Media Portal

The Media Portal is a cinematic content browsing interface for exploring all media across your Emby and Jellyfin libraries. It provides a visual, poster-driven experience for browsing your entire collection — from the landing page hero billboard to detailed item pages with metadata, cast, analytics, and technical specifications.

Key features

How to access

Navigate to Streaming Dashboard > Control Center > Media in the sidebar, or click the Media tab within the Control Center.

Portal landing page

Hero billboard

The top of the Media Portal features a large hero section highlighting a piece of content from your library. The hero rotates daily — the same item is shown throughout the day and changes the next day. It displays:

• Full-width backdrop image
• Poster artwork
• Title, year, studio, content rating, community rating, and runtime
• Quality badge (4K, 1080p, etc.) and HDR indicator if applicable
• Genre chips
• Technical specifications — video codec, audio codec, audio channels, container format, file size, and subtitle availability
• Synopsis and tagline (when available)

Clicking the poster or title navigates to the full detail page for that item.

Library shelves

Below the hero, each library from your media servers appears as a horizontal scrollable shelf of poster cards. Each shelf shows:

• Library name with collection type badge and server icon
• Item count
• Arrow navigation buttons for scrolling
• A “View all” link for libraries with more than 20 items

A Recently Added shelf also appears, showing the most recently added items across all libraries.

View modes

Toggle between two display modes:

• Shelf View — horizontal scrollable rows per library (the default)
• Grid View — all items displayed in a responsive grid

Search

A search bar at the top of the portal allows searching across all libraries. Search results replace the shelf view with a results grid. Search capabilities include:

• Text search across titles with a brief delay for smoother typing (300ms debounce)
• Type filter chips — filter results by All, Movies, Series, or Episodes
• Sort options — Recently Added, Name, or Rating

Command palette integration

Media content is also searchable from the dashboard-wide command palette (accessed via the search icon in the top bar or keyboard shortcut). When the Streaming Dashboard is enabled with at least one server configured, typing in the command palette searches both dashboard pages and media library content simultaneously. Media results appear in a separate “Media” section with compact poster thumbnails, type badges, and server indicators. Clicking a media result navigates directly to the item detail page.

Density slider

A range slider controls the size of media poster cards throughout the portal, adjustable from 80px to 220px poster width. The setting is persisted across sessions.

• Compact sizes — show more items per row with essential badges only (poster, quality, server badge)
• Larger sizes — show more detail per card with titles, year, and additional metadata visible

Library detail page

Clicking “View all” on a library shelf opens a full library detail page with:

• Library header ribbon — library name, item count, and server icon
• Filter bar — genre, resolution, content type, and sort controls
• A-Z alphabet rail — a vertical rail of letters for quick jumping to items starting with a specific letter
• Infinite scroll grid — items load progressively as you scroll down, with skeleton placeholders during loading
• Density slider — the same poster size control as the portal landing page

Media item detail page

Clicking any poster card opens a comprehensive detail page with a cinematic presentation.

Hero section

A dual-layer hero displays a full-width backdrop image with a gradient overlay, poster artwork, and metadata badges showing server type, content type, rating, quality, and runtime.

Content information

• Title, year, genres, content rating, and community rating
• Studio name
• Overview or synopsis (expandable for long descriptions)
• Tagline (when available)
• Technical specification badges — video codec, audio codec, audio channels, container format, file size, HDR status, and subtitle availability
• External ID links — clickable links to IMDb, TMDb, and TVDB when available

Analytics dashboard

Per-item analytics are displayed directly on the detail page:

Viewer cards

Shows who has watched this item, with per-viewer watch time, completion percentage, and last watched date.

Cast shelf

A horizontal scrollable list of cast and crew members with portrait photos (when available), names, and roles.

Geographic map

When geographic data is available, a map shows where viewers of this content are located.

Technical specifications panel

Detailed technical breakdown of the media file — video resolution, codec, bitrate, audio channels, container format, file size, and HDR metadata.

Episode breakdown

For TV series, a season and episode grid shows all episodes with individual metadata and watch statistics per episode.

Sibling versions

If multiple versions of the same content exist (different quality levels or formats), they are displayed for comparison.

Actions

Cover art settings

The Streaming Dashboard supports two external artwork providers — TMDB (The Movie Database) and TheTVDB — for sourcing high-quality canonical cover art across all streaming views. Movie posters, TV show artwork, and backdrop images from these providers appear throughout the Media Portal, Live Sessions library drawers, session cards, Intelligence widgets, and media item detail pages. Administrators control providers and per-category routing from the Media section in the Streaming Dashboard Settings flyout.

Artwork providers

Two providers are available, each with an independent toggle:

Each provider can be toggled independently:

• Enabled — the provider is available for use in provider routing (see below). The dashboard fetches artwork from this provider’s API when it is assigned to a content category.
• Disabled — no API calls are made to this provider. Any content categories currently assigned to a disabled provider automatically fall back.

Changes take effect immediately across all streaming views without a page reload. The dashboard’s artwork cache is preserved when you disable a provider, so re-enabling it restores cached artwork instantly without re-fetching.

Per-category provider routing

When at least one provider is enabled, the Provider Routing panel appears, allowing you to choose which provider supplies artwork for each content category:

The dropdown for each category only shows providers that are currently enabled, plus the None (server artwork) option. Selecting None disables external cover art for that category without turning off the provider globally — useful when you want one category to use your media server’s native images while the other uses an external provider.

When a provider is disabled via its toggle, any categories currently assigned to that provider automatically fall back to the next available provider, or to None if no other provider is enabled.

Custom API keys (BYOK)

Both providers ship with built-in API keys that work out of the box with no configuration. Administrators who want dedicated rate limits or prefer to use their own accounts can provide custom API keys for either or both providers.

TMDB API key

1. Create a free account at themoviedb.org 
2. Go to Account Settings > API (or visit themoviedb.org/settings/api)
3. Request an API key — select “Personal” or “Education” use (free for non-commercial use)
4. Once approved, navigate to the API Read Access Token section
5. Copy the v4 Read Access Token — this is the long token that starts with eyJ...

TheTVDB API key

1. Create a free account at thetvdb.com 
2. Navigate to your account’s API keys section
3. Create or copy your API key — it is a UUID-format string (e.g., xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx)

Entering and testing custom keys

In the Streaming Dashboard Settings flyout, expand the Media section. The API key field for each provider appears below its toggle when the provider is enabled:

1. Enter your API key in the corresponding field
2. Click Test to verify the key works — the dashboard makes a live authentication call to the provider and confirms the key is valid
3. Click Save Changes

To remove a custom key and revert to the built-in key, click the Clear button next to the key field and save.

Where cover art appears

When a provider is enabled and assigned to a content category, canonical artwork from that provider is used across all of these streaming views:

• Media Portal — hero billboard backdrops, library shelf posters, search result posters, and library detail page posters
• Media item detail pages — hero backdrops, poster artwork, and cast portraits
• Live Sessions — library drawer poster cards, session card thumbnails, and categorical view thumbnails
• Control Center — media library content thumbnails
• Intelligence widgets — trending content posters, abandoned item posters, and item analytics thumbnails

When both providers are disabled, or when a category is set to None, those areas fall back to your media server’s native artwork. If a media item has no artwork on your media server either, a placeholder icon is shown.

Security and privacy

All media artwork — posters, backdrops, and thumbnails — is served through a dashboard proxy endpoint. Your browser never contacts the media server directly. Media server URLs, API keys, and internal network addresses are never exposed to the browser.

Best practices

FAQ

Related pages