Cannot watch high quality movie oversea on Emby server

[SleepDragon 0]

My NAS system is locate at Canada, and right now my family is on vacation to China.

They told me they can access Emby server, but just can watch movies on 480p. if choose movie which higher than 480p，it is hard to play.

So this problem is base on the internet speed in China or not? Is that any method to make it play on 720p or 1080p?

Thanks a lot.

[Abobader 3464]

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[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

20 minutes ago, SleepDragon said:

My NAS system is locate at Canada, and right now my family is on vacation to China.

They told me they can access Emby server, but just can watch movies on 480p. if choose movie which higher than 480p，it is hard to play.

So this problem is base on the internet speed in China or not? Is that any method to make it play on 720p or 1080p?

Thanks a lot.

the data rate that exists between you and China probably runs through something more than 10 relays and redirects. Every time anything manipulates your data stream the effective throughput goes down. I doubt, even with a multi-gig data rate at each end that you can get a better connection. While distance does not directly relate to data speed it does have a relationship and, since you cannot have a direct connection from Canada to China. Being able to stream even at 420 p, with little glitches or interruptions or delays is a minor miracle in itself.

Although I do not use it the "download" feature, which stores media locally, it might work if you ask for the media well ahead of time. I do not know for sure but that seems like a situation "download" was designed for. 

Edited August 18, 2024 by Gilgamesh_48

[SleepDragon 0]

3 minutes ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

the data rate that exists between you and China probably runs through something more than 10 relays and redirects. Every time anything manipulates your data stream the effective throughput goes down. I doubt, even with a multi-gig data rate at each end that you can get an better connection. While distance does not directly relate to data speed it does have a relationship and, since you cannot have a direct connection from Canada to China. Being able to stream even at 420 p, with little glitches or interruptions or delays is a minor miracle in itself.

Although I do not use it the "download" feature, which stores media locally, it might work if you ask for the media well ahead of time. I do not know for sure but that seems like a situation "download" was designed for. 

thanks a lot. Download maybe a good idea but we cannot download everything locally right? anyway thanks for help.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

4 minutes ago, SleepDragon said:

thanks a lot. Download maybe a good idea but we cannot download everything locally right? anyway thanks for help.

As I said i do not use the "download" feature but i would think that the main limit is device local storage. I know that on my tablet i can place something like 7 or 8 1080p movies. But, when I am traveling, I simply use a fairly large portable USB drive and copy, outside of Emby, the movies or TV shows to it before I travel. I then use VLC to play what I want. I do not use Emby while traveling as I do not like opening up my server for remote access. It is a little inconvenient but it works and i can watch what i want as long as I pre-planed correctly.

[Luke 42079]

2 hours ago, SleepDragon said:

My NAS system is locate at Canada, and right now my family is on vacation to China.

They told me they can access Emby server, but just can watch movies on 480p. if choose movie which higher than 480p，it is hard to play.

So this problem is base on the internet speed in China or not? Is that any method to make it play on 720p or 1080p?

Thanks a lot.

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[RanmaCanada 495]

Any data getting through to China needs to go through their great firewall and will be severely throttled. There is nothing you can do short of using a VPN which I'm pretty sure is illegal in China.

[rbjtech 5284]

6 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

Any data getting through to China needs to go through their great firewall and will be severely throttled. There is nothing you can do short of using a VPN which I'm pretty sure is illegal in China.

Yep.. every packet is being inspected and adding latency into the stream.  Embys ability to tolerate network latency is poor at the best of times, so streaming lets say 10mbit+ to china is a big ask.  I also suspect emby 'auto' detection will not be taking any of this into account - thus it trying to direct play as oppose to force a much lower but stable bitrate via transcoding.

I did an emby latency study some time ago now - i'll try and find it - but i recall even intercontinental streams having issues depending on the global routing hubs.

Remember, all the big streamers use cdn's, emby does not/cannot, so streaming globally is a big ask.

[MrAudio 22]

On 8/18/2024 at 8:12 PM, RanmaCanada said:

Any data getting through to China needs to go through their great firewall and will be severely throttled. There is nothing you can do short of using a VPN which I'm pretty sure is illegal in China.

 Even then, a VPN connection is itself somewhat throttled, and I'm sure the CCP is going to throttle VPN connections anyway - just because they might not be able to access the data doesn't mean they can't throttle the connection, and in fact, they're MORE likely to throttle a connection they can't inspect.

The bottom line is that there are technical issues that the OP can't do anything about that are going to prevent this from working. Downloading content ahead of viewing is certainly an option for some devices (phones and tablets with plenty of storage), but it isn't going to work for something like a Smart TV or Roku that only has 2GB or 4GB of storage, given that a 1080p movie is probably between 4-20 GB in size, depending on bitrate. For it to work at all, Emby is going to have to transcode the content to a much lower resolution and bitrate, and you're going to have all of the problems common with transcoding: difficulty pausing and resuming, nearly impossible to FF or REW, audio sync issues, and so on.

Other than perhaps North Korea, China is about the worst-case scenario.