New app on a 4x3 TV

[TheShanMan 40]

Mistakenly said composite when I meant s-video. But I could consider upgrading the video adapter used for the main tv and stick with what I have for B&W.

Maybe user switching is worth trying if swapping settings.dat files doesn't work well, but I'm not sure I could fully automate it. You seem to be suggesting I can though, so I'll keep that in mind.

Settings.dat seems like the most straightforward way to get this working though.

Appreciate your input on this.

[softworkz 5066]

30 minutes ago, TheShanMan said:

if swapping settings.dat files doesn't work well,

That file is not purely a user settings file. It also stores application state, mirrors some settings you make on the web-app side (stored in the browser folders). When you swap that, things go out of sync, logins may no longer work. The sync feature won't work properly because it would acquire different tokens, etc. 
You will think the app has bugs.

30 minutes ago, TheShanMan said:

I'm not sure I could fully automate it. You seem to be suggesting I can though, so I'll keep that in mind.

When both sessions are logged-in already (and not locked), then you should be able to switch immediately without password entry via

tscon 2 /dest:console

The number (in this example 2) must be the session Id of the other session and it must be executed from an elevated prompt/context.
I haven't tried it in this specific setup, though. You'll need to research a bit.

The elevation can always be simplified by creating a scheduled task that runs in admin context and can be triggered manually without admin rights and you can set up a hotkey to trigger the task.

Personally, I would get a used Nvidia, though  

Edited May 14, 2025 by softworkz

[TheShanMan 40]

Maybe I'll try swapping not just the settings file but the whole app directory then, effectively like the sandbox idea I suggested earlier.

I've done some automation that uses elevation through the task scheduler and it's not trivial. I've learned to hate that as a solution. Plus I'd need to automate the initial logging in of 2 accounts. Doesn't sound trivial, even if the user doesn't have a password.

A card for the main tv might be the best way to go in the long run, but hopefully the directory swapping will work well in the short run.

Thanks again.

[softworkz 5066]

41 minutes ago, TheShanMan said:

But I could consider upgrading the video adapter used for the main tv and stick with what I have for B&W.

Of course these also support S-Video (or analog RGB, which is even better than S-Video). You will want (or even need) to drive both through the Nvidia when you go that route.

[softworkz 5066]

2 minutes ago, TheShanMan said:

hopefully the directory swapping will work well in the short run.

Don't use the sync feature, don't update and (please) don't ask for support while doing this.

[TheShanMan 40]

3 minutes ago, softworkz said:

Of course these also support S-Video (or analog RGB, which is even better than S-Video). You will want (or even need) to drive both through the Nvidia when you go that route.

Not that I saw, unless the dvi connector I saw is analog and you can get an s-video adapter for that. Not my preference. I'd probably just stick with 2 cards. 2 cards has worked fine in general for me for years (until this new Emby app).

Just now, softworkz said:

Don't use the sync feature, don't update and (please) don't ask for support while doing this.

Why? If I'm swapping the whole Emby directory, there shouldn't be a sync issue, unless state is stored outside the directory too.

[softworkz 5066]

Have you ever tried what I had suggested earlier:

• Choose "Balanced" and immediately afterwards "Customize" (so it starts with "Balanced" values
• At the very bottom is "Video ioutput": Choose "GPU" instead of default

You can also try enabling "Additional Performance Tweaks"

[TheShanMan 40]

I'll give that a try. Thanks! But I'm not very interested in trying a bunch of customizing tweaks because it's so time consuming to do that and then try to verify whether it causes problems on my main TV.

You didn't say why swapping the whole Emby directory would be a problem so I'm guessing you previously misread my comment about that and that there isn't an inherent problem with doing it. I understand you not endorsing that idea and it's not ideal to me either but it's easy. Hopefully your video setting suggestion will work for both TV's though.

I'll let you know if that works!

[softworkz 5066]

1 minute ago, TheShanMan said:

I'm guessing you previously misread my comment about that and that there isn't an inherent problem with doing it.

I didn't misread. My reply was directly referring to that.

3 minutes ago, TheShanMan said:

But I'm not very interested in trying a bunch of customizing tweaks because it's so time consuming to do that and then try to verify whether it causes problems on my main TV.

A bunch? It's a single checkbox.

[TheShanMan 40]

Well, not answering my question means I'm left to speculation.

There are a lot of options that get added by choosing customize. Not just the one checkbox. Like I said, I'll give the one a try but don't want to go down the road of playing with a bunch of options.

[softworkz 5066]

36 minutes ago, TheShanMan said:

Well, not answering my question means I'm left to speculation.

I told you what will or might break when you do this:

11 hours ago, softworkz said:

Don't use the sync feature, don't update

What do you expect from me? It would require at least two days of full-time work to research this and give you a precise answer about what would happen in a situation that is not acceptable to happen for the app anyway.

I could immediately write down a list of a dozen things that might break, but most of them are depending other things, so when I would name any and the other conditions are not fulfilled, you would later answer to me, saying "ha ha, you were wrong, xy didn't break".
So I named two things where it's very likely to break. But when you don't use the sync feature for example you might not see any breakage.
Breakage doesn't mean that you'd see an error. In case of sync, the breakage would be rather clear, but in other cases you'd just encounter weird behavior or glitches that are hard to trace back to the root cause. That's why I said you should not ask here for support and let us hunt down something that would never happen otherwise.

Put differently: I can guarantee you that bad things will happen sooner or later but I cannot predict what and how bad it will be.

36 minutes ago, TheShanMan said:

There are a lot of options that get added by choosing customize. Not just the one checkbox. Like I said, I'll give the one a try but don't want to go down the road of playing with a bunch of options.

The way how the "Customize" option works is very simple. It is described in the FAQ:

 

 

Edited May 14, 2025 by softworkz

[TheShanMan 40]

I'm not trying to argue with you but you told me nothing about what would happen if I swap the directory. What you told me is what would happen if I swap settings.dat. I don't expect anything from you. It was a simple question which you declined to answer directly for whatever reason (I took it to mean you understandably don't want to go on record with an answer) and that's fine. You don't owe me anything. I do appreciate the help you've given.

Edited May 14, 2025 by TheShanMan

[softworkz 5066]

4 minutes ago, TheShanMan said:

you told me nothing about what would happen if I swap the directory.

I did:

 

Translation: Sync feature can break and the swapping can break when the app gets updated.

Isn't that a pretty clear answer?

[TheShanMan 40]

11 hours ago, TheShanMan said:

Why? If I'm swapping the whole Emby directory, there shouldn't be a sync issue, unless state is stored outside the directory too.

For the record, this is what went unanswered. You have now answered though: problems can happen when the app gets updated and an old directory gets swapped in. So it's not a syncing issue with other data in the directory. It's a syncing issue with the app itself. Makes sense. That could be handled too, but hopefully that won't be necessary. Time will tell - I have to watch a bunch of stuff on my main TV before I can say for sure that the occasional artifacts don't return.

Also for the record, I don't know what the "sync feature" even is (I'm not asking for an explanation). Maybe that's part of the disconnect we had.

Thanks!

[softworkz 5066]

Sorry, the "Sync" feature is now called "Downloads", but it syncs files essentially between client and server. Swapping the data causes data mismatch between client and server.
Sync is happening in the background, even when the app is closed.

[TheShanMan 40]

Ah, okay. Downloading is not something I'd ever use given that client and server are the same machine in this case. Thanks.

[softworkz 5066]

The Download/Sync feature is just one of many things that can go wrong. It was the most clear and most easily understandable example I could think of. The others cannot be explained with a few words only.

Edited May 14, 2025 by softworkz

[softworkz 5066]

Here's another illustrative example - it didn't come to my mind yesterday:

Token Ping-Pong

The app is exchanging authorization tokens with

• One or several Emby Servers
• The Windows Push Notification Service

At first, when you copy the settings folder you have the same auth tokens in both configs.
But sooner or later (can be weeks, but also earlier or later), a token expires and needs to be either refreshed (automatically) or needs you to sign-in again and you get a new token. In that case, the previous token becomes invalid, but the new token is only saved in one config. As soon as you switch, you'll need to log in again, and from that moment on, you'll need to re-login after each switch.
Background operations use the saved token, but there's no way to show a login dialog to re-login (because background-op), and so - background connection attempts will fail after a switch until a new manual log-in has been done.

For the Windows push service token it's even more complicated but it takes too much time to explain.

[TheShanMan 40]

Well unfortunately the balanced, then customize with the GPU option does introduce glitching. Not as noticeable as my earlier glitching issue, but undesirable nevertheless. I'm going to see if I can find an adequate half height graphics card for my main TV (any specifics on features I should insist on?), hopefully at a fairly low cost (don't want to invest all that much in an overall system that's quite old). In the meantime I'll try to make a point in just switching the video option each time I switch TV's.

It would be nice if Emby could associate the video options with a particular card, so when switching between TV's it would automatically use the right video options. I suspect such a feature would be too much of an edge case to be worth implementing, but that would make this problem easily solvable.

I may also try your idea of using another logged in user for the B&W TV even though I don't think I could automate the initial log in. I also may just go back to using Theater (though I know eventually it'll be EOL).

Unfortunately this is a process of trying to find the best option among none that appear to be ideal, so it's a trial and error thing until I can figure out what I live with.

At some point though if I'm disappointed with trying these other ideas, and until I'm ready to do a full system upgrade, I might become tempted to roll the dice with a directory swapping scheme which handles the app update scenario (i.e. delete directory when going to B&W TV, restore when going back to main if the app wasn't updated, and if it was updated, restore the old version of the app to ensure the app and the directory remain in sync). And then if a problem develops I can do a clean install to see if the swapping scheme is causing it. I'm not trying to get you to give me a thumbs up nor do I want you to spend more time finding reasons it won't work. I think the way I use Emby, none of those issues will affect me. I know, I'm probably wrong and I would be shooting myself in the foot, but then I'd know for sure whether or not it's worth it with the way I use Emby.

Thanks for all the input you've given. That does help steer me, provide options to consider, and set expectations.

[softworkz 5066]

14 hours ago, TheShanMan said:

if I can find an adequate half height graphics card for my main TV (any specifics on features I should insist on?),

The reason why I had suggested the GeForce GTX 950 / 960 is because

• The 900 series is the last one which also supports analog output and that make you safe to use it for your analog TV as well (possibly)
• From those, the 950 amd 960 are the only ones which also support HEVC hardware decoding - that would be a big plus for you.
  See here: https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

Looking again, it also lists the GTX 750 on the same line. You can get those for $20-30 from ebay. There seem to be low-profile models and also some with passive cooling.

 

14 hours ago, TheShanMan said:

I suspect such a feature would be too much of an edge case to be worth implementing,

Yes, unforunately. And it would also become really difficult, because then you (I mean others) might also want this to be specific to a certain display connected to a specific GPU. When you plug in and out, it can become hard to map the right settings to the right display, because this can affect the order and low level naming (\\.\Display1..2..3).

Finally, many settings can only be applied before playback start, so when you move the app between displays, not all settings can  be applied on-the-fly.
This would open a can of worms...

 

14 hours ago, TheShanMan said:

I think the way I use Emby, none of those issues will affect me. I know, I'm probably wrong and I would be shooting myself in the foot, but then I'd know for sure whether or not it's worth it with the way I use Emby.

Everything has been said in this regard, but one more just came to my mind: You could register for the beta when we will go for the next major update, that will give you two separate apps with separate settings. But it will take some time until we get to that point.

 

14 hours ago, TheShanMan said:

Thanks for all the input you've given

Sure, you're welcome! (and you were lucky that I was procrastinating something that night  )