Why doesn't Emby leverage guide data for metadata?

[Deihmos 169]

By default, Emby tries to fetch metadata for recordings from sources like TVDB but why doesn't it pull it from the guide? In my experience, TVDB and TMDB are often inaccurate since most of what I record isn't listed there. It frequently incorrectly matched recordings, so I ended up disabling it entirely, leaving only a poster.

Other software, like Channels and Plex, retrieves both backdrops and posters for recordings directly from the guide and don't use the metadata providers so it is always 100% accurate. Emby guide seems to only provide the poster. Scraping the backdrops from the guide and giving the option to get metadata from there should be considered.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, the server already does this. It will use all available guide data.

[Deihmos 169]

Yes, but your guide doesn’t scrape a backdrop like other guides I’ve used. Instead, it ends up using an oversized poster as the backdrop, which doesn’t look that great.

 

 

 

[Luke 42077]

OK we'll look into what they have available. Thanks.

[Deihmos 169]

I’m now seeing backdrops in the Live TV guide. They weren’t there before. Is this something Emby is working on implementing? They’re not being used for recordings—the poster is still used as the backdrop instead.

[Luke 42077]

HI, yes the server is now importing the backdrops.

[Deihmos 169]

On 10/19/2025 at 4:53 PM, Luke said:

HI, yes the server is now importing the backdrops.

Th egg  has the backdrops but they are not added to the recordings, so lately I have been searching the web to manually add the backdrop. Is there a way I can get them directly from Emby? Is there a specific folder where they are saved?

[Luke 42077]

On 12/7/2025 at 1:58 PM, Deihmos said:

Th egg  has the backdrops but they are not added to the recordings, so lately I have been searching the web to manually add the backdrop. Is there a way I can get them directly from Emby? Is there a specific folder where they are saved?

Yea I don’t think the dvr saves the backdrop from the guide data because up until recently we never had that. So we’ll have to add that. Thanks.