External player integration – can Emby send a direct file URL to an external player on Android?

[Cotignac 3]

I am running Emby on a R_volution PlayerPro 8K Android device. The device has an excellent built-in media player (Dune) that handles Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and lip sync perfectly, but it cannot read external SRT subtitle files.

I would like to use Emby for library browsing and navigation, and then hand off playback to the built-in Dune player.

My questions:

• Can Emby on Android send a direct network URL (for example an SMB or HTTP path) to the video file, so that an external player can open it directly without going through Emby's own player?
• Is there an Emby API call or intent that can launch an external Android player with a specific file or stream URL?
• Has anyone successfully integrated Emby with the Dune player on R_volution or similar devices?

The reason I am not using Emby's built-in player is lip sync issues. The reason I am not using R_volution's own R_video app is that it requires a connection to their own servers to access the library, which I consider an unacceptable dependency.

Any suggestions are welcome.

[Luke 42128]

Hi, we don't currently do that because we don't know if the player will be able to use that or not. And even if it can, we don't know if the android device will be able to reach it. But an option to do that is always possible.

[Cotignac 3]

Thank you for your response.

To address your concerns directly:

Can the Dune player handle a network URL? Yes, absolutely. The Dune-based player on the R_volution PlayerPro can open files directly via SMB and HTTP network paths without any issues. Network playback is one of its core strengths.

Can the Android device reach the network path? Yes. The R_volution device is on the same local network as the media files, which are stored on Synology NAS devices. Direct access is not an issue.

Our intended approach

Rather than waiting for a native Emby feature, we are considering building a small local bridge application that would work as follows:

• The user browses the library and selects a title in Emby as usual
• The bridge intercepts the playback event via the Emby API or webhook
• The bridge retrieves the direct network path to the video file and any associated external SRT subtitle file
• The bridge launches the Dune player via an Android intent, passing both the video URL and the subtitle path directly

This would give us the best of both worlds – Emby's excellent library management and metadata, combined with Dune's superior handling of Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and lip sync.

Additional observation

It is worth noting that even when using the R_volution PlayerPro as an external player alongside Emby, the movie title is already displayed at the top of the screen when playback is paused. This confirms that metadata communication between Emby and the device is already functioning, which is encouraging for the bridge concept.

Our question to the Emby team

Does Emby currently support webhooks or API callbacks that fire when a user initiates playback on a specific device? And is there an existing API endpoint that returns the direct file path or network URL for a given media item?

Any guidance on the available API hooks would be greatly appreciated.