Casting/controlling Emby for Fire TV via Emby for Android

[BenVenn 21]

This might be quite niche but I've noticed it for a while and thought I'd make a mention of it. 

When casting and/or controlling an existing play session on Emby for Fire TV (I believe the same applies when doing the same on Emby for Android TV) I notice that the playback bar and other aspects of the app misbehaves. 

The song shows as paused and the playback marker updates every few seconds, albeit still showing as paused. This makes the new lyrics feature on Emby mobile apps hard to follow on your phone. Additionally it makes actually pausing or playing the song in question difficult. 

I've also found when clicking on the play queue icon that shows as empty. I've been able to replicate this issue consistently across listening sessions. My play queue on the TV does have a lot of content as I'm playing direct from a playlist. 

I'll pop some screenshots below. I do not know if this issue extends to iOS Emby apps too or not. 

 

Playback bar showing as paused whilst casting/controlling an existing session on Emby for Fire TV:

 

The song showing as paused from Emby for Android, when in actuality its playing:

 

The play queue showing as empty:

 

Proof my TV is playing the song and shows a queue (sorry for the exceptionally bad quality):

 

[ebr 14904]

Hi.  The play queue from the remote device isn't accessible in the remote controlling app at this time.  I believe that is true across all apps but if you try sideloading our standard android app on the fire how does that compare?

https://emby.media/emby-for-android.html

Thanks.

 

[BenVenn 21]

16 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  The play queue from the remote device isn't accessible in the remote controlling app at this time.  I believe that is true across all apps but if you try sideloading our standard android app on the fire how does that compare?

https://emby.media/emby-for-android.html

Thanks.

 

I'll give that a go and report back, many thanks!

[viking19 20]

This looks very similar to the issues with the playing bar I've experienced with DLNA, could they be related?

The following from this thread Casting to Denon Heos DLNA does not show the play queue.

On 09/06/2022 at 12:31, viking19 said:

This is a feature I've been waiting for. I tried it out with my Denon receiver from the Android app and it works well. The only issue for me (and has been for a long time with DLNA and the Android app) is the now playing bar at the bottom of the screen will eventually freeze up. It doesn't affect playback at all and I can still look at the playlist screen to see what track is playing. It's really only an annoyance and it only happens with the Android app as casting from the web app works correctly.

On 02/07/2022 at 20:39, Luke said:

Hi, we're looking into this. Thanks.

[Luke 37024]

No, they're not related. There are some device specific issues with Dlna. In this case, I think the Fire TV app hasn't yet implemented what is needed to report the play queue to the server for manipulation.

What you could do is install our standard android app onto the fire tv:

https://emby.media/emby-for-android.html

It supports everything needed for remote control of the play queue.

[BenVenn 21]

30 minutes ago, Luke said:

No, they're not related. There are some device specific issues with Dlna. In this case, I think the Fire TV app hasn't yet implemented what is needed to report the play queue to the server for manipulation.

What you could do is install our standard android app onto the fire tv:

https://emby.media/emby-for-android.html

It supports everything needed for remote control of the play queue.

Thanks for the tip. I've sideloaded the apk onto my Android TV and have found that the interface is a lot slower to navigate than the native Android TV app, I'm talking visual latency with browsing menus. Lyrics also stutter quite a lot when transitioning.

Do you think native hardware requirement differences between the two applications could be a cause?

[Luke 37024]

23 hours ago, BenVenn said:

Thanks for the tip. I've sideloaded the apk onto my Android TV and have found that the interface is a lot slower to navigate than the native Android TV app, I'm talking visual latency with browsing menus. Lyrics also stutter quite a lot when transitioning.

Do you think native hardware requirement differences between the two applications could be a cause?

Hi, yes we are continuing to work on improving the user interface performance of the standard app. Thanks.