Two weeks of troubleshooting paid off – Docker solution for my Emby on UGREEN

[Blueskies278 49]

Wrong Date for US Shows

• Fixed US Show Metadata: Pulls directly from Trakt to bypass Emby’s "Upcoming" endpoint issues. "Upcoming" now displays the correct dates for US TV shows in the European timezone.
• Timezone Accuracy: Personally, I prefer Trakt because it syncs to whatever timezone you’re in.
• Self-Healing: Detects Emby cache resets and reapplies fixes within 30 seconds.
• Set & Forget: Runs automatically on my UGREEN DXP4800 Plus NAS; includes a 1:00 AM daily "safety net" sync and handles reboots without manual intervention.

 

No TMDB Option for TV Shows

• TMDB Landscape Fixes: Scans my folders every 60 seconds and downloads missing landscape.jpg thumbnails from TMDB. Hopefully, TMDB support for TV shows will be implemented in the near future.
• Thumbnail Selection: It will download the most popular thumbnail with text. If you want to select a different one, you will have to manually download it from the TMDB website.

 

Auto Next Episode Not Working (Android & Apple TV)

• The Workaround: Install Diagnostic Options and toggle "Disable HLS Subtitles."
• The Fix: Usually, this setting disables itself when Emby restarts. My Persistent Settings permanently locks the "Disable HLS Subtitles" toggle so it stays active even after a reboot.

Summary: All of this took about two weeks to compile with Claude AI because I hit numerous walls, but it was well worth it!

Edited April 12 by Blueskies278

[Luke 42375]

Hi, what are emby cache resets?

[Blueskies278 49]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi, what are emby cache resets?

There is a synchronization conflict between Docker, Emby, and TMDB. After my Docker container corrects the air times for upcoming US TV shows, Emby pulls fresh data from TMDB a few hours later. This overwrites the corrections and reverts the shows to the incorrect timezone. To fix this, I’ve bypassed TMDB in favor of Trakt, which respects timezone data more accurately. Additionally, I noticed some upcoming shows fail to appear in Emby entirely, even though they are visible in the Kodi. Kodi uses Trakt for upcoming TV Show.

Edited April 12 by Blueskies278

[Blueskies278 49]

UPDATE: 

Fix: Emby Upcoming Page Slow to Load

My Emby Upcoming page was taking an annoying  2+ minutes to load, this happens every 4-5 hours. After some digging I found Emby fetches live data from TheMovieDB every time you click it rather than using a local cache.

The Fix A small Docker container that runs alongside Emby. It caches the Upcoming data every night at midnight and serves it instantly through a proxy on port 8097. Now emby "upcoming" works insanely like jellyfin.

Summery:

• Port 8097 → Use this for all your devices (browser, Android TV box)
• Port 5050 → Cache status page http://NAS IP:5050/status
• Midnight → Cache refreshes automatically every night

 

it's great that RTM now works like Jellyfin, but I'm still using my custom Emby-Watcher-Service, I created weeks ago, before the official bug fix, because it's almost instant.

All these fixes I created with the help of Claude & Gemini AI make using Emby a joy. I no longer use Kodi or Jellyfin.

The feature I’m proudest of is 'Upcoming,' which now displays the correct dates via Trakt. It was a real challenge—Claude AI insisted it couldn't be done, but I kept pushing and feeding it ideas until we finally cracked it.

 

Edited April 17 by Blueskies278

[Blueskies278 49]

This is what happens when I click on 'Upcoming' before the docker fix: here is a short clip, but in real time it takes 2 minutes and 10 seconds to load TV shows. This happens every few hours. Very annoying. As mentioned before, Jellyfin never has this issue.

Edited April 18 by Blueskies278

[Happy2Play 9831]

3 hours ago, Blueskies278 said:

This is what happens when I click on 'Upcoming' before the docker fix: here is a short clip, but in real time it takes 2 minutes and 10 seconds to load TV shows. This happens every few hours. Very annoying. As mentioned before, Jellyfin never has this issue.

 

emby upcoming.mov 525.78 kB · 0 downloads

Looks sort of normal as Upcoming has to query provider as cache expires.  Would need to see the corresponding log for this video.

Only current way around this would be running Missing Episode task daily to ensure cache exists.

 

[Blueskies278 49]

1 hour ago, Happy2Play said:

Looks sort of normal as Upcoming has to query provider as cache expires.  Would need to see the corresponding log for this video.

Only current way around this would be running Missing Episode task daily to ensure cache exists.

 

Sorry, this is not normal for me. Waiting over two minutes is unacceptable, this happens multiple times during the day and I find it very annoying. Like I said before, Jellyfin never has this issue. Before the fix, I was missing episodes anyway, this has been going on for months. My current setup works perfectly, it hasn't missed any episodes in the past two weeks.

The tweaks I've implemented has made Emby significantly better for my daily use.

Edited April 19 by Blueskies278

[Blueskies278 49]

 

 key findings from both logs:

Emby log (00:00 - 04:39)

• Started midnight library refresh at exactly 00:00
• Spent 4.5 hours fetching every season of every show from TheMovieDB one by one
• This is why Upcoming was slow — Emby was too busy doing live metadata lookups to respond quickly
• 2,700+ individual API calls to TheMovieDB during that period

Jellyfin log (05:51)

• Started up in 7.6 seconds
• Did a few quick cleanup tasks in seconds
• No live metadata fetching when you click Upcoming
• Upcoming was instant because Jellyfin uses its local database instead of calling TheMovieDB live

The key difference: Jellyfin pre-caches everything on startup and serves from its local database. Emby calls TheMovieDB live every time you click Upcoming, which is why it takes 2+ minutes.

That's exactly why proxy fix works —  bypass Emby's live lookup and serve the pre-cached data instead, just like Jellyfin does natively. I realy don't see Emby's Logic.

Edited April 19 by Blueskies278

[Luke 42375]

Quote

After some digging I found Emby fetches live data from TheMovieDB every time you click it rather than using a local cache.

Not every time. It's just that the cache is short lived.

[Blueskies278 49]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

Not every time. It's just that the cache is short lived.

I would say on average, every 4–10 hours. I will have to wait over 2 minutes again.I think it maybe an issue if you have a large  library, that's why I created my own docker fix. 

Why doesn't Emby natively have a cache for 'Upcoming'?

Thanks

Edited April 20 by Blueskies278

[Luke 42375]

12 hours ago, Blueskies278 said:

Why doesn't Emby natively have a cache for 'Upcoming'?

 

Hi, it does.

[Blueskies278 49]

6 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, it does.

It took a lot of trial and error to finally crack the 'upcoming' cache issue — so I asked Claude AI, and here's what I found

What likely actually happens: The Emby developer is correct — Emby does cache Upcoming data. But the cache expires or gets invalidated triggering a fresh lookup. Based on what we saw:

• Second click was 199ms — that was the cache working
• First click was 2.6 minutes — that was the cache being rebuilt after expiring

So the real problem isn't that Emby has no cache — it's that when the cache expires and rebuilds, it blocks your request for 2+ minutes instead of serving stale data while refreshing in the background.

Our fix still works perfectly regardless — we serve the cached data instantly and let Emby rebuild its own cache in the background without you ever waiting.

 

Basically, the cache expires or gets invalidated, triggering a fresh lookup (this happens multiple times throughout the day). As I mentioned before, Jellyfin's "Upcoming" is always instant because the cache does not expire or get invalidated within the 24 hour timeframe.

This makes total sense to me because this is what I was experiencing before the fix. 

 

Thanks

 

 

 

 

Edited April 20 by Blueskies278

[Blueskies278 49]

@LukeThanks for adding TMDb for thumbnails. By adding it, there's so much choice now! 

The only outstanding bug is 'Auto Next Episode' not working on the Android and Apple TV apps. There are no issues with the Emby web version.

As I have already highlighted in this post, I permanently locked the 'Disable HLS Subtitles' toggle to get 'Auto Next Episode' working; it now stays active even after a reboot via a Docker custom fix

Unfortunately, I know the 'upcoming' cache issue can't be fixed. It’s not an issue for me, though, because I created a custom Docker fix that works 100% in my setup.

Edited Thursday at 09:55 PM by Blueskies278