Is there a device (Android TV, Fire Stick, Roku, etc.) that reports or can report to Home Assistant what is playing? So it would Say Netflix, The Walking Dead Episode 1 Season 1 or whatever.
I don’t know if this is app specific, or device specific but would really like to know. I am trying to setup something for my daughter’s room and this way I can see what she is watching, and hopefully it is something she can watch. She has a google home now for playing music but sometimes she gets down a rabbit hole with YouTube Music and gets some pretty crazy things. She was listenting to Disney Music then all of the sudden it was Epic Rap Battles of History…
I started a TV show on Hulu and it just says that Hulu is playing. It does not say anything about “America’s Funniest Videos” playing Season 30 Episode 12 or whatever.
Here is what it says:
source_list:
Home
ABC
Apple TV
Disney Plus
FandangoNOW Movies & TV
Google Play Movies & TV
HBO NOW
Hulu
Movies Anywhere
NBC
Netflix
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
PBS KIDS
Plex - Stream Free TV & Movies
Prime Video
Roku Media Player
Roku Streaming Player Intro
Roku Tips & Tricks
Sling TV
The Roku Channel
VUDU
media_content_type: movie
app_id: ‘2285’
app_name: Hulu
source: Hulu
friendly_name: Living Room
entity_picture: >-
/api/media_player_proxy/media_player.living_room?
supported_features: 19388
The only “devices” that I know of that do this is Plex, Kodi, and/or Emby (and Squeezebox and Chromecast (thanks @nickrout)) . There are some music services (those that have APIs like Spotify) that might give you track info. But, none of the devices you mentioned are able to give you the deep info like you are looking for.
Yeah, I never know the right terms to use with Kodi. Is it a server? Is it an app? It’s both! Plex at least makes it simple; You have a server and you have rendering apps.
Apoloigies if I am out-of-date here, this is the latest thread I could find on the matter.
In the case of Netflix… I think this lack of info is due to how the Netflix app integrates with the Chromecast.
For example the Netflix app UI can be paused, which is reflected onto your screen in a graphical sense only - i.e. without the Chromecast being in a paused state (although pausing the Chromecast is fed back to the Netflix state). Likewise when a certain episode is playing, this is not ‘made known’ to the Chromecast. The chromecast seems to just reflect the very general Netflix app state… and so we just get the unhelpful ‘media_title: Netflix’ from the Chromecast metadata.
I guess this is how Netflix prefers to do things, and I suspect the issues listed above (for different devices/services) come down to the same approach. Annoying, but without a specific Netflix (etc.) integration I can’t see how to get around it.
I actually forgot about this, but it seems like you are correct. I have moved on from Roku now and I’m using those new Google Chromecasts and haven’t started to add them back into my home assistant. If I ever make a component I will post it here, but other things are taking up my time right now.
Reporting in for Google Chrome cast. Tried it with the following apps:
YouTube
Disney+
HBO max
Hulu
Netflix
Youtube, Disney+, and HBO max all provided media_title which displayed the title of the currently playing title. Hulu and Netflix did not.
The other thing I noticed is that the pause/play state were accurately reported by all apps except Netflix. Other discussions confirm the same, seems Netflix is the most lacking which is a bit sad because its probably the one I care most about working correctly.
Plex is a bit hit and miss too, sometimes it reports back to Home Assistant that it is playing something and sometimes it does not, it does the same thing as Netflix, and indicates that the app is active, but the actual media_player state is unknown
Plex should always report the current media. If it doesn’t, please report an issue.
There used to be a problem on Android-based clients (e.g, Shield, Fire, etc) where after starting playback from HA it wouldn’t reflect the proper playback state. That problem has been fixed.
I’ll let you know if that is now the case, I will know reasonably quickly because I have an automation that pauses Plex when my phone starts ringing (which to be fair does seem to have been working much better lately).