Display a poster of the current episode as the background for the TV show (just like on Android phone)

[chuwz 23]

Hello, please do not mark this topic as a duplicate. Please read my feature request carefully—this topic is completely different from the topic “When I click on an episode, Stay on the current episode's poster”!

 

currently, Emby is designed on mobile devices so that when I tap on an episode of a TV show, the background image changes to the poster for that specific episode.

As shown in the video.

However, strangely, the Emby Universal App on Android TV doesn’t work this way, as shown in the video: no matter which episode I tap, it always displays the poster of the entire series instead of the poster of the current episode.

 Could you add an option that allows us display a poster of the current episode as the background for the TV show (just like on Android phone) while using the Emby Universal App on Android TV?

Actually, I’ve already used AI to write code and created an Xposed plugin that achieves this effect. You can check out the demo—this is exactly the effect I was hoping to achieve.

Actually, displaying the poster of the current episode in background is standard practice—the third-party Emby client Yamby does it this way. (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hush.yamby&hl=zh)

Even Emby itself does this: if you switch the media library to “Home videos & photos” tapping on a video will display an enlarged poster of the current video as the background.

Also, I understand that you want me to enable ”Show a poster on the detail screen“, but when I did so, I encountered a serious bug.

I posted a topic about this bug; you might want to check it out. [BUG on Android TV] A minor issue that occurs after enabling the poster on the detail screen

I won't enable ”Show a poster on the detail screen“ until the bug is fixed.

 

So could you please support “display a poster of the current episode as the background for the TV show (just like on Android phone)”? Thank you so much!

[ebr 16551]

Hi.  We use backdrops as backdrops on large-format devices.  Enlarging a poster and displaying it this way would look awful in most instances I'm afraid.  If you really want this, you could probably create a backdrop for those episodes and it would show there.

[crusher11 1241]

4 hours ago, ebr said:

If you really want this, you could probably create a backdrop for those episodes and it would show there.

Yes, manually-created episode backdrops work:

 

I have no need for them to actually appear as backdrops, but doing it this way means these are the images that get used in Next Up/Continue Watching, instead of using the landscape image for the entire series.

[ebr 16551]

59 minutes ago, crusher11 said:

but doing it this way means these are the images that get used in Next Up/Continue Watching, instead of using the landscape image for the entire series.

Shouldn't be necessary with 4.10 right?

[crusher11 1241]

5 minutes ago, ebr said:

Shouldn't be necessary with 4.10 right?

I was just wondering that as I was posting. AFAIK you just get to choose between portrait and landscape, though, so it still likely behaves the same way—and I only want my sports events to do this, I'd rather have series art than episode art for actual TV shows.

[chuwz 23]

Hello, @Luke@ebr

1.

Quote

Enlarging a poster and displaying it this way would look awful in most instances I'm afraid.

I’ve already used AI to write some code and create an Xposed plugin to achieve this effect. Take a look—it looks pretty well, doesn’t it? 

I don't think it's terrible—I think it's fantastic!

 2. It’s true that some people prefer to continue seeing series posters instead of episode posters. So I suggest adding an option, such as "Show a poster on the detail screen", to satisfy both groups.

If you don't want episode posters, turn this option off; if you want episode posters, turn this option on.

[ebr 16551]

Those are not "posters".  What you want to achieve is already possibly by simply providing a backdrop for the episodes.

[chuwz 23]

6 hours ago, ebr said:

Those are not "posters".

Okay, maybe I didn't explain it quite right—maybe what's inside the red circle isn't actually a poster?

@Luke@ebrI just want to display the content inside this red circle as the background.

Quote

What you want to achieve is already possibly by simply providing a backdrop for the episodes.

I'm not sure what you mean by “backdrop.” If you mean manually creating one, that would be way too much trouble... I have so many TV shows to process—there's no way I could do that...

Quote

So, what exactly am I trying to achieve?

This is an Xposed plugin I wrote using Claude Code (if you don't trust this .apk, feel free to delete it—no need to let me know).

display the primary image from the current episode as the backdrop on large-format devices..apk

By injecting this Xposed module, I was able to achieve the effect I wanted.

Automatically display the primary image from the current episode as the backdrop on large-format devices.

I can confirm that the current official version of Emby doesn't support this feature.

 

So, could you please support this feature request?

You could create a toggle option that can be turned on or off, which would satisfy both those who like this feature and those who hate this feature.