Android TV client and Synology reverse proxy

[djuka01 2]

Hi, I'm trying to get Android TV client to work with my setup. I have a custom domain with public cert configured on my synolgy. I'm doing port forward on my firewall to Synology reverse proxy from where I push to emby local ip and port. And everything works fine, except my Android TV clients. I have multiple of them and none work, while i.e. iOS, browser and android clients all work. 

I've read few similar topics but failed to find an answer and would really like to resolve this if possible without importing certs and exposing emby directly. If anyone. can assist it would be appreciated. I'm attaching relevant configs from syno and emby.

Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

Hi.  Can you try searching for our standard android app (Just "Emby" on Amazon and "Emby for Android on Google) on the same device's app store and see how that compares?

Thanks.

 

[djuka01 2]

Thanks for the reply. This one can connect without issues, BUT...   When accessing Emby server via WAN it's not able to play anything, it just loads for a minute and then drops "Playback error, no compatible streams are currently available. Please try again or contact...". When on LAN, Android app connects and plays conntent, same as Android TV app. For a bit of a background, my test Android TV is on a remote site but I'm able to run S2S VPN between remote site and Emby server site. Although this is a workaround for my personal devices, I've often been unable to setup Emby for friends and family who run Android TVs due to this issue and would like to find a working solution if possible. 

Appreciated

[Luke 42077]

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[djuka01 2]

Logs sent to PM.

Thanks

[DonMacaroni 54]

I use Reverse proxy and everything seems to work fine for Android TV as well, I do have some DNS trickery (split-dns) that when playback occurs from local network it will get redirected to local IP of the server. Since all google related devices have Google DNS hardcoded on them (at least most of them are) I also have NAT rule which redirects all DNS requests to my local DNS server (otherwise split-dns would not work).

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  Make sure your proxy is forwarding all post-data properly.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, have you compared your reverse proxy configuration to this?

 

[djuka01 2]

On 1/10/2026 at 10:28 PM, Luke said:

Hi, have you compared your reverse proxy configuration to this?

 

I'we seen this but unfortunately I do not have this level of understanding for configuring nginx as a proxy. Synology's native reverse proxy simply did the trick for my needs until now. If somoeone can translate this to the level of advanced properties of synology native reverse proxy, it would be appreciated, otherwise it seems that I will need to spinup nginx and dig into the topic.

Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

3 hours ago, djuka01 said:

I'we seen this but unfortunately I do not have this level of understanding for configuring nginx as a proxy. Synology's native reverse proxy simply did the trick for my needs until now. If somoeone can translate this to the level of advanced properties of synology native reverse proxy, it would be appreciated, otherwise it seems that I will need to spinup nginx and dig into the topic.

Thanks.

You don't necessarily need to install nginx. Most reverse proxies have similar options so you could compare the nginx settings to your synology proxy settings.

[DonMacaroni 54]

Mine is configured this way:

Very simple config, certificates (https) is handled by proxy, no custom headers or any other trickery.

Edited January 12 by DonMacaroni

[DonMacaroni 54]

@LukeSynology reverse proxy is ngnix but most of the settings are not exposed to UI.
@djuka01Synology stores reverse-proxy config in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/server.ReverseProxy.conf (it is symlink which directs to actual config file, which is guid). I have never tinkered with that config file myself though as I never had to. And AFAIK, these will be regenerated from scratch, each time you change proxy config in UI.
 

 

Edited January 12 by DonMacaroni

[djuka01 2]

@Lukethat's clear but it needs a bit of reverse enginering and understanding of what parts of the configuration I need and can extract from this and how to translate it to synology reverse proxy UI fields. 
@DonMacaroniThis was my setup exactly, no advanced config whatsoever and it worked for everything except for the Android TV client. Then I've started to poke arround and added those custom headers based on recommendation from some thread.

I've read that nginx is the background of synology service but also that it's stripped and that it won't "swallow" the full config file as is so, at my level of current knowledge about this, it seems more straightforward to spin up an nginx container and place a preconfigured file from the other thread.

Obviously, no quick solution with what I have in place and already know so will have to wait for some spare time to play around. 

Thanks everyone for the assistance. 

BR

[DonMacaroni 54]

Weird thing is, that it works for me, with exact config I posted. 
What version of your Android TV is? Should not really matter, but just to be sure.
Mine is quite old 11.

[djuka01 2]

This one is Sony Bravia running 9.0 (Pie), others that I've tested where android boxes also on Pie...

Edited January 12 by djuka01

[DonMacaroni 54]

I have old Phone at the drawer, it has 10.0, unfortunately I don’t posess any 9.0 devices to test 

EDIT: Testing with that phone proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. Apparently it cannot even connect to 802.11ax wireless at all. 

Edited January 12 by DonMacaroni

[djuka01 2]

Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of these set top boxes around here coming from cable providers which do not run anything newer...  

Thanks for the effort in any case....

Cheers

[lianne5 1]

I’ve run into something similar with Android TV clients behind a Synology reverse proxy. It does work, but Android TV seems to be a bit more sensitive than mobile or browser clients when it comes to how Emby is exposed.

One thing that helped in my case was making sure Emby knows it’s sitting behind a reverse proxy — setting Secure connection mode to Handled by reverse proxy and double-checking the external domain and HTTPS port in the network settings. If those aren’t right, some Android TV apps struggle to connect even though everything else works.

Also worth checking how Synology is forwarding headers. Its reverse proxy setup is convenient, but it can behave slightly differently than a standard nginx config. Some people have better luck with split DNS so local devices don’t loop back out through the proxy.

In short, it’s usually not an Emby bug — just a mix of Android TV being picky and the proxy needing a bit of fine-tuning. Once the external URL and proxy handling are correct, it tends to work reliably.

sneaker residential proxies

Edited January 14 by lianne5

[djuka01 2]

@lianne5Thanks for the input. Yes, emby is set to handle secure mode by reverse proxy and everything else is already in place. I think it's clear that this is about forwarding headers correctly but I need to figure out how to set this up correctly, either in synology reverse proxy or by bringing up a standarlone nginx.

[ebr 16169]

7 hours ago, lianne5 said:

Also worth checking how Synology is forwarding headers

And post-data.  The difference is that the Android TV app is sending information in post-data where most of the other apps are not.

[Luke 42077]

On 1/14/2026 at 4:44 AM, djuka01 said:

@lianne5Thanks for the input. Yes, emby is set to handle secure mode by reverse proxy and everything else is already in place. I think it's clear that this is about forwarding headers correctly but I need to figure out how to set this up correctly, either in synology reverse proxy or by bringing up a standarlone nginx.

HI, did you figure this out?

[heffeque 78]

I have tons of reverse proxy stuff working securely without issues, but Emby... I personally gave up and just connect insecurely (I think I got it to work on the web interface, but not on Android/WebOS/Tizen, which are the majority of the devices my friends and family use).

Performance on high-bitrate videos (or when accessing from so-so internet connections) is also much better insecurely, so... (shrug)

Edited January 19 by heffeque