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 42821]

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 42821]

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 42821]

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.

[Mahinepua 128]

That doesn’t make any sense Luke because currently actor images are downloaded in advance, so a few kb of extra txt for bio’s wouldnt impact.

If it’s an agreement with providers then I understand, and if that’s the case can Emby be made not to freeze when offline and trying to fetch bio’s on demand?

I reported the issue at Xmas, often we click on an actor to see what other movies they are in and with no internet it can freeze for up to a minute before proceeding.

Edited Thursday at 07:37 PM by Mahinepua

[Luke 42821]

Actor images are not downloaded in advance. Not by Emby at least. 
 

the server just records the image url but doesn’t fetch it until the first time that it’s needed.

[Mahinepua 128]

That’s interesting. I’ll check tonight after adding new media, scanning then disabling the internet and viewing a movie.

[Mahinepua 128]

Hi Luke, I scanned in new media, turned off the internet, went into a new movie and I had actor images.

The fetcher did retrieve actor images in advance OR maybe it was using the cache for actors from other movies with the same actors which is more likely.

Are there Emby compatible tools that can download actor images/bio in advance and add them into Emby's main cache, not add them into the individual media directory?

[Luke 42821]

Quote

maybe it was using the cache for actors from other movies with the same actors which is more likely.

Correct yes.

[justinrh 285]

But lets not lose sight of the issue here.  No internet should not make Emby slow or unusable.

[Mahinepua 128]

Yes that's correct. Although it can be used offline, its not 100% functional due to on demand fetchers and other components that need the internet.

Still can play media though.

In my situation last Xmas Emby wasn't really usable due to IPTV and patchy internet freezing background tasks and bogging just browsing media.

Once I removed IPTV everything worked fine...until I tried to view bio's of course.

Unfortunately we live in a world where you are never truly offline anymore so you cant blame Emby.

Even premiere authentication requires routine internet access, so its not technically usable offline on a permanent basis.

 

[speechles 2107]

The Roku will start blinking the white status light when it has no internet. At that same time any app launched that has any internet functionality (such as trailers, and some plugins on Emby) then it will also trigger a warning that the app might require internet. You can choose "launch anyways" and it will launch Emby anyways without internet.

Then once you start to play an item the Roku will send video start/stop beacons over the internet indicating how long it takes the app to start playback and the URL playback is coming from. Without internet these beacons being sent may cause slight delays before playback begins. The URL they see from your Emby server is an internal URL with an ID playing stream.mkv or similar. They do not see the filenames, paths, mounts, anything else. The reason Roku does these beacons is to BAN any apps playing from blacklisted URL's. It isn't meant for Emby servers. It is meant to stop someone creating an app that steals content from a CDN. They would know you are. They would BAN that app and block that app from being installed on any Roku. Remove the app from any Roku that previously installed it. Any user having that app installed would have developer mode removed from their Roku to prevent them from being the one that made the app from doing it again with that Roku device. It blocks your entire developer account and all your Rokus serial numbers attached to it. They would have to create a new account and buy new Rokus to ever develop on Roku again.

So at the start of any playback Roku is sending these beacons. They also send them whenever media stops playing. To keep metrics for how long each streaming app keeps their users inside the video player. Roku keeps track of total streaming hours for each app. Then you can see how popular everything is based on that metric. That is how their store works. So everything they are doing is to protect their store.

I assume the same happens with Amazon. The Amazon fire sends beacons to track playback/URLs to ban infringing apps. You must send these beacons or they will BAN your app. This is completely normal since they own the store they make the rules. Since everything on Emby originates from your Emby server and nothing is played directly from online URLs this both protects you and Emby from infringing store policies.

Edited 26 minutes ago by speechles