cmh31909 0 Posted April 23, 2020 Share Posted April 23, 2020 I have a local Emby server running on my network. I use Emby (beta) Roku App to connect to it. I do NOT use Emby Connect, I connect directly to my local server (I set up a manual connection). I was going to watch some streaming video on Hulu tonight and noticed my Internet connection was down. For clarification, the Roku still had it's wireless connection to my network, it was just my connection to the Internet that was down. So I decided to watch some videos that are stored on my local Emby server. I started the Emby app on my Roku device. The app found and signed me into my local server and let me select the user to login as it usually does. However, after selecting the user, it went to the next screen and just sat there with the Emby logo swirling. Being the curious person I am, I decided to let it just sit there and see what happened. It sat there for many minutes, and then as soon as the Internet connection came back, the app came to life and behaved as normal. So what is the point of being able to connect to your local server through the app if it will not function without an Internet connect? My guess is that it is checking to see if I have Emby Premier, because it always pops up a banner encouraging me to get Permier. Otherwise, I can't imagine what business it would have connecting to the Internet. Please fix this so lack of Internet does not prevent the app from working when connecting to local servers. Thanks, Carlton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37027 Posted April 23, 2020 Share Posted April 23, 2020 Hi there, we'll take a look at this. It should be something that happens in the background and doesn't stall the user interface. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 23, 2020 Author Share Posted April 23, 2020 Thank you, please let me know what you find and when you expect to have a fix/workaround for this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14905 Posted April 23, 2020 Share Posted April 23, 2020 Hi. I don't think your assumption is correct but we'll check it out. I suspect this is the Roku itself sending beacons back home. I don't think this device is designed to work offline... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 23, 2020 Author Share Posted April 23, 2020 I don't see why Roku would be connecting to the internet while the Emby app is running. I would also think if Roku had a problem running w/o internet, it would not have even let me start the emby app. Please check the Emby app anyhow just to be sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14905 Posted April 23, 2020 Share Posted April 23, 2020 Hi. We will check it out but you should know that the Roku tracks absolutely everything. They require us to send "beacons" at certain times in order for them to track things like how long it takes for our app to start up, start playback, etc. It is fair to assume they are also watching the urls that are being connected to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 23, 2020 Author Share Posted April 23, 2020 >They require us to send "beacons" at certain times in order for them to track things like how long it takes for our app to start up, start playback, etc Can your app check to see if the Internet is available, and if it is not, then do not try to send the beacons or perfom any other activity that would block if no Internet was available? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14905 Posted April 23, 2020 Share Posted April 23, 2020 As I said, we will test and see what is going on here as I believe this used to work. As for modifying how the beacons work, no we cannot do that. Roku has strict requirements for store acceptance. They didn't sell you this box to use offline . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 23, 2020 Author Share Posted April 23, 2020 I'm not saying to not send them beacons or to modify when you send them, I'm saying, that if the internet connection is down ,then don't try and send them because they won't get them anyway and it appears that if what you are saying is true then that could be causing the app to hang. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speechles 1917 Posted April 23, 2020 Share Posted April 23, 2020 (edited) What causes the app to hang is the Roku. It senses there is no internet. It knows it cannot reach home. At that point you should really exit the application you are in and restart it. What hangs the Roku are the DNS requests that never complete. It throws off the Roku if it is already in the application tripping over those beacons. Once you restart the application without internet the Roku will "give up" doing those beacon requests naturally. It will ask as you launch the application "This application may need internet. [start anyways] [cancel]". Choose start anyways and it won't report the beacons since it knows now the internet is really not there. Edited April 23, 2020 by speechles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilgamesh_48 943 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 (edited) What causes the app to hang is the Roku. It senses there is no internet. It knows it cannot reach home. At that point you should really exit the application you are in and restart it. What hangs the Roku are the DNS requests that never complete. It throws off the Roku if it is already in the application tripping over those beacons. Once you restart the application without internet the Roku will "give up" doing those beacon requests naturally. It will ask as you launch the application "This application may need internet. [start anyways] [cancel]". Choose start anyways and it won't report the beacons since it knows now the internet is really not there. Now I finally know why I believe I have no problem with running Emby on my Roku without internet while others report problems. I thought I did nothing special but if I am in Emby and receive an unexpected error I exit Emby and restart it. (Sometimes I even restart my Roku) I do that so automatically that I never even think about it. The same is true for other apps, like Plex, when I lose my internet. I lose internet so often that I have developed strong recovery habits. Edited April 24, 2020 by Gilgamesh_48 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 24, 2020 Author Share Posted April 24, 2020 What causes the app to hang is the Roku. It senses there is no internet. It knows it cannot reach home. At that point you should really exit the application you are in and restart it. What hangs the Roku are the DNS requests that never complete. It throws off the Roku if it is already in the application tripping over those beacons. Once you restart the application without internet the Roku will "give up" doing those beacon requests naturally. It will ask as you launch the application "This application may need internet. [start anyways] [cancel]". Choose start anyways and it won't report the beacons since it knows now the internet is really not there. That is exactly what I did. When I initially selected Emby, Roku warned me that the Internet was not available and asked me if I wanted to continue anyway. That is why I am thinking it is an Emby problem and not a Roku one since the Roku knows the Internet was not available and let me continue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speechles 1917 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 (edited) What version of Emby server? If you go to the "devices" tab of the Emby server dashboard you can see all the Roku devices listed that have used your server. Go ahead and delete every single device that shows as a Roku in that area. Don't worry they will all rebuild the next time that user authenticates with a Roku device. But this could be the reason is something changed and the device info stored on the server isn't matching. I am going to try to chase the root cause of that issue today and see if I can get a timeout without a screen to appear and create the same hang. It does hang with the spinner continuously spinning? The spinner never stops spinning? Edited April 24, 2020 by speechles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 24, 2020 Author Share Posted April 24, 2020 What version of Emby server? If you go to the "devices" tab of the Emby server dashboard you can see all the Roku devices listed that have used your server. Go ahead and delete every single device that shows as a Roku in that area. Don't worry they will all rebuild the next time that user authenticates with a Roku device. But this could be the reason is something changed and the device info stored on the server isn't matching. I am going to try to chase the root cause of that issue today and see if I can get a timeout without a screen to appear and create the same hang. It does hang with the spinner continuously spinning? The spinner never stops spinning? Server Version - 4.4.2.0 It does hang with the spinner continuously spinning? The spinner never stops spinning? -- Correct, the screen "framing/layout" is shown, and the Emby spinner in the middle of the screen just spins..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14905 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 That sounds like something may not be handling a time-out properly. Speechles, did you disconnect internet and reproduce? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speechles 1917 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 (edited) That sounds like something may not be handling a time-out properly. Speechles, did you disconnect internet and reproduce? I tried to reproduce but it always lets me in... and BTW my internet is always disconnect for some reason up to 20x a day. I didn't find the hang yet. I only used the RokuTV to try to hang on so far. ..and it doesn't sound like a timeout since it is retry and eventually success. There is code in the app to retry up to 5x on some items. That may be what is at play here too. I can hammer away at this in a bit after I wake up a bit more. There has to be a reason it gets slow at that point and then recovers itself. Edited April 24, 2020 by speechles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14905 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 The app caches the Premiere check for 24 hours so your test may be bypassing that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 24, 2020 Author Share Posted April 24, 2020 In case it makes a difference, I am using the Roku 3900X, not a RokuTv. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 24, 2020 Author Share Posted April 24, 2020 The app caches the Premiere check for 24 hours so your test may be bypassing that... In my case, it had definitely been > 24 hours since I had run the Emby app on that particular Roku. How about just not doing the Premier check since it really ads no value to the experience and could be responsible for these issues? Or if you are going to do a check, can't it ask the Emby server if premier is installed instead of going out to the Internet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speechles 1917 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 (edited) In case it makes a difference, I am using the Roku 3900X, not a RokuTv. You are using WiFi not ethernet? That must be the difference here. I will test with the Roku express and also look at the premier checks to make sure we have an IP address assigned to the Roku (check 1) and the network has internet (check 2) before sending these too. Edited April 24, 2020 by speechles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 24, 2020 Author Share Posted April 24, 2020 You are using WiFi not ethernet? That must be the difference here. I will test with the Roku express and also look at the premier checks to make sure we have an IP address assigned to the Roku (check 1) and the network has internet (check 2) before sending these too. I am using Wifi, but as I said in my original post, the Roku was connected to the wifi network, it's just that our connection to the internet was not working. I verified it was connected to wifi, but also, if it had not been, Emby would not have been able to connect to my local server as it did. Remember, I was able to connect to and login to my local Emby server, it was just after logging in that the Emby app hung. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14905 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 Yes, correct. Checking just for pure network connectivity would be pointless (other than maybe not to waste time trying to reach any server). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josevh 9 Posted April 24, 2020 Share Posted April 24, 2020 Just gonna put my 2c in here in case it helps.I used to have this problem with my Roku TV when the internet went out. In my case, my emby server was deployed on server within docker. The solution ended up being to explicitly set the Network setting "Bind to local network address:" to the IP address of the host machine. Previously (probably the default behavior), it would bind to the docker container's IP which I verified via the Dashboard page. After making this change I haven't had a problem playing media offline. Again, don't know the full details of your scenario but thought I'd share just in case it helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmh31909 0 Posted April 24, 2020 Author Share Posted April 24, 2020 >In my case, my emby server was deployed on server within docker. Thanks for the suggestion, however, in my case, it is running on a dedicated computer and bound to that machine's only network adapter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Midaz 2 Posted January 16, 2021 Share Posted January 16, 2021 Good afternoon ! Guys i would know if at this moment we have an improve about it ! Is it possible to use emby on a local network (without internet connection ). ? Example i have a raspberry pi connected with a hard drive ( media files on hard drive ) - i would like that people connected to this network use the emby client ( no internet ) and perform play back on it I have emby premier for life !! Waiting for your answer.. have a good day guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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