no differently than Emby.
I have an Emby server, connected to a NAS device that serves content to an endpoint.
My endpoint has, until now, been the Nvidia Shield Pro.
When I use the Emby client, I get both ATMOS and DV.
When I use Kodi as the server and/or client, I get neither on the shield.
My search has proven that Kodi is the culprit because it’s capability is inconsistent, regardless of endpoint, with the exception of ATV which doesn’t support the DV7 profile.

The reason I’m bringing this up is that Emby is essentially no different than Plex or Kodi, in the use case you have suggested.
Emby support DLNA and UPNP and can control endpoints, no differently than Plex or Kodi.

Would you consider adding support for media scrubbing, feedback and cover art with Emby???

It’s equally as popular and well supported as Plex and has a similar licensing structure…
I moved away from Plex it was very late to supporting of DV and ATMOS, whereas Emby has supported it for a while…

And being as Emby is UPNP/DLNA compliant (the former does require a UPNP plug-in), would’t the coding for support be very similar???

Thanks, man.
I’ve been a customer/licensee in all forms almost since your day 1.
I’m relatively local to you, and was even MORE local to you back in the day.
I think we even talked about me visiting the office with a piece of tech I had that you were interested in supporting (but I can’t recall for sure).

Again, thanks!!!

8

You have a high opinion of UPnP and DLNA. My advice is to remove those words from your lexicon. They are ancient and virtually unused protocols from 10+ years ago. UPnP is used for basic discovery on networks and that’s about as far as the two of those things go these days. If a single product implements something related to those, it’s less of an open solution than a custom solution masquerading as something open since nobody else uses it.

Kodi supports Atmos fine on Shield, but configuring Kodi Audio correctly can be super confusing. It has sometimes taken quite a bit of time to get that working, but Kodi 20+ has improved their settings panels so it is more clear now. Again, trying to get DV from any software solution though such as Kodi/Emby is usually just a huge mess of versions and bugs. Better to stick with hardware solutions.

Anyway, I’ll retitle and reclassify this thread as “Emby Support” as that seems to be what it was always about. As with any feature request, the result of that depends on how many other users want it as well.