App needs to phone home?

[fba 1]

I've been working on using Emby in the car, for long road trips.   My plan has been to use inexpensive Android "media player" boxes to playback on two monitors in the headrests of my car.   However, I have run in to an odd issue.  

 

From what I can tell, the Android app seems to want to "phone home" to check that the Emby premiere that I paid for is valid.   (Or something along those lines.)

 

The "server" that I am running from is an ODroid-C1.   It has a wireless interface in it, and uses hostapd to provide connectivity between it and any other device that wants to use it.   I started out by having the ODroid bridge the wired and wireless interfaces, and made sure that Emby was working on my phone when I connected to the SSID being provided by the ODroid.   I also made sure that Emby was happy with my Primere key.   Everything worked fine when everything was connected this way.

 

Then, I changed things so that the wireless was no longer bridged to the wired interface, and I unplugged the wired interface so that there was no Internet connectivity.   On my phone, I can access the web interface from Emby, and can attempt to stream a movie from the server to my phone over the web interface.  (The attempt fails because the phone doesn't seem to like the codec for the movie.  But, it does attempt to do it.)   If I then switch to the Android app, I can talk to the server, list the movies that are on it, and do most of the expected things.   However, when I select a movie to play and tap the "Play" button, nothing happens for a VERY long time.   If you wait long enough, you will eventually get the screen that suggests that you need to pay for Emby Primere, or you need to pay for the app through Google.

 

Since the server seems happy with the Premiere key, and there is a LONG delay before the error screen is shown, I have to assume that the Android app is trying to make a call across the Internet to validate something.   This call eventually fails, and the screen that says you need to pay shows up. 

 

Does this seem to agree with what others have experienced?

 

If so, I have two comments on this :

 

1. When it is making the call to the Internet, it should at least show a spinner or something to keep me from spamming the play button. 

2. Why is it necessary to "phone home" across the Internet in the first place?   The server already did that to validate the key, and from what I can tell, the server will be happy with validation for some period of time.

 

The problem I am going to have is that even if I CAN get Internet access to the server device (via bluetooth to my phone, or something similar), there are HUGE stretches of road I will be driving where no Internet access is available.  

 

Is there anything that can be done about this issue?

 

Thanks!

[Luke 37119]

It's only periodic. What I would suggest doing is validating while you have internet access then the app will save that result and reuse it for a period of time