Using Emby WITHOUT Internet

[ebr 14944]

15 hours ago, chacawaca said:

is there a way to use Emby server like a proxy as a second source if device can't reach internet ?

Sorry, not at this time.  There are discussions about that earlier.

Thanks.

[Guest]

So, my internet went out today, it's been out for an hour or two. I felt like watching a movie and I was denied. Haven't had an outage for maybe a year, and emby happened to choose right now to verify my lifetime license? I've been with you since it was MediaBrowser. I had plans like one of the others of talking it with me on my boat, but I guess that's not an option. 

Going to Jellyfin once the internet comes back online.

Yes, I'm posting this from my cellphone, and sure I could tether my server to my cell, but this will happen again, and honestly, screw that. 

[Audiomixer 328]

2 hours ago, Nibble said:

So, my internet went out today, it's been out for an hour or two. I felt like watching a movie and I was denied. Haven't had an outage for maybe a year, and emby happened to choose right now to verify my lifetime license? I've been with you since it was MediaBrowser. I had plans like one of the others of talking it with me on my boat, but I guess that's not an option. 

Going to Jellyfin once the internet comes back online.

Yes, I'm posting this from my cellphone, and sure I could tether my server to my cell, but this will happen again, and honestly, screw that. 

I actually quit using plex and came to emby for this reason (since then i know how to make plex work when logged in should internet die). In winter it is not uncommon to loose power for days at a time. Yes i have backup power but internet is dead. There has to be a way for emby to verify a lifetime license with the average type user in such a way as to be secure on a more permanent basis so that the server will not go down at the worst time possible.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Audiomixer said:

I actually quit using plex and came to emby for this reason (since then i know how to make plex work when logged in should internet die). In winter it is not uncommon to loose power for days at a time. Yes I have backup power but internet is dead. There has to be a way for emby to verify a lifetime license with the average type user in such a way as to be secure on a more permanent basis so that the server will not go down at the worst time possible.

I agree. Hardware USB tokens could work.
Another issue is I have another server at my parents house. They are in their 70s, and the live out in the middle of nowhere with their internet options are dial-up and satellite. The power their also regularly goes out for days at a time in the winter. They have five TVs hooked up to 4k Rokus. If Emby has a hissy-fit phoning home because the internet is out, they have ZERO options. Do you want to help them figure out how to get Emby in a web browser, and then connect the laptop or whatever to the TV? 

[Happy2Play 8321]

@Nibble But Roku is free unless you are talking about LiveTV as the feature require Premiere not the Device.  So assuming they are running their own server they can play their media.

As I can disconnect the internet and watch all my movies/TV forever offline on my Roku.

[Guest]

I stand corrected, they will be fine.  We still think a hardware token or something like that would be good idea.

[Happy2Play 8321]

@Nibble I do not know the exact amount of time, but every client caches their validation for x number of days.  Only issue becomes when the last time was the client validated.  

[Guest]

Yeah, that is how it should work, but I opened the theater app, as I don't want to transcode 4k content, and it says, Hey, get a Premier key!
This is also beside the fact of what several of us have mentioned earlier, that we are likely to be off grid a great deal of the time. Emby has been great in so many ways, I just don't want to have to be connected to the internet to what stuff in my house.

[Happy2Play 8321]

Without methods that would surely hack the value of Premiere there are not too many options on a system that requires internet.  But sides clients that do not require Premiere.

[Gilgamesh_48 945]

Folks, it is always well to remember that it is only TV. I do not understand the urgency of having to have TV available all the time. I am mostly housebound and I live in rural Tennessee so I lose internet for sometimes long times, once 2 1/2 weeks. With all that, as long as I have power (or it is off for less time than my battery backup will hold up) I never lose the ability to play movies and TV shows. I have, exactly once in the last year, lost the ability to use any functionality in Emby except live TV and, since my internet comes on the same cable that I get my internet through, I have never lost internet and still had the ability to watch live TV. But that is exactly as it should be.

Twice in the last couple of years I lost power long enough for my batteries to fail. Without power Emby does not work at all.

But I have come up with an entertainment option that will stay up for about a week, maybe longer. What I have is a tiny computer with only MediaMonkey on it and a rather large SD card that contains 1000s of audiobooks. I also keep a couple of extended USB battery packs so I can keep that computer operational.
That way I can be entertained even without power or internet for, by a very liberal estimate, about 10 days.

There is no perfect solution for keeping access when power and/or internet goes out but I have found one that works for me and I believe that some solution like I use would be reasonable available , with just a little preplaning, so that dead times are well filled.

I have found that I "can" use my phone in place of the small computer but I do not like wearing earphones around the house and that is why I went with the solution I did. I guess I could add another battery pack and actually watch movies with my system. But it is very uncomfortable for me to watch anything on a screen smaller than about 20-22 inches.

I am not saying that everyone or anyone should use my solution but I just wanted to put it out there so it might suggest solutions for others.

Also, as was said in an earlier post, without internet most of Emby, watching movies and TV shows from your library, works without any premier features at all.

[daldana 47]

While most power outages of a few hours are surprises, I would guess that those that last for days would be weather related. Does that sound like a valid assumption? If it does, could there be a validate button available so that one could check-in to Emby's servers when the weather is predicted to be bad enough to possibly cause a power loss? What would be the challenges to implement that?

[pwhodges 1534]

Easier would be for Emby to renew its cached validation at least daily, meaning that the cache is always fresh at the point that connectivity is lost.

Maybe that's how it already is meant to be - but the number of times people have a problem suggests otherwise.

Paul

[ebr 14944]

1 hour ago, pwhodges said:

Easier would be for Emby to renew its cached validation at least daily

We already do that but you have to actually run the app.  People run into trouble when they try to use an app they haven't used for several days after the power goes out.

[rbjtech 4301]

Another point to make is the media itself is still on the local LAN in the majority of cases - and normally you can playback without issue using the operating system media player or an open source media player such as VLC.

So if I lost the emby front end (the web server) for whatever reason then I would just point VLC etc to the shares and play the media that way.    

Would I get all the flashy metadata - no - but I would be able to play the media - emby is simply the 'front end' to my media collection.

I believe the 'dlna' server is also part of the base (non premier) service as well - so if the clients are 'locked out' - then you can simply use dlna to stream instead.

[Jamr 3]

4 hours ago, ebr said:

We already do that but you have to actually run the app.  People run into trouble when they try to use an app they haven't used for several days after the power goes out.

Unfortunately we can not predict future power outages and plan before the outage to run the app.

[moviefan 184]

On 11/11/2022 at 7:35 AM, ebr said:

Yes, that is correct.  The apps need to validate the device limit.

This seems like one that should be easy to fix.  Why can't the server check the device limit before deciding to stream to the app requesting?

[ebr 14944]

24 minutes ago, moviefan said:

This seems like one that should be easy to fix.  Why can't the server check the device limit before deciding to stream to the app requesting?

That would not help in the case of no internet but we found very early on that centralizing this functionality just made it that much easier to defeat. 

[ebr 14944]

And I just want to point out again that the device limits are not designed for us to make more money. Their primary purpose is to make it much harder for someone to use our platform for an illegal streaming service. 

[chacawaca 106]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

That would not help in the case of no internet but we found very early on that centralizing this functionality just made it that much easier to defeat. 

I think that can help. 

Exemple :

Server UP 24/24 7/7 check licence is valid every day.

App : started 1 time per week last time app checked licence 7 day ago

 

Internet shortage, you start the app, licence isnt valide cause you havent start it in the last X day, if app can valide licence with server as second option and  confirm that licence is still valide at least i can use livetv when internet is down.

 

 

[Jamr 3]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

And I just want to point out again that the device limits are not designed for us to make more money. Their primary purpose is to make it much harder for someone to use our platform for an illegal streaming service. 

So your thinking is that all of the honest people should have to suffer because of a few that choose to not follow the rules.

[roaku 797]

46 minutes ago, Jamr said:

So your thinking is that all of the honest people should have to suffer because of a few that choose to not follow the rules.

Their thinking is they don't want to get kicked out of the app stores.

[Jamr 3]

23 minutes ago, roaku said:

Their thinking is they don't want to get kicked out of the app stores.

And piss off their paying customers. Good strategy!

[roaku 797]

12 minutes ago, Jamr said:

And piss off their paying customers. Good strategy!

Yes, it is a good strategy to have fewer annoyed customers that you can work with to find improved solutions over time versus getting unilaterally and irreversibly kicked out of the stores (or attracting federal law enforcement) and angering and losing even more of your customers.

Edited December 1, 2022 by roaku

[Jamr 3]

1 hour ago, roaku said:

Yes, it is a good strategy to have fewer annoyed customers that you can work with to find improved solutions over time versus getting unilaterally and irreversibly kicked out of the stores (or attracting federal law enforcement) and angering and losing even more of your customers.

I disagree as I would be the first to pay for a lifetime membership and even side load the app if it worked without internet access.

[Happy2Play 8321]

I would disagree as we have users that are forced to sideload on TVs and there are thousands of complaints there.  So app store compliance is a higher priority in my opinion.