Can't FF or REW while watching recorded content

[Spymaster 5]

On 3/22/2025 at 12:10 PM, SamES said:

Did you try holding down the left/right button?

Yes. It makes no difference. Whether pushing FF/REW once, or pushing and holding, the content moves forward/back a single step and then normal playback resumes. The only way to FF/REW is to repeatedly hit the button and then it bumps forward at 30 second intervals per my "Skip forward length" setting.

FF/REW was fine until the last but one update.

[SamES 1056]

12 hours ago, Spymaster said:

Yes. It makes no difference. Whether pushing FF/REW once, or pushing and holding, the content moves forward/back a single step and then normal playback resumes. The only way to FF/REW is to repeatedly hit the button and then it bumps forward at 30 second intervals per my "Skip forward length" setting.

FF/REW was fine until the last but one update.

Can you please confirm what type of remote you are using?  Is it the standard LG remote or are you using a universal or other type of remote?

On the App Settings menu, can you please confirm that it is showing version 1.0.46.

On the TV Settings, please go to 'About this TV' in General settings, then select 'TV Information', please confirm the 'webOS TV Version'

Thanks

[Spymaster 5]

6 hours ago, SamES said:

Can you please confirm what type of remote you are using?  Is it the standard LG remote or are you using a universal or other type of remote?

On the App Settings menu, can you please confirm that it is showing version 1.0.46.

On the TV Settings, please go to 'About this TV' in General settings, then select 'TV Information', please confirm the 'webOS TV Version'

Thanks

I am using a Logitech Harmony Elite universal remote control.

Yes, the Emby app version is 1.0.46

The webOS TV version is: "3.9.2-6270911 (dreadlocks2-dudhwa)"

[SamES 1056]

3 hours ago, Spymaster said:

I am using a Logitech Harmony Elite universal remote control

OK, that might be the issue.  Do you have the original remote that you can test with?

The app needs to see a long press of the left/right arrows to initiate seeking rather than stepping forwards/back

[Spymaster 5]

1 hour ago, SamES said:

OK, that might be the issue.  Do you have the original remote that you can test with?

The app needs to see a long press of the left/right arrows to initiate seeking rather than stepping forwards/back

Ah yes, that seems to be it.

My remote is programmed so that (both) short/long pushes of the FF button = "FastForward" while (both) short/long pushes of the direction right button = "DirectionRight"

If I long-press the FF button then navigation is stepped. But if I long-press the direction right button then seeking works perfectly.

Which is the complete opposite to how Sky TV, Netflix and BBC iPlayer, for example, operate where the FF/REW buttons enable smooth seeking and the direction buttons provide stepped navigation.

I don't suppose it would be possible to alter Emby so that seeking is triggered by a long press of FF/REW and stepped navigation is triggered by the direction keys?

Edited March 24, 2025 by Spymaster

[SamES 1056]

2 hours ago, Spymaster said:

My remote is programmed so that (both) short/long pushes of the FF button = "FastForward" while (both) short/long pushes of the direction right button = "DirectionRight"

 

Perfect, thanks for confirming.

2 hours ago, Spymaster said:

I don't suppose it would be possible to alter Emby so that seeking is triggered by a long press of FF/REW and stepped navigation is triggered by the direction keys?

One issue with that approach is that some manufacturers (particularly Samsung) have compact remotes with only a few keys and no dedicated REW/FF buttons, hence the need to combine the functions into the arrow keys

[Spymaster 5]

21 hours ago, SamES said:

Perfect, thanks for confirming.

One issue with that approach is that some manufacturers (particularly Samsung) have compact remotes with only a few keys and no dedicated REW/FF buttons, hence the need to combine the functions into the arrow keys

That's interesting regarding Samsung remotes, but presumably they're able to accomodate the arguably more logical navigation functions implemented by giants Netflix and others...?

[CrappyUserName 30]

I noticed seeking changed a version or two ago but I never mentioned it. I have an LGB6OLED.... can't believe it's 9 years old this year.

Previously pushing right on the remote would skip forward 30 seconds (based on settings).

Holding right would seek quite quickly. eg) I could seek forward an hour in a couple of seconds.

But since something changed I initially thought holding right didn't do anything and I've been tapping right multiple times to jump forward 30 seconds at a time. But I've just noticed if I hold it down it actually enters a x2 fast forward mode. If I let it go and push right again it goes to x3, x4 etc... the movie keeps playing normally while the seek bar counts forward. When I push ok it executes the seek to whatever the timer has counted up to. It's a very slow way to seek a 2 hour movie.

I honestly don't understand the logic behind the current FF mode thing. Usually fast forward will move the movie forward at the same time so you can stop it when it gets the scene you are looking for. I think that scenario would be much more common than someone wanting to seek to specific time. Also, like I said, it's slow as balls even at 4x. I believe the old method just obeyed the forward seek setting (I have it at 30 seconds) so when you hold the direction button down it repeatedly jumps forward 30 seconds. You could easily seek forward 1 hour in 2 or 3 seconds, now it's a total slog.

The old method was a lot better than the current setup.

[Luke 42077]

2 hours ago, CrappyUserName said:

I noticed seeking changed a version or two ago but I never mentioned it. I have an LGB6OLED.... can't believe it's 9 years old this year.

Previously pushing right on the remote would skip forward 30 seconds (based on settings).

Holding right would seek quite quickly. eg) I could seek forward an hour in a couple of seconds.

But since something changed I initially thought holding right didn't do anything and I've been tapping right multiple times to jump forward 30 seconds at a time. But I've just noticed if I hold it down it actually enters a x2 fast forward mode. If I let it go and push right again it goes to x3, x4 etc... the movie keeps playing normally while the seek bar counts forward. When I push ok it executes the seek to whatever the timer has counted up to. It's a very slow way to seek a 2 hour movie.

I honestly don't understand the logic behind the current FF mode thing. Usually fast forward will move the movie forward at the same time so you can stop it when it gets the scene you are looking for. I think that scenario would be much more common than someone wanting to seek to specific time. Also, like I said, it's slow as balls even at 4x. I believe the old method just obeyed the forward seek setting (I have it at 30 seconds) so when you hold the direction button down it repeatedly jumps forward 30 seconds. You could easily seek forward 1 hour in 2 or 3 seconds, now it's a total slog.

The old method was a lot better than the current setup.

The 4x seek should be a lot faster than before, and not even close. Keep in mind you can still do single taps to ff/rew using the preset value.

[Spymaster 5]

7 minutes ago, Luke said:

The 4x seek should be a lot faster than before, and not even close. Keep in mind you can still do single taps to ff/rew using the preset value.

Trouble is, if I understand the above post correctly, that 4x seek doesn't give you a real-time view of what you're scanning through, the film continues playing at normal speed until you stop scanning, so you're navigating blindly?

Can't FF/REW functionality from a few versions ago not simply be restored?

Edited March 26, 2025 by Spymaster

[Luke 42077]

10 minutes ago, Spymaster said:

Trouble is, if I understand the above post correctly, that 4x seek doesn't give you a real-time view of what you're scanning through, the film continues playing at normal speed until you stop scanning, so you're navigating blindly?

Can't FF/REW functionality from a few versions ago not simply be restored?

Do you have the video preview thumbnail feature enabled in server settings? if you do then you'll see those thumbnails as you go along.

[Spymaster 5]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Do you have the video preview thumbnail feature enabled in server settings? if you do then you'll see those thumbnails as you go along.

I can't find that anywhere, where is it?

And it feels only an okay solution...

Please can you simply restore the original functionality?

[CrappyUserName 30]

2 hours ago, Spymaster said:

I can't find that anywhere, where is it?

It's under library settings. You can set it per library.

But it doesn't sound like a great solution and this description makes it very unappealing.

Quote

Video preview thumbnails provide live updates while seeking in supported apps. Thumbnail generation may take a long time, cause high CPU usage, and consume additional disk space.

 

4 hours ago, Luke said:

The 4x seek should be a lot faster than before, and not even close

It must have been pretty bad before. Even at 4x it is 4x slower than the old method. It's also very clunky, hold the button to trigger it, let go of the button then tap it 2 more times to go at max speed which is still quite slow.

I'm having a hard time believing anyone who tested it thought it was better than the old method. Just put a movie on and try and seek to 1 hour into it and you will see what I mean. In any case, I think the real issue is it's been changed to the direction button hold command. What should have happened is the direction button hold was left as it was, and this stepped FF functionality should have been linked to the FF buttons.

[CrappyUserName 30]

I saw the blog announcement for the Samsung version which mentioned improvements to FF/RW and hoped there was some overlap with the LG version but that doesn't appear to be the case. Holding left and right still just commences the stepped FF/RW then it takes multiple presses to get x3, x4.

Previously you could hold the direction button down and it would step forward repeatedly based on "Skip Forward Length" settings. I know I'm repeating myself here as you seem to defend this new behaviour but all I ask is you start up a movie and fast forward to 1 hour in the movie and time how long it takes. Then divide that time by 10 and that's how long it used to take with a "Skip Forward Length" of 30 seconds.

I assume this change is due to newer remotes not having separate FF/RW buttons. It would be good if the behaviour was optional.

And just because I don't know where else to put this and it might show up on a google search for someone, my TV was having trouble opening the content store for a couple weeks but I hadn't worried about it. When I tried to update Emby it actually gave me a reason I could do something with.

It couldn't find the domain lgrecommends.lgappstv.com

I tried pinging it and it seems to have disappeared off the internet. Finding a similar post which had ph.lgrecommends.lgappstv.com, I tried pinging au.lgrecommends.lgappstv.com as I'm in Australia. This gave me an IP address so I did a DNS override for lgrecommends.lgappstv.com to point to that IP. This got me to the spinning dots on the TV but it eventually timed out and just stated the content store had an error. So I turned the TV off at the wall until the standby went off and turned it on again. Not only did it install the Emby update but the content store is running substantially faster than it ever did before. I guess it was always running off an overseas location. Hope it helps someone.

It wouldn't surprise me if LG just got rid of that URL and didn't update people running on older TV's. Even though my 9 year old OLED did get a firmware update a few months ago. Maybe that's when they broke it....

[SamES 1056]

What app version do you have installed now?

[CrappyUserName 30]

2 hours ago, SamES said:

What app version do you have installed now?

The latest 1.0.47

And just to state the obvious. I didn't mean to imply the issues with the content store were related to Emby. It's just I found a solution to a problem I had and figured this was as good a place as any to share it.

The only recent issue I have with the app is the FF/RW as the last couple of versions have been a regression in functionality/user satisfaction for me. To be completely honest, I can't actually remember the last time I updated that was a positive experience. The only changes I've noticed have been the removal of all but 2 themes on older TV models, mixed collections changed to side scrolling, constant flip flopping of the player controls layout and most recently the FF/RW change. All of which have been a negative. Actually looking back through my posts on here, it was version 1.0.35 when you made it possible to hold the direction button to constantly jump forward based on the "Skip Forward Length" settings. I'm sure a lot of bugs have been fixed since then but functionality wise it's all been downhill since then for me.

The problem is I can't stop the TV from prompting me to update so I eventually do to get rid of that annoyance.

[Luke 42077]

On 7/9/2025 at 1:39 AM, CrappyUserName said:

but all I ask is you start up a movie and fast forward to 1 hour in the movie and time how long it takes.

At 3x or 4x wouldn't it be really fast?

[CrappyUserName 30]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

At 3x or 4x wouldn't it be really fast?

I did an experiment. I started a movie and started a stop watch as soon as I held the direction button to trigger the seek operation, I then hit the direction button 3 times to get it to x4. It took 33 seconds for it to seek to 1 hour in the movie. I then did the same test with me constantly pushing the direction button so it did 30 second jumps and got there in 24 seconds with a sore thumb.

Previously I could hold the direction button down and get there in a couple of seconds.

Edit: When I say previously, I mean since 1.0.35. I'm not sure what version it changed to do the x2/x3/x4 stuff.

Edited July 11, 2025 by CrappyUserName

[Spymaster 5]

A significant issue for me, when I FF or REW using the direction keys (yuck), is that I can only do so "blind". I'll FF for "a bit" then have to see whereabouts I am, then FF a bit more and look again. A true FF / REW feature should:

1) Enable me to use the actual FF/REW buttons on the remote so that it's consistent with my other devices and services and

2) Enable me to see in real time what I'm navigating through, so that I can find the spot that I'm looking for without it feeling like pot luck.

Edited July 11, 2025 by Spymaster

[SamES 1056]

I must admit that I also liked the old approach where you could either do multiple presses or hold left/right down. Both options would show the thumbnails, then you when you stop pressing it jumps to that location. 
 

I can see how the x2, x4 approach can be useful, but both have there benefits. 

[Luke 42077]

Emby for LG TV's 1.0.49 has been released. Stay tuned to the blog for the release announcement.

[Spymaster 5]

16 hours ago, Luke said:

Emby for LG TV's 1.0.49 has been released. Stay tuned to the blog for the release announcement.

Update installed... but not noticing any difference in terms of navigation!

[Luke 42077]

1 hour ago, Spymaster said:

Update installed... but not noticing any difference in terms of navigation!

What exactly did you try?

[Spymaster 5]

29 minutes ago, Luke said:

What exactly did you try?

FF and REW using the FF and REW buttons on the remote. They still only step forwards and back - only the direction buttons offer full navigation. So still operates more like an "app" than a TV service such as Netflix or Prime.

Edited December 27, 2025 by Spymaster

[Luke 42077]

Did you try holding the buttons down?