VirtualTV plugin

[Lostboy66 6]

Is there anyway I can select a "Home Video & Photos" library as the source for a Virtual TV Channel.   I would like to have one of my family video library that can just play.

Edited January 16 by Lostboy66
correction

[pünktchen 1409]

1 hour ago, Lostboy66 said:

Is there anyway I can select a "Home Video & Photos" library as the source for a Virtual TV Channel.

No. I think MyTV can do this.

[alex77777 16]

@pünktchen I installed Emby Server on a M4 Mac Mini and I have the same issue with the Comskip not working, I installed 2.1.7.4, I seen you had "Attempt to fix playlist playback in the AppleTV app" for the 2.1.7.3 release (I assume that would also apply 2.1.7.4 release) and Comskip still doesn't work when played via Virtual TV but it can be easily replicated by just installing the plugins and using a Apple TV, just wanted to let you know. 

[podonnell 47]

Do we have a way to target the primary genre only when creating channels? For example I have a Fantasy channel, but there are some items that are very loosely Fantasy but still get pulled into the channel because it's the 4th aggregated genre from TheMovieDB. Is there any means to build out a channel on the primary genre only?

[Prattsville 0]

I just discovered Emby after being a Plex (lifetime)  user for past 10+ years. I switch to Emby for one reason initally...VirtualTV. I saw some youtube comparisons a couple of weeks ago comparing Plex, jellyfin and Emby. One of the reviewers mentioned VirtualTV and that was it. I have been dreaming of creating my own (off grid) type of TV. I have ripped all of my collection over the past 15 or so years but wanted to simulate a real TV guide. I downloaded Emby, paid for the lifetime and can't wait to use this feature.

Unfortunately I can't seem to figure out how to use it. Is there a tutorial or video that can walk me thru the process of making channels? Sorry but I'm so confused about how to get started.

Any help pointing me to a tutorial would be greatly appreciated.

Also, does the developer have a patreon page or a way to donate ? This is really a dream come true if I can figure it out

 

I started reading page one of this forum but I'm wondering since it's 6 years old the interface has changed.

 

To get things started install the plugin via Emby's plugin catalog and restart Emby.

Setup your channels with a name and number and choose your playback mode.

[Discordian 0]

On 17/08/2025 at 14:44, pünktchen said:

I guess you have also set "Watched & Unwatched" episodes, so what else should happen?

If possible, I'd like an option to put already watched titles to the end. Or if I set to only show unwatched shows, if there are no unwatched shows, mark them all as unwatched.

Currently it's hard as a channel I'm building I have to set Episode Balancing to 100% otherwise a single show will play for about 3 days at the end. However shows with only a few episodes appear all the time now.

It'd be super helpful if (any one of these):

• I had more episode balancing options
  • Random sorting with weighting based on watch count / state (as far as I understand count isn't used at all by this plugin right now)
  • An option to mix already watched shows into the show with the most episodes, until everything is watched (then reset watched state)
• The ability to reset all shows played state on plugin user if only x number of shows have unplayed episodes (I'd set this value to 2 for example)
• Options to set the min/max episodes of specific TV shows
  • by length of episode could be cool here too, but isn't super related to my issue.

The issue I ran into is I have 1 show with 840 episodes, and most shows have 40-160 episodes. It's made it very hard to organize my channel within the current options.

[Brendon 119]

Love this plug-in but it has been doing some weird things, I have a few channels that play episodes in sequence, shows are still random, but the episodes sequenced. I have noticed channels resetting themselves after about a week, they just go back and restart all the shows again, but they never ran through all the shows/episodes they had allocated.

This seems to be happening on channels where i use Random Series, Ordered Episodes and also Premiere Date, Ascending.

Any idea's as to why this is happening??

[MarkE2794 1]

when I try to create a channel for some reason there is a small handful of things it is not letting me do that it used to:

- for some reason it won't show folders to choose media from in the rules category for channels

- for bumpers its the same as for the rules category it wont let me choose a location for my bumpers/commercials

is there anyway to fix this, if there is any help or advice is much appreciated

[PuffyToesToo 346]

9 hours ago, MarkE2794 said:

when I try to create a channel for some reason there is a small handful of things it is not letting me do that it used to:

- for some reason it won't show folders to choose media from in the rules category for channels

- for bumpers its the same as for the rules category it wont let me choose a location for my bumpers/commercials

is there anyway to fix this, if there is any help or advice is much appreciated

Have you chosen the Emby User under the Common Conditions, and do you have your API key entered? On rare occasion, generating a new API key has resolved that issue for me.

[MarkE2794 1]

I have chosen an Emby User and generated a new api key but still having issues

[PuffyToesToo 346]

1 hour ago, MarkE2794 said:

I have chosen an Emby User and generated a new api key but still having issues

Sorry I couldn't give you helpful advice, hopefully pünktchen will be able to help you further then. 

[hdsuisse 14]

Hi pünktchen. Emby Version 4.9.3.0 Transcoding fail when im using Continuous Playback Mode

Error: Access token is invalid or expired

VirtualTV 2.1.7.0 plugin is attempting to access Emby server with an old or invalid key. Therefore, the server is responding with a 500 Internal Server Error.

The Emby Appi Key ist set correctli in the Playback Settings and the Emby User have all admin rights.

Is there a solution for this problem?

 

 

Edited February 12 by hdsuisse

[pünktchen 1409]

On 2/11/2026 at 6:57 AM, MarkE2794 said:

when I try to create a channel for some reason there is a small handful of things it is not letting me do that it used to:

- for some reason it won't show folders to choose media from in the rules category for channels

- for bumpers its the same as for the rules category it wont let me choose a location for my bumpers/commercials

is there anyway to fix this, if there is any help or advice is much appreciated

As a first test you could try to find out if the plugin request really does not return anything or if it just times out:

1. Edit/create a VirtualTV channel
2. Open the browser developer tools by hitting F12 on your keyboard and switch to the network tab
3. Change/select an Emby user under Common Conditions of the channel settings
4. Look for the status code and response of the queries in the network tab of the browser developer tools

[pünktchen 1409]

On 2/12/2026 at 2:53 PM, hdsuisse said:

Hi pünktchen. Emby Version 4.9.3.0 Transcoding fail when im using Continuous Playback Mode

Error: Access token is invalid or expired

VirtualTV 2.1.7.0 plugin is attempting to access Emby server with an old or invalid key. Therefore, the server is responding with a 500 Internal Server Error.

The Emby Appi Key ist set correctli in the Playback Settings and the Emby User have all admin rights.

Is there a solution for this problem?

No problems here on Beta 4.10.0.3. Did you also try a new API key?

[pünktchen 1409]

On 2/7/2026 at 1:24 AM, Brendon said:

Love this plug-in but it has been doing some weird things, I have a few channels that play episodes in sequence, shows are still random, but the episodes sequenced. I have noticed channels resetting themselves after about a week, they just go back and restart all the shows again, but they never ran through all the shows/episodes they had allocated.

This seems to be happening on channels where i use Random Series, Ordered Episodes and also Premiere Date, Ascending.

Any idea's as to why this is happening??

It was designed this way by me years before i've created the better sort option "Random Series, Ordered Episodes Playback". Without the option "Cache program data...", every guide refresh will reset the order for "Random Series, Ordered Episodes". With that option enabled, it will happen by default after seven days. I plan to change this behavior, but as probably everyone has noticed, I don't have the time to develop new features. Only bug fixing when necessary...

[hdsuisse 14]

On 2/13/2026 at 7:50 PM, pünktchen said:

No problems here on Beta 4.10.0.3. Did you also try a new API key?

Yes, several times. 

I want to play the virtual channels on an external player. This works until I switch to a channel that's supposed to be transcoded; then Emby LiveTV crashes and has to be restarted. I'll send you the log later. Seems to be a bug in ffmpeg.

[hdsuisse 14]

here the logs when it stops working:

Execution: 2026-02-15 12:06:05

ffmpeg-VirtualTV-f3a68757f53841739c6c3ff32702444c-20260215120605.txt ffmpeg-remux-0534aed0-b3c9-4bb9-9503-7d4e76edb3af_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-135aed2d-c8d2-4755-afb7-6a13f916c1aa_1.txt ffmpeg-VirtualTV-2dcbce3065c44f95a69756dfae497a8d-20260215120624.txt

 

embyserver.txt

Edited Sunday at 11:29 AM by hdsuisse

[hdsuisse 14]

i think here is the problem

	*** Error Report ***
	Version: 4.9.3.0
	Command line: /opt/emby-server/system/EmbyServer.dll -programdata /var/lib/emby -ffdetect /opt/emby-server/bin/ffdetect -ffmpeg /opt/emby-server/bin/ffmpeg -ffprobe /opt/emby-server/bin/ffprobe -restartexitcode 3 -updatepackage emby-server-deb_{version}_amd64.deb
	Operating system: Linux version 6.12.30+ (ugreen@debian) (gcc-12 (Debian 12.2.0-14+deb12u1) 12.2.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.40) #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Ja
	OS/Process: x64/x64
	Framework: .NET 8.0.22
	Runtime: opt/emby-server/system/System.Private.CoreLib.dll
	Processor count: 6
	Data path: /var/lib/emby
	Application path: /opt/emby-server/system
	Emby.Server.MediaEncoding.Unified.Ffmpeg.FfRunException: Emby.Server.MediaEncoding.Unified.Ffmpeg.FfRunException: Error starting ffmpeg
	-loglevel +timing -y -print_graphs_file "/var/lib/emby/logs/ffmpeg-remux-135aed2d-c8d2-4755-afb7-6a13f916c1aa_1graph.txt" -copyts -start_at_zero -f matroska,webm -ss 01:25:03.201 -c:v:0 h264 -noautorotate -i "/volume1/Filme/Familie/Raya und der letzte Drache.mkv" -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -sn -c:v:0 copy -bsf:v:0 h264_mp4toannexb -c:a:0 aac -ab:a:0 128000 -ar:a:0 44100 -ac:a:0 2 -metadata:s:a:0 language=ger -disposition:a:0 default -avoid_negative_ts disabled -map_metadata -1 -map_chapters -1 "/volume2/Emby-Transcoding/transcoding-temp/X8E962D/X8E962D.ts"
	
	12:06:25.437 ffmpeg version 5.1-emby_2023_06_25_p4 Copyright (c) 2000-2022 the FFmpeg developers and softworkz for Emby LLC
	12:06:25.437   built with gcc 10.3.0 (crosstool-NG 1.25.0)
	12:06:25.437 Execution Date: 2026-02-15 12:06:25
	12:06:25.482 Input #0, matroska,webm, from '/volume1/Filme/Familie/Raya und der letzte Drache.mkv':
	12:06:25.482   Metadata:
	12:06:25.482     creation_time   : 2022-08-25T11:57:46.000000Z
	12:06:25.482     ENCODER         : Lavf58.76.100
	12:06:25.482   Duration: 01:47:29.22, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 4395 kb/s
	12:06:25.482   Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Main), yuv420p(tv, bt709, progressive), 1920x804 [SAR 1:1 DAR 160:67], Level 40, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, Start-Time 0.005s (default)
	12:06:25.482     Metadata:
	12:06:25.482       DURATION        : 01:47:29.198000000
	12:06:25.482   Stream #0:1(ger): Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 448 kb/s (default)
	12:06:25.482     Metadata:
	12:06:25.482       title           : Surround
	12:06:25.482       DURATION        : 01:47:29.216000000
	12:06:25.483 /volume2/Emby-Transcoding/transcoding-temp/X8E962D/X8E962D.ts: No such file or directory
	12:06:25.483 EXIT

When i try to open the folder in WinSCP /volume2/Emby-Transcoding/transcoding-temp/X8E962D i have the same error: No such file or directory

Edited Sunday at 11:42 AM by hdsuisse

[pünktchen 1409]

@hdsuisseThe problem only occurs occasionally, right? I think i know what's happening. I'm maybe a little bit to aggressive when it comes to deleting old files and folders of a stopped streaming session. When you switch to a new channel, after a delay of 20 seconds, the plugin deletes all leftovers from the previous channel and also empty folders. Occasionally this cleanup process will also delete things from the new streaming session. Until this is fixed by me, you should let your channels play for at least 30 seconds.

[hdsuisse 14]

That makes sense, i quickly zap the channels 

[hdsuisse 14]

I zap the channel every 30 seconds and there were no more problems.

[Brendon 119]

On 14/02/2026 at 06:10, pünktchen said:

It was designed this way by me years before i've created the better sort option "Random Series, Ordered Episodes Playback". Without the option "Cache program data...", every guide refresh will reset the order for "Random Series, Ordered Episodes". With that option enabled, it will happen by default after seven days. I plan to change this behavior, but as probably everyone has noticed, I don't have the time to develop new features. Only bug fixing when necessary...

I see, kind of annoying behavior, in fact I thought it was a bug. My users have completely abandoned the Virtual Channels because of it, literally getting the same episodes over and over again with no progression so i have turned them all off.

[jansipi 0]

The plugin doesn't appear in my catalogue. Using emby version 4.9.3.0. Where can I find a zip of the plugin to install it manually? 

[PuffyToesToo 346]

9 hours ago, jansipi said:

The plugin doesn't appear in my catalogue. Using emby version 4.9.3.0. Where can I find a zip of the plugin to install it manually? 

Do you have Emby Premiere?

[jansipi 0]

Yes. Premiere monthly.