Plan Guard for Emby — guide

Installation

You need Emby Server 4.10.1 or newer.

1. Sign in to your MediaLab Works account, open Licenses and download the plugin DLL (available on an active subscription, a lifetime license within its update window, or during the free 30-day trial).
2. Copy the DLL into the Emby plugins folder and restart Emby Server:
   • Linux (package): /var/lib/emby/plugins/
   • Docker: the plugins folder inside your Emby config volume
   • Windows: %AppData%\Emby-Server\programdata\plugins\
3. Open Plan Guard in the Emby dashboard menu and click License. Paste your license key and activate it, or enter your e-mail to start the free 30-day trial or buy a license. The plugin contacts the license server, binds the key to this Emby server and shows the license as Active.

The license is checked once a day (and at every Emby start). Without internet the plugin keeps working for 7 days after the last successful check; after that it is stopped until it can check again.

License

Without a valid license the plugin is stopped; only the License page keeps working (there you can start the trial, buy, enter the key or update).

With a valid license, the same page can install an update or roll back to the previous version if an update causes trouble. Restart Emby after either.

Configuration

1. Limits: set them per user, or per plan for all the users of that plan:
   • the number of simultaneous streams;
   • the quality at home and the quality away from home (bitrate);
   • the maximum resolution;
   • whether transcoding is allowed.
2. Enforcement: choose what happens when a limit is exceeded: a message, stopping the playback, or signing the device out.
3. Cashier plans (optional): with Cashier, every paid plan gets its own limits profile automatically.
4. Shared-account detection: Plan Guard flags an account used from different places and networks at the same time, and "impossible travel" (sign-ins too far apart for the time between them).

Daily use

• Limits are checked live, while people watch.
• The activity log and the admin pages show what Plan Guard did and which accounts look shared.

How players react

• Emby Web 4.10 ignores stop commands, so Plan Guard signs the device out instead of stopping the playback.
• Infuse, Kodi and DLNA players have no remote control, so they are signed out too.
• The full list of clients and how each one reacts will be added after testing.

Location data

Locations are looked up on your server, from the free DB-IP Lite City and ASN databases, downloaded from download.db-ip.com once a month. If Access Log or Security Notifications already keep a MaxMind or DB-IP database, Plan Guard can reuse it. Nothing about your users is sent anywhere.

IP Geolocation by DB-IP (CC BY 4.0).