Emby becomes very slow when Internet is down

[ChipL 6]

We've had a few home internet outages recently due to storms, etc. At this time, Emby because our sole means of entertainment.  While it generally works, navigating between screens often becomes painfully slow. I guessed that it was trying to use the internet to get certain information, so I looked in the logs and found many timeouts trying to get artwork:   https://ebyl.tmsimg.com/assets/p7893024_b_v8_aa.jpg?w=480&h=720

I'm not 100% sure if this is the problem, but the errors seem to coincide with sluggish behavior. During an internet outage, we can absolutely live without pretty artwork for recorded programs, etc. It would be nice if such requests were asynchronous behind the scenes so artwork could come in when it's available, but doesn't slow the UI.  This problem exists on all devices we have:  web UI, Firestick and Roku.

 

[Luke 42810]

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

[ChipL 6]

Sorry. I thought I had attached the full file. 

embyserver.txt

[Mahinepua 128]

This happened to me last Christmas and I thought I was going mad.

In my experience, Emby does need a permanent internet connection to function 100%, some items such as actor bio's are not downloaded in advance like artwork and there is no setting to allow so.

If your using IPTV it will cause major issues with a patchy connection, I simply turned off IPTV and avoided anything that needed the internet and problem solved.

Initially I had lagging menus when browsing, nothing that would need the internet but failing background tasks were obviously causing problems.

 

@Lukecan this option be added?

some items such as actor bio's are not downloaded in advance like artwork and there is no setting to allow so

Edited Tuesday at 07:26 PM by Mahinepua

[Luke 42810]

45 minutes ago, Mahinepua said:

This happened to me last Christmas and I thought I was going mad.

In my experience, Emby does need a permanent internet connection to function 100%, some items such as actor bio's are not downloaded in advance like artwork and there is no setting to allow so.

If your using IPTV it will cause major issues with a patchy connection, I simply turned off IPTV and avoided anything that needed the internet and problem solved.

Initially I had lagging menus when browsing, nothing that would need the internet but failing background tasks were obviously causing problems.

 

@Lukecan this option be added?

some items such as actor bio's are not downloaded in advance like artwork and there is no setting to allow so

Add an option to do what? Using iptv wont' matter until you actually try to play.

[Mahinepua 128]

add a fetcher option for actor bio's, I dont know why its not an option.

at present they are loaded on demand.

with no internet = up to a minute blank screen before it times out and then finally displays other movies the actor has been in.

 

[Luke 42810]

On 7/28/2026 at 4:35 PM, Mahinepua said:

add a fetcher option for actor bio's, I dont know why its not an option.

at present they are loaded on demand.

with no internet = up to a minute blank screen before it times out and then finally displays other movies the actor has been in.

 

Because that results in hammering the metadata providers with huge numbers of requests and they have asked us not to do this. That is why it’s on demand.

 That and I promise you wouldn’t like the library scan time that would come with that.