Emby for Android TV killed EAC3 and video freezes at 90%

[jan_axhell 4]

In the past 2 weeks I noticed that every episode of a series that I was watching freezed at about 90% and I had to exit and restart to go on, sometimes from the beginning. According to claude code, it's because eac3 codec support has been removed. My Tv has Android 7, so the other android app that is now advertised in the home is not viable for me as it crashes as soon as I launch it (has already been like this for at least one or two years). The only thing I could to was to revert to tv.emby.embyatv v2.1.48g. Claude code made a custom APK that won't be updated any further with Playstore auto-update, but I would obviously prefer to update. This is what Claude Code had to say about it:

REGRESSION IN EMBY FOR ANDROID TV 2.1.51G: E-AC3 (DOLBY DIGITAL PLUS) NO LONGER DIRECT STREAMS, FORCES AUDIO TRANSCODE + PLAYBACK STALLS NEAR ~90%
Summary
After the Android TV app auto-updated to 2.1.51g (versionCode 215100), media with E-AC3 (eac3) audio tracks stopped Direct Streaming and started forcing a server-side audio transcode to AAC. On top of that, the resulting remux/transcode playback stalls once near ~90% of the file and has to be exited and restarted to finish. Rolling the app back to 2.1.48g (versionCode 214800) restores the previous behavior (Direct Stream, no transcode, no stall).

Environment
Client: Emby for Android TV — regressed on 2.1.51g (215100), works on 2.1.48g (214800)
Device: Philips 32PFS6402/12, Android TV 7.1.2, armeabi-v7a, ExoPlayer 2.18.7 (as reported in the ffmpeg session User-Agent)
Server: Emby Server 4.9.5.0 (unchanged since 2026-05-18 — not the cause)
Media: MKV, Video h264 1080p, Audio eac3 5.1 (e.g. WEB-DL episodes)
What happens on 2.1.51g
Playback request from the app contains:

...&AudioCodec=aac,pcm_s16le,aac,mp3&... &TranscodeReasons=AudioCodecNotSupported
So the app no longer advertises E-AC3 support. The server keeps the video as -c:v copy but re-encodes the audio eac3 -> aac (a “remux” transcode). During this remux, playback consistently stalls near ~90% of the file:

Example (55:55 file): playback froze around PlaybackPosition 00:48:53 while segments were already produced further ahead (TranscodingPosition 00:50:28, throttle=off, speed=1.04x). The server was not starved of data — the client (ExoPlayer) stops advancing. Exiting and re-entering lets it finish.
This reproduces on multiple different files (all eac3), so it is systematic, not a corrupt file.

What happens on 2.1.48g (previous version)
Same server, same files, only the app downgraded. The non-DirectPlay reason changes from AudioCodecNotSupported to a non-required channel condition:

Profile: VideoAudioCodecProfile, DirectPlay=false.
Reason=Android-Exo.AudioChannels Condition: LessThanEqual. ConditionValue: 2. IsRequired: False.
i.e. E-AC3 is accepted again. The server session reports:

PlayMethod = DirectStream
with no ffmpeg transcode process and no segments in transcoding-temp. No stall.

Reproduction
On Android TV app 2.1.51g, play a file whose audio is E-AC3 5.1.
Observe the server spawns an ffmpeg-remux-* session (audio eac3 -> aac) with TranscodeReasons=AudioCodecNotSupported.
Let it play toward the end — playback stalls once around 90%.
Downgrade the app to 2.1.48g and repeat: PlayMethod becomes DirectStream, no transcode, no stall.
Notes / questions
The official Android TV supported-codec list mentions ac3 (Dolby Digital) but not eac3 (Dolby Digital Plus); yet 2.1.48g and earlier did offer eac3 (hardware-decoded by the TV) and it worked for years. Was dropping eac3 from the reported capabilities in 2.1.51g intentional? If so, please make it a device/app option, because on hardware that decodes E-AC3 fine it turns a Direct Stream into a transcode.
Separately, the ~90% remux stall itself looks like a client-side HLS/ExoPlayer issue worth investigating, since it makes the fallback transcode path unusable to the end of the file.
There is no in-app setting to re-enable E-AC3 (Playback settings expose no audio-codec option).
The standard “Emby for Android” app (com.mb.android 3.5.36) is not a workaround on this TV: it crashes on launch with IllegalArgumentException: Invalid column internal_provider_id on Android 7.1.2.