Main stopped compiling: the v21 column drop treated cached_at as
never-read, but the fresh-cache-first playback metadata gate
(ApiCacheSingleton.getIfFresh, from the playback start-latency fix)
reads it on every Plex and Jellyfin playback start, and a later
cleanup removed the put() stamp the gate depends on.
Reinstate the column, keep the v21 migration to the connections
half only (it never shipped in a release), restore the explicit
put() timestamp - on conflict the upsert only updates the
companion's columns, so without it a refreshed row would keep its
original write time and read as permanently stale - and copy
cached_at through the pinned-metadata rescope statement again. The
v21 migration test now pins that api_cache is left untouched.
plex_client.selectStreams' allParts=false branch, download_manager's both-branches-true conditional and unscoped getAllPinnedMetadata tail, playback_source_resolver.preferOffline, and update_service's unreachable catches had no reachable path; PlaybackSession.result/streamHeaders, PlaybackContext.clientScopeId, FileInfoStreams.audioStream, PrefsRepairOutcome.settingsReset/sessionsSalvaged, and JellyfinLiveSessionTracker.playSessionId were write-only; PlexConnection.directUrl, PlexServer.isOnline plus its parse-and-persist presence field, SafStorageService.createDirectory, FullscreenStateManager.stopMonitoring/dispose, the play_queue_launcher re-export shim, track-selection's constant params, and PlexApiCache.unpinForOffline/isPinnedRatingKey (matching the earlier Jellyfin removal) were dead API.
Videos take noticeably long to start. On Plex, tapping Play refetched
/library/metadata/{id} network-first even though the detail screen wrote
a strict superset of that exact payload under the same cache key seconds
earlier. On Jellyfin/Emby, playback start issued a full-detail item GET
before the PlaybackInfo negotiation, and the video controls issued the
same heavy GET again while the stream was opening (#1784) — the most
expensive queries a small home server serves, paid two to three times
per start.
Add ApiCache.getIfFresh over the existing cachedAt column and serve
rows younger than playbackMetadataCacheFreshness (5 min) without a
round trip. Plex guards with the strict stream-detail check
(_plexMetadataHasStreamDetail) so a thin row written by
getPlaybackExtras' lean fetch still goes to the network; Jellyfin's
row has a single full-shape writer, so fetchPlaybackBundle and
fetchPlaybackExtras share the new fetchItemFreshCacheFirst. Any miss,
stale, thin, or malformed row falls through to the unchanged
network-first path, and offline behavior is untouched.
Emby is Jellyfin's upstream ancestor and speaks a near-identical MediaBrowser
API, so the existing Jellyfin stack is parameterised by a `MediaBrowserDialect`
rather than forked. `JellyfinClient`, its auth service, endpoint discovery, LAN
discovery, and the add/edit connection screens all take the dialect and keep one
implementation; `MediaBackend.emby` and `ConnectionKind.emby` carry it through
the neutral models, the Drift `kind` discriminator, downloads, and caches.
Every divergence below was measured against a live Emby 4.9.5 server, not
inferred from documentation, and each is documented at its capability getter.
Jellyfin's request strings stay byte-identical so nothing about its behaviour
changes.
Routes and auth
- Emby only accepts the pre-10.9 user-scoped item routes (`/Users/{id}/Items/…`,
`/Users/{id}/PlayedItems/…`, `/Users/{id}/FavoriteItems/…`); the unprefixed
forms Jellyfin 10.11 added return 404.
- The API is also served under a legacy `/emby` prefix, and both dialects accept
the token as `X-Emby-Token` or `api_key=`.
- Emby answers only its own LAN discovery datagram ("who is EmbyServer?") and
ignores Jellyfin's; its default HTTPS port is 8920.
- No `/QuickConnect` route exists, so Quick Connect stays Jellyfin-only.
Row fields Emby withholds
- `ProductionYear`, `OfficialRating`, `PremiereDate` and `DateCreated` are absent
from list rows unless named in `Fields`, which would otherwise strip the year
and age-rating badge from every card in the app.
- `UserData.LastPlayedDate` never appears on a list row under `Fields=UserData`,
`EnableUserData=true` or the user-scoped `Ids=` form — only on the single-item
detail route, or when the Emby-specific `UserDataLastPlayedDate` token is
requested. Without it every recency-ordered surface silently degrades to
library-add time, and `JellyfinApiCache.applyWatchState` stamps
`DateTime.now()` on watched rows, so an offline watch-state pull would rewrite
the cached play time of everything it walked.
Continue Watching and Next Up
- Emby computes Next Up per series only: the library-wide `/Shows/NextUp` query
returns nothing under every parameter combination tried. The shelf is
therefore reconstructed from a played-episode recency scan plus one
`/Shows/NextUp?SeriesId=` per distinct series, bounded by a shared wall clock
that covers the scan as well — per-request timeouts cannot bound the pass
because `MediaServerHttpClient` times the connect and receive phases
independently. Rows are stamped with their series' newest play from the same
response that ordered them, so no per-series enrichment request is needed.
- `/Shows/NextUp` ignores `NextUpDateCutoff`, and no server-side played-date
filter exists to delegate to (`MinDatePlayed` and `MinDateLastPlayed` are
ignored; `MinDateLastSaved`, `MinDateCreated` and `MinPremiereDate` filter
unrelated dates), so the 365-day window is applied to the scanned dates.
- The resume route returns items with no saved position, including plain next
episodes, so the Emby resume leg reads from `/Items?Filters=IsResumable`.
- Emby is ahead of Jellyfin in one place: `/Users/{id}/Items/{id}/HideFromResume`
makes Continue Watching removal a real capability.
Everything else
- `/Sessions/Playing` and `/Sessions/Playing/Progress` reject a body with no
`PlaySessionId` (HTTP 400), so playback reporting always sends one.
- Passing any `MediaTypes` value to the playlist query returns an empty list.
- There is no aggregate `/Items/Filters` route; the four filter facets are
reassembled from `/Genres`, `/OfficialRatings`, `/Studios` and `/Tags`.
- Metadata writes take name-pair lists (`Genres: [{'Name': 'Action'}]`); the
plain string array is accepted and then silently discarded.
- Custom artwork uploads must be base64 text, not raw bytes — which was broken
for Jellyfin too and is fixed for both.
- Trickplay, media segments and lyrics 404 on Emby, so scrub previews are absent
and intro/credit markers fall back to chapter names.
Verified against a local Emby 4.9.5 and a Jellyfin 10.11.11 control server:
onboarding, browse, detail, playable stream URLs serving real bytes, subtitle
sidecars, watch-state write and restore, hubs, cross-server aggregation and
search across both backends simultaneously.
Drops dead code across services, models, utils and widgets, including the
connection auth service, which had no implementer, and the Live TV DVR
provisioning models, which had no caller.
Tests that only covered deleted behaviour are removed or trimmed. No
behaviour change.
edde746