Direct File Access - Exoplayer

[Teddyknuddel 144]

@vdatanet
That's actually a much better way of putting it, and I mostly agree with you.

You're right that “the server isn't in the media path” is, by itself, an architectural difference rather than automatically an advantage. Whether it becomes an advantage depends on the setup.

But you've also just listed several concrete situations where it does become an advantage: avoiding an unnecessary network hop, players whose native file access behaves better, and media structures that benefit from real file access.

And that's really all I've been arguing. I never claimed that SMB universally beats HTTP, nor that it somehow produces better picture or sound from identical data.

In my particular setup, everything is local, the player and storage are on the same network, Kodi has excellent native SMB support, and I neither need nor want the server to mediate media delivery. So Direct File Access is the architecture that suits that setup better.

For a browser, Chromecast, remote client or a client that may require remuxing/transcoding, HTTP obviously has major advantages. I wouldn't suggest otherwise.

So yes: two architectures, different trade-offs, and which one is preferable depends on the setup.

Which brings us to the slightly ironic conclusion that Direct File Access does indeed have concrete benefits — just not for everybody.

And that was my point all along.

[ebr 16676]

7 hours ago, Teddyknuddel said:

After all these discussions, have we now reached the point where the strategy is simply to sit this out in silence and hope that the thread starter eventually “forgets” about it?

From my perspective there is nothing left to discuss at this point in time.  There is not enough benefit in this feature to warrant further development at this time.

[Teddyknuddel 144]

@ebr
And this is exactly where we disagree.

You say there is “not enough benefit” to warrant further development. But that isn't an objective technical conclusion — it's your assessment of how much those benefits are worth relative to the number of users who would use them.

@vdatanet has just described several situations himself where Direct File Access can provide an actual advantage. So I think we've moved beyond the question of whether benefits exist at all. They clearly can.

The remaining question is how much value Emby assigns to those benefits and to the users who want them.

And that's the part I don't agree with.

Direct File Access existed, it worked, and I used it successfully myself. It wasn't abandoned because it was technically useless or because HTTP made it functionally impossible. Android changed, maintaining the feature became less attractive, and Emby decided that the number of users benefiting from it didn't justify the effort.

That's your development decision to make. But I'm equally entitled to challenge the reasoning behind that decision — especially as a user who actually used the feature and found it valuable enough to downgrade an entire Shield just to retain it.

So no, from my perspective there is still something to discuss. Saying “there is not enough benefit” doesn't settle the question; it simply states Emby's current position on it.

And positions can be reconsidered.