Emby Premiere on offline Android TV clients (server online, clients offline)

[edanius 4]

Hello,

I have a special setup onboard a vessel and I’m trying to understand if what I want is technically possible or not.

Setup:

Emby Server has internet access and can verify that I have an active Emby Premiere license.

The server works perfectly and streaming is local (LAN only).

My Android TV (Android 15) clients have no internet access at all.

They are always offline and cannot be given internet access due to extremely limited connectivity onboard.

All clients connect to the server over local network only.

Problem: Despite the server being online and licensed, the Android TV clients never get Emby Premiere features.

They behave as if no Premiere license exists.

Question:

is there any way for Android TV clients to use Emby Premiere without having direct internet access themselves, relying only on the server’s license verification?

Or do Android TV clients require their own internet for Premiere to work?

In short: is this scenario supported, or is it simply not possible?

[Lessaj 467]

Both the server and the client devices must have internet connectivity to verify the premiere status. They don't need it all the time, it's cached for roughly a week or so, but then they'll have to phone home again.

[ebr 16169]

59 minutes ago, Lessaj said:

Both the server and the client devices must have internet connectivity to verify the premiere status. They don't need it all the time, it's cached for roughly a week or so, but then they'll have to phone home again.

This is correct.  A Roku device might work better in your situation.

[edanius 4]

Thank you for the suggestion to use Roku — I appreciate it — but unfortunately it’s not a viable option for us due to cost and maintenance across many TVs.
Is it true that Kodi + Emby plugin for Kodi works fully offline? 

[TMCsw 248]

Possible alternative?

I haven’t tried this, but you could use ADGUARD (or another DNS blocker) to block all DNS requests from client devices, then allow mb3admin.com so clients can occasionally validate their Premier use. (Perhaps other sites are needed?)

I would not expect it to use any significant bandwidth, just a thought.