Watch Party

[jspanitz 14]

"highly anticipated Live TV upgrade" - by who?  I'm with @evil_crabon this one.

This has to be one of the most talked about and requested features.  At least a half dozen threads at some point on the matter.  This thread alone started in mid 2022.  Basically 2 years now.  For a feature that was asked about 2 years before that.  Sorry, I can't cut the devs any clack on this one anymore.  I moved over to JF for the time being.  Would love to come back and keep up with this request as it's the only reason I'm not still running Emby. 

[douglasparker 9]

I really wanted to like Jellyfin, but the client support is horrible and the SyncPlay feature is extremely broken.

Jellyfin developers have said over and over again that the original developer of SyncPlay just disappeared without documenting any of it- and nobody wants to take ownership of the code. There are no plans over at Jellyfin to fix it and if it doesn't work then you're just SOL.

I love what Jellyfin stands for, but they refuse to take money for anything but infrastructure costs- which means it's basically a project run by volunteers in their free time.

When developers have asked about the direction of Jellyfin and how they can help, they basically said that they don't have any roadmap or vision, and that they're all just working to make Jellyfin better.

It just feels very disorganized without a clear vision. SwiftFin (tvOS) app is a prime example. Most of my users are not technical. They have no idea that they gotta search "SwiftFin" for the Jellyfin app on tvOS.

I'm not sure if you have checked the Jellyfin release notes, but progress is EXTREMELY slow. Sure, they do good work such as better HDR tonemapping, etc but at an incredibly slow pace.

I and many of the people I know would rather pay developers to make a better product.

Plex sold out to investors and has been going downhill for a long time now, and is only going to get worse.

Most of my rant probably deserves it's own thread- but the point I am trying to get here is Jellyfin is in a rough spot right now and Plex is going downhill fast.

I recently finally caved and said enough is enough, I'll give Emby a try. It's honestly the best investment that I have made in a long time.

The ONLY thing missing for me and my users is a Watch Together type feature.

Emby developers, if you are listening, I and many others would PAY to have this designed and developed. 

Edited February 12, 2024 by douglasparker

[neik 873]

My sister and her boyfriend would enjoy this a lot. Right now they try to sync manually by pausing and trying to play on the same time - quite a pain which is never in sync.

[Dibbes 514]

3 hours ago, evil_crab said:

I'm sure Emby devs have usage statistics and take it into consideration when setting up priorities, but I, personally, am always surprised by the amount of attention Live TV gets. No one that I know watches any live television, and it has been the case for the last 10+ years. The only exceptions are sports fans, but even they prefer official streaming services of Formula 1, NBA, etc. Of course, it can be a regional/generational thing, but it all is very strange to me nevertheless 

That's very US based thinking... In Europe (and various other parts of the world) live TV is still a major thing. A lot of people have the TV on in the background while doing other things, but having a TV in every room of the house, isn't always desired... This is where Emby would come in

[solidsnakex37 55]

6 hours ago, BillOatman said:

But I obviously didn't think it was eminent in Emby since I installed JF

I came from Jellyfin to Emby, at first I didn't want to move from a free, open source option to a paid option. 

After over a year, I find myself using my old Jellyfin server which has had more updates than Emby over that same period of time. Playback issues that exist in Emby do not exist in Jellyfin etc...idk, not trying to stir the pot here but Emby just seems stale (no offense to the devs at all, I am sure they are working hard on the stuff they are choosing to do). 

[drait 2]

2 hours ago, douglasparker said:

 I and many others would PAY to have this designed and developed. 

I really wish Emby had a bounty program that those that can and want to incentivize specific feature development, could. 

Maybe one or more of the plugin devs would be interested in this sort of pay-for-functionality arrangements? 

[douglasparker 9]

Just now, drait said:

Maybe one or more of the plugin devs would be interested in this sort of pay-for-functionality arrangements? 

Do you know if the API allows for pause, play, stop, and seeking of streams (including retrieval of that data)?

I was looking at making something quick and dirty for the moment, but I didn't see everything I needed at: https://swagger.emby.media/?staticview=true

Do the plugins use a separate API?

I personally can't promise anything, but it's something that I wanted to look into in my free time.

Ultimately a native solution with built in client support is what needs to happen.

[roaku 842]

3 minutes ago, douglasparker said:

Do you know if the API allows for pause, play, stop, and seeking of streams (including retrieval of that data)?

I was looking at making something quick and dirty for the moment, but I didn't see everything I needed at: https://swagger.emby.media/?staticview=true

Do the plugins use a separate API?

I personally can't promise anything, but it's something that I wanted to look into in my free time.

Ultimately a native solution with built in client support is what needs to happen.

I would start here:

 

[solidsnakex37 55]

11 minutes ago, douglasparker said:

Do you know if the API allows for pause, play, stop, and seeking of streams (including retrieval of that data)?

 

Unfortunately, this thread began with many people banding together to try and come up with a 3rd party solution. There was great progress made, but ran into a wall that needed the Emby Core team to step in and finish it, but they never did. This was over a year and a half ago. 
 

On 10/27/2022 at 3:39 AM, Cheesegeezer said:

@chef tried his best, but there was quite alot of core dev work to get this working properly. So no 3rd Party Dev Plugin will be available.

Core team - it's over to you  

 

[chef 3810]

Yeah that watch party test plugin was the quickest, and dirtiest attempt there could be. No doubt. LOL!

 

[evil_crab 23]

6 hours ago, Dibbes said:

That's very US based thinking... In Europe (and various other parts of the world) live TV is still a major thing. A lot of people have the TV on in the background while doing other things, but having a TV in every room of the house, isn't always desired... This is where Emby would come in

I'm also from Europe

[sross44 430]

This is definitely one of the most talked about "wish list"items that people that use Emby want. I see it across multiple social media platforms. 

[BillOatman 596]

21 hours ago, evil_crab said:

I'm sure Emby devs have usage statistics and take it into consideration when setting up priorities, but I, personally, am always surprised by the amount of attention Live TV gets. No one that I know watches any live television, and it has been the case for the last 10+ years. The only exceptions are sports fans, but even they prefer official streaming services of Formula 1, NBA, etc. Of course, it can be a regional/generational thing, but it all is very strange to me nevertheless 

I find this to be false.  I and many others I know use streams to watch sports, no "official" services.  I personally use TiviMate for live TV as it works a lot better and faster than Emby does.  But I have Emby live tv setup for my remote kids.  I think making Emby live tv better is important for the user community.  But will also mention that the team should be able to to work on more than one feature at a time as well.

[ebr 16169]

23 hours ago, RafaG said:

I have not seen a single new function

Really?

Quote

4.8.0.80

 

 

• Add new profile pin feature. Useful for devices shared by multiple users.
• Add new table view option
• Add more fields for selection in poster views
• Add new theme options
• Various database performance improvements
• Merge webhooks into notifications
• Support keyword-based recordings
• Display all episodes directly under series without using season layer (with user display option to control behavior)
• Update Intel Media Driver
• Minor database performance improvements
• Support extras for seasons and episodes
• Various fixes for iOS 17
• Revamp backup plugin to be a more complete backup
• Support saving images locally for extras
• Add FR-TP content rating
• Import hearing impaired attribute for both internal and external subtitles
• Add hidden config switch to disable ssl renegotiation
• Add library option to cache images in server data folder to reduce disk access to original media folder
• Remember audio and subtitles across a tv series
• Improve support for audio-only live streams
• Add View Missing Episodes context menu option for series and seasons
• Add option when creating a user to copy data from an existing user
• Support random sorting on list screens
• Improve country and language list sorting
• Improve program dialog in live tv guide to show complete information
• Add subtitle position settings
• Improve user interface of Play On menu
• Add sample file ignore size to library options
• Added New Episodes section under Live TV suggestions
• Add new indicator on Live TV program posters
• Add options to hide played media from More Like This and Suggestions
• Add user locked out notification to Notifications and Webhooks
• Support more conventions with provider id values in folder names (moviedb, imdb, etc)
• Fix songs not being grouped into album when the album title contains an emoji
• Improve series name detection by getting the series name from episode file names, in some cases
• Fix empty genre filters on playlists
• Support multiple languages with user audio and subtitle preferences
• Improve performance of server activity viewer
• Improve support for folders being used in multiple libraries of same content types
• Clear external ids for episodes when using Identify feature on Series
• Improve search for single title movies
• Add camera upload user permission
• Add new configurable home screen sections - Playlists, Collections, and Recently Released Movies
• Add more fields for display in User and Device management
• Add HDR filters to video list screens
• Add sorting controls to user and device management screens
• Add additional subtitle color options
• Support swipe down to close all dialogs that slide up
• Add Remove Identification feature to reset metadata
• Improve searching titles containing quotes and periods (e.g. Agents of S.h.i.e.l.d or Shield)
• Anonymize manifest.json
• Add warning for duplicates when adding items to playlists
• Support both nb and no Norwegian language options
• Fix anamorphic image extraction
• Add automatic metadata refresh option for episodes with placeholder titles such as TBA
• Rework Trakt plugin to be an option that each user can configure, rather than server settings
• Rework Notifications to be an option that each user can configure, rather than server settings
• Add guide display options to control visibility of channel names, images and numbers
• Improve automatic reconnection for live streams
• Display preview of matched items when setting up a keyword recording
• Reduce database queries in audio fingerprint process
• Add HK ratings
• Add user option to hide media info from detail screens
• Fix transcode temp path in startup logging
• Improve support for "subs" and "subtitles" folders
• Fix 172.X addresses always being considered private
• Don't allow local network addresses to be specified in x-forwarded-for and x-real-ip
• Add media deleted notification and webhook event
• Support multi-select drag and drop add to playlist
• Support multi-select operations on downloads and conversions lists
• Fix swagger docs with reverse proxies
• Update default subtitle font
• Add option to limit the number of genres displayed at the top of detail screens
• Rework playlists to be saved as m3u and deprecate the previous xml format
• Support extras in Collections
• Various image processing fixes
• Fix restricting by tag hiding the tag itself
• Improve episode number parsing when episode file name is gibberish and parent folder name is readable
• Fix multi-episode file titles not using series display order
• Fix hide from Continue Listening only hiding a single track and not the entire album
• Support sorting for playlists and collections
• Fix live tv recordings being stopped in rare cases when the limit to keep is set to 1
• Revamp webhooks plugin, supporting new events and configuration options
• Include activity log database file when vacuuming databases
• Rework scanning of extras, allowing more flexible usage of video extras
• Resolve issue of multi-part and multi-version not being able to be used together
• Improve the use of internet metadata with recordings
• Support shift to multi-select
• Use tone mapping for image extraction
• Fix green bottom line with QSV+OpenCL tone mapping
• Fix single image extraction with MPEGTS
• Allow separate images for audio book tracks
• Stop scanning at the top of a library when it's unreachable
• Add image size display option
• Add lock screen function to video player on mobile devices
• Fix support for simultaneous music and photo playback
• Add three way toggle nav menu to web app
• Add option to control display of rating information at the start of video playback
• Change wording of transcoding reasons to be more user friendly
• Improve filter menu indicator
• Add Select None to multi-select lists
• Fix sort by sort title being case sensitive in some views
• Fixes for multi-part and multi-version videos being used together
• Fixes for movies having file names starting with years
• Initial RTL support in web interface
• Fix Intro Detection scheduled task not being visible
• Make tagline field lockable
• Make overview field lockable
• Fix a/v sync regressions with live tv and recordings
• Rework Live TV recording options to be based on selected folders, rather than raw paths
• Support .actors folder for people images
• Resolve long-standing metadata quirks when removing data from nfo files and having it not get cleared in Emby
• Fix changes to url-only nfo files not being recognized
• Nfo plugin: Stop saving nfo files for additional parts
• Improve photo loading performance
• Fixes for downloads automatically redownloading
• Remember subtitle selections even when user option is set to None
• Improve support for musicbrainz illegal character replacement
• Fix graphic subtitle position when burning in subtitles with transcoding
• Improve drag and drop scrolling
• Fix unnecessary ffmpeg dependency on Windows Media Foundation
• Sanitize new playlist and collection names
• Add intro detection library options
• Fix sporadic cases of errors when reordering live tv channels
• Improve automatic channel mapping with xml tv
• Support sort by composer

 

[rbjtech 5284]

16 hours ago, chef said:

Yeah that watch party test plugin was the quickest, and dirtiest attempt there could be. No doubt. LOL!

 

Hi @chef- Did you ever post your code on git - maybe a private repo ?

Since the original mock up, I now have much more of a personal need to have this functionality as all my 'kids' have sinced moved away so having this would be cool.

As per the original mock up  - I have my own 'Watch Party' working perfectly well with emby - I just have to manually add the session ids and item id to a script that just launches all the sessions via a curl api request - yes it has zero functionality after that, but it 'works'.    All play well within 1 second ... 

I think that's what your proof of concept did - but via a Plugin - so a lot easier than hacking a script every time lol - if you could share the source, that would be great !

Edited February 13, 2024 by rbjtech

[rbjtech 5284]

12 hours ago, evil_crab said:

I'm also from Europe

Have to agree,  for me and my extended family, LiveTV is very rarely watched 'Live' and has not been for the last 5-10 years.    If it's not available via streaming, then it's recorded from OTA via Emby and watched later - primarily to avoid the appauling number of adverts that make LiveTV a soul destroying experience ..

With this in mind - WatchParty (for me) is a far higher priority than LiveTV.

[jspanitz 14]

49 minutes ago, ebr said:

Really?

 

Ok, sure, but the last release before that was Aug 23, 2023 - that's eons in todays world

One suggestion on the release notes - some grouping, perhaps by area then by new features and then bug fixes

Edited February 13, 2024 by jspanitz

[bugz000 9]

21 minutes ago, jspanitz said:

Ok, sure, but the last release before that was Aug 23, 2023 - that's eons in todays world

One suggestion on the release notes - some grouping, perhaps by area then by new features and then bug fixes

5 months per update? not that bad really, you also forget emby has an app on a huge variety of platforms, appstores, codebases and more, emby also has (where possible) the same features in the same place across all of this, 5 months to release all the above features across all of these is actually quite impressive
ofcourse i'm sure you're always welcome to join the development team if you think you can do a better job

this is also why i believe watch party is such a problem feature, as it requires coordination across multiple devices codebases languages api's and more, and the server to synchronise playback, where, for example, a smart TV manufacturer may not give app control of the seek bar, but we encourage the devs to work through this and find some form of solution, even if not supported by all platforms
 

On 10/24/2023 at 9:33 PM, jspanitz said:

This is why I've dumped Emby for the time being - they're not listening to the use base IMO.

and, yet, it appears you are also still here...

Edited February 13, 2024 by bugz000

[RafaG 17]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

Really?

 

Yes, really. No new features, I only read fixes, improves, optimizations and cosmetic changes. I update to new version and I don't see anythig new in my emby. You show me the release log for the last six months and I don't see nothing really NEW. 
 

[bugz000 9]

just looked it up, the variety of platforms include, but is not limited to; Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, Android, iOS,  Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, and Apple TV, Android TV, LG Smart TV and Samsung Smart TV,  PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, Windows Store, apt and more... 126 new features across this in 5 months,  that is about 1.6 features a day...

"eons", he says...

[sydlexius 297]

Can we get back to the topic of the Watch party feature request?

[bugz000 9]

watch party is a difficult problem to solve, but it is possible, doing it nicely however, even since using discord youtube "watch party" feature has had problems, i don't know the specifics of why it's difficult, drawing comparison here to FPS games where location and shooting is so quick to nearly be seamless, a similar technology could be employed to sync a playbar surely? but it would require a whole new engine and protocol for this specific feature... maybe the devs can highlight some of the difficulties and we can brainstorm a solution together?

[Lambtalk 44]

5 minutes ago, bugz000 said:

just looked it up, the variety of platforms include, but is not limited to; Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, Android, iOS,  Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, and Apple TV, Android TV, LG Smart TV and Samsung Smart TV,  PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, Windows Store, apt and more... 126 new features across this in 5 months,  that is about 1.6 features a day...

"eons", he says...

That wasn't across 5 months...

The release notes posted look to cover most, if not all, of the release notes from the various betas that were run for the last 18ish month. Plus some of those changes listed look to actually be from Emby releases prior to 4.8 as well.

Also keep in mind that these are just Emby Server changes. Each app is updated independently with it's own features and fixes outside of the server release cycles.

[sydlexius 297]

5 minutes ago, bugz000 said:

watch party is a difficult problem to solve, but it is possible, doing it nicely however, even since using discord youtube "watch party" feature has had problems, i don't know the specifics of why it's difficult, drawing comparison here to FPS games where location and shooting is so quick to nearly be seamless, a similar technology could be employed to sync a playbar surely? but it would require a whole new engine and protocol for this specific feature... maybe the devs can highlight some of the difficulties and we can brainstorm a solution together?

I would assume that this level of synchronization is probably overkill.  At the bare minimum, you'd probably only have to have endpoints poll (or get pushes, if that makes more sense) for start and stop events to happen.  When the "stop" happens, perhaps a sanity check can be done to verify that all clients are still at the same playback position and adjust accordingly.

[bugz000 9]

13 minutes ago, sydlexius said:

I would assume that this level of synchronization is probably overkill.  At the bare minimum, you'd probably only have to have endpoints poll (or get pushes, if that makes more sense) for start and stop events to happen.  When the "stop" happens, perhaps a sanity check can be done to verify that all clients are still at the same playback position and adjust accordingly.

so what would you expect the main hurdles to be? as this seems relatively simple to achieve, but there must be some form of roadblock as even jellyfin and discord can't quite get it right

Edited February 13, 2024 by bugz000