How to operate emby as silent party / cinema?

[godfuture 5]

Hey guys,

summer is coming and temperatures are rising. Lets imagine that I want to have a silent party or silent open air cinema  in my garden to avoid problems with my neighbors. Everyone has a mobile. Everyone has headphones.

Could I start playing a movie or song on an emby client connected to a beamer/audio system and other guest clients connect just for audio? This way a silent party or silent cinema would be possible.

Emby already has LiveTV capabilities. Maybe this could be done in the same way?

I dont know what the easiest way is, given that most of the party guests do not have access to the emby instance. Maybe one emby user connected to audio and video systems is starting the movie or audio (single item, playlists, stream...whatever) as live stream and emby server is opening a public audio stream that can be played by other thirdparty apps?!

Is there any standard audio stream protocol?

Looking forward hearing other ideas.

[visproduction 315]

Use a blu-tooth amp.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=best+blu-tooth+amps+review+2025&ia=web

[godfuture 5]

6 hours ago, visproduction said:

Use a blu-tooth amp.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=best+blu-tooth+amps+review+2025&ia=web

Every guest can connect to the amp to get the audio stream? Or what is the idea?

[visproduction 315]

GF,

Good question.  Check if the amp can handle multiple users at once.  You might need a larger model.  If it works, please do post the results back here.

[godfuture 5]

On 6/17/2025 at 9:50 PM, visproduction said:

GF,

Good question.  Check if the amp can handle multiple users at once.  You might need a larger model.  If it works, please do post the results back here.

It does not look like. To make this work, I need Auracast support which is not given in many mobiles yet. I hope emby devs react to my proposal with public audio stream on server that can be started as emby user.

To make this really easy and quick to setup, QR-code support of the android/ios app would be required.

Waiting for feedback of dev team. Or other ideas to come

[godfuture 5]

I just tested a bit around with VLC. It seems quite easy. VLC is able to open a stream over http or rstp. Other devices can connect this stream. It worked also on Android. But still there are some challenges. I could not yet turn Kodi with Emby as media player into a stream server like with VLC. Also latency seems to be an issue. And I have not yet tested multicast.

If emby server could publish an audio only stream, my hope is that latency issues are not that big of a problem. To be checked.

Question: is it easily possible to make Emby to publish a stream playable by VLC next to its standard playback? I mean the Emby client (kodi, android app or any other clients) still need to play the video from server next to the public audio stream. Maybe a check box in player "Play this also as audio stream" would be possible...

Well, just posting my (not so well structured) thoughts here...

Edited June 19, 2025 by godfuture

[godfuture 5]

Feedback from kodinerds forum:

Quote

ffmpeg can also generate several output streams from one input, for example piping to VLC with audio + video for the projector/TV and once only audio via multicast. Since multicast minimizes network overhead and additional receivers mean virtually no overhead.

As emby is using ffmpeg in background, it seems it is not so hard to achieve multicast audio stream at all.

[Q-Droid 989]

This might be something useful in that chain.

https://github.com/bluenviron/mediamtx

 

[Jdiesel 1431]

Actual drive in theaters use FM transmitters

 

https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005007342168961.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.2.7c3463c2SFSqNZ&algo_pvid=1dd936cf-10d3-4862-a2f0-f9ad11c46314&algo_exp_id=1dd936cf-10d3-4862-a2f0-f9ad11c46314-1&pdp_ext_f={"order"%3A"17"%2C"eval"%3A"1"}&pdp_npi=4%40dis!CAD!111.41!77.99!!!571.63!400.16!%402103245417503831966286826e1c3d!12000040341792518!sea!CA!0!ABX&curPageLogUid=BYSrgBO2EtoS&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch|query_from%3A

 

Back when phones still had headphone jacks a common but often unadvertised feature was the ability to use the wired headphone cable as an FM antenna. You could download an app and turn your phone into an FM radio and listen on the same headphones that were doubling as the FM antenna.

Edited June 20, 2025 by Jdiesel