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.
Several pairs of near-identical code paths differ in one load-bearing
line. Each site now carries a comment naming the invariant that forces it
apart, backed by a characterization test so a future deduplication fails
loudly instead of silently changing behaviour.
Pinned: focusable wrapper vs. chip D-pad activation policy, profile
connection cleanup's raw-id vs. ServerId-typed server projections, live TV
tab loaders, video player display matching and playback service wiring,
track selection container ordering, tracker HTTP client status ladder, and
the MediaServerHttpClient shutdown/cancellation contract versus
ManagedHttpClient's closing guard.
New tests:
test/focus/dpad_activation_policy_test.dart
test/services/track_selection_container_ordinal_test.dart
test/services/trackers/tracker_status_ladder_test.dart
test/utils/media_server_http_client_shutdown_test.dart
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.
- start binder before navigating from auth, mark isBinding synchronously
- overlap plex.tv resource refresh with optimistic cached-metadata connect,
reconcile tokens/membership in background once it lands
- cached endpoint probe gets a head start on the race instead of serially
blocking it
- defer phase-1 HTTPS upgrade off the splash critical path
- per-server connect progress stream for incremental splash checkmarks
- startup timing instrumentation (bind/fetch/race/connect elapsedMs)
edde746