Why does a file that direct plays in Plex not direct play in Emby? Can this be enhanced?

[LehighBri 19]

I have Emby 3.0.5783.0 and a Roku 2 (2015 edition) and am struggling to get my MP4 media to direct play within Emby on the Roku.  It is media that started as WTV (from WMC via HDHomeRun), then I use MCEbuddy to convert it to MP4 (using the MP4 High Quality profile), but for some reason it refuses to direct play.

 

In Roku, Roku audio settings are set to auto-detect, Emby app streaming settings are set to maximum (30Mbps), and all devices (server, Roku, Plex, etc.) are running on a wired 1Gbps LAN.

 

As a sanity check, I playback that exact same file in Plex on my Roku and it direct plays just fine (and things like fast forward and rewind are lightning fast...whereas in Emby w/ transcoding it takes a few seconds which isn't ideal).

 

I know Emby isn't Plex, but something feels off here.  Is there a way to enhance intelligence around direct playing within Emby?  See below for the media details that I see in Emby.  Any suggestions/workarounds in the meantime (that doesn't require me to re-convert the content)?

 

And lastly, I see things like the following in the Emby server log... what is the logic that determines if a direct play profile exists or not?

 

2016-01-04 14:04:33.9131 Info App: Profile: Roku, Path: <filepath>, isEligibleForDirectPlay: True, isEligibleForDirectStream: True
2016-01-04 14:04:33.9131 Info App: Profile: Roku, No direct play profiles found for Path: <filepath>

 

Edited January 4, 2016 by LehighBri

[speechles 1917]

Officially, roku has stated that levels above 4.1 are unsupported. Unofficially, they do this to limit their liability in terms of licensing and such. The reality is on a roku3 the chipset will work up to level 5.1 and still direct stream.

 

The forked blue neon emby app has this restriction removed, as unofficially we can do more things this way. The official emby roku client hasnt adopted this yet.

 

 

Plex also recommends staying at 4.1, but lets users still choose to risk it and use the unsupported levels.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Edited January 4, 2016 by speechles

[LehighBri 19]

@@speechles - thanks so much... makes perfect sense.  I knew something had to be up.  Sure enough, when I use the blue neon Roku app the same file in question direct streams back no problem!!  Huge improvement in usability.  Thanks so much!

[CBers 6771]

The forked blue neon emby app has this restriction removed, as unofficially we can do more things this way. The official emby roku client hasnt adopted this yet.

 

 

Do you have a pull request in place ??

[LehighBri 19]

Do you have a pull request in place ??

 

Agree... it'd be great to get this feature into the main Roku app as I suspect I'm not the only one that is having this issue...

[speechles 1917]

Do you have a pull request in place ??

 

A closed one I made, sure. There was no movement on it so I gave up and closed it.

 

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Roku/pull/91

 

Here is the changes:

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Roku/commit/16d488bdcfedc8f752ef0a874b9603b2a786bd6e

 

The mp3 thing is now adopted by the official client. The 5.1 level thing isn't. I don't control what can or cannot be merged into the official app. This is why the blue neon one exists. I can control what goes in there. Thats just how things go. I am not in the least dismayed by any of this. Rome wasn't built in a day. Things like this take time.