Android App: Phoenix for SageTV

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'll make the assumption you are running your Sage Server on windows 3.11, to avoid playing the 'update' game? He did not recommend you go out and purchase a new phone, he said to look at a 3rd party site that develops and distributes upgraded firmware's to bring older hardware up to newer softwares.

hey, there you are...I've asked you some questions lately which you never replied to. thanks for your input on something I didn't ask for. My Android phone was update-abandoned by HTC less than 9 months after purchase ($550). Sorry mate...that IS a game, and unlike some, I have limits as to what I can spend on the entry fee. For that cash-outlay, I need to get five years from a product. My comment contained no hostility to the poster, unlike yours. Not everyone has the time or knowledge to root their phones, including me. Replacing an entire operating system to run a single app is, well....not worth my time. And I am running my Sage server on the first OS upgrade after the original install, the same as my phone progression, if you must know. When I have time to spend to become as smart as you suggest I need to be to become an HTC employee, I will. Until then, it's much more intelligent to find an app that actually works, you know? cheers

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

hey, there you are...I've asked you some questions lately which you never replied to. thanks for your input on something I didn't ask for. My Android phone was update-abandoned by HTC less than 9 months after purchase ($550). Sorry mate...that IS a game, and unlike some, I have limits as to what I can spend on the entry fee. For that cash-outlay, I need to get five years from a product. My comment contained no hostility to the poster, unlike yours. Not everyone has the time or knowledge to root their phones, including me. Replacing an entire operating system to run a single app is, well....not worth my time. And I am running my Sage server on the first OS upgrade after the original install, the same as my phone progression, if you must know. When I have time to spend to become as smart as you suggest I need to be to become an HTC employee, I will. Until then, it's much more intelligent to find an app that actually works, you know? cheers

I don't think you even read my post (at least not in its entirety). There are PLENTY of old phones that are abandoned by their manufacturers/carriers, that are running much newer OS's. I was trying to show you that you CAN avoid playing the update game. Specifically, what phone do you have, and have you looked for an updated firmware?

[reggie14]

I don't really understand the hostility from you, tvmaster... Panteragstk and Fuzzy were giving you legimate advice in response to the problems you're running into. If you don't want to flash a new ROM, fine, but it wasn't a crazy suggestion. And I would say in a lot of cases flashing a ROM is easier than a lot of the stuff you've probably had to do with your Sage system.

Anyway, whenever I use MX Player I seem to always find minor bugs. I prefer Dice Player. It looks like that ought to run on Android 2.3.

[LWM4P]

Everyone,
Posted here, cause I am wondering if this might be the solution I am looking for. My current setup is a Sage server, HD300 in the living room, and a EEE touchscreen running sage client mounted in the kitchen. Everything currently works great!

I am thinking of replacing the touchscreen in the kitchen with a tablet. The main driver is that a EEE touchscreen is alright, but you are basically trying to do mouse movement with your finger. We mainly use this to watch TV and listen to music.

If I mount a tablet in this space instead, can I use this app? Any other suggestions?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by LWM4P

Everyone,
Posted here, cause I am wondering if this might be the solution I am looking for. My current setup is a Sage server, HD300 in the living room, and a EEE touchscreen running sage client mounted in the kitchen. Everything currently works great!

I am thinking of replacing the touchscreen in the kitchen with a tablet. The main driver is that a EEE touchscreen is alright, but you are basically trying to do mouse movement with your finger. We mainly use this to watch TV and listen to music.

If I mount a tablet in this space instead, can I use this app? Any other suggestions?

Not sure if this app will fit the bill... It's not really tablet optimized, and the music section is pretty limited

[LWM4P]

ok thanks. If you have any other suggestions, let me know. I am going with three choices right now. 1. Stick with current setup 2. Go with some kind of VNC 3. See if I can get the sageclient installed on a windows tablet.

[bikesquid]

I find music is very competently handled by sqeezeplay on android. I've been running a LMS server on the same box as the sage server for a long time and use android tablets/phones as remotes and players very nicely that way. Doesn't address the TV part, but if this phoenix for sagetv app does what want there it could work well. You can also use one of the screen sharing apps and a pc to send the video/audio to a tablet, I've played with splashtop a little and it looked promising.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by LWM4P

ok thanks. If you have any other suggestions, let me know. I am going with three choices right now. 1. Stick with current setup 2. Go with some kind of VNC 3. See if I can get the sageclient installed on a windows tablet.

I use Splashtop on my tablet to connect to my client or server and run sage on my Nexus tablet.

[sacrament055]

Anybody else notice a buzzing noise on transcoding? Seems to start after a commercial as the audio switches between dolby digital and stereo or whatever. Curious if anyone has any tips on how to fix this.

[pingmustard]

So I've tried Phoenix on both my Samsung S4 and Note 8. With the S4 + default video player, the app works great. However, with Samsung Note 8, I noticed two issues:

1. When adding new views, the UI shows font that's like dark grey on black; it's horribly difficult to read. Anyway to fix the font color?

2. When playing video via "Watch on device option", playback with the note 8 is pretty jerky / unwatchable, even on LOW quality. If I use ES Explorer to play the same video, things playback perfectly fine. I tried MX Player off the play store with no success.

3. When searching for media, I've noticed the search seems to act a little funny; For instance, searching for "Iron" would expect "Iron Man" to be returned, but it doesn't... how does the search really work?

Does anyone else experience this issue or know how to fix?

Thanks!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by sacrament055

Anybody else notice a buzzing noise on transcoding? Seems to start after a commercial as the audio switches between dolby digital and stereo or whatever. Curious if anyone has any tips on how to fix this.

I can't say that that I've noticed this myself... but to be honest, I rarely use the video playback feature

Originally Posted by pingmustard

So I've tried Phoenix on both my Samsung S4 and Note 8. With the S4 + default video player, the app works great. However, with Samsung Note 8, I noticed two issues:

1. When adding new views, the UI shows font that's like dark grey on black; it's horribly difficult to read. Anyway to fix the font color?

2. When playing video via "Watch on device option", playback with the note 8 is pretty jerky / unwatchable, even on LOW quality. If I use ES Explorer to play the same video, things playback perfectly fine. I tried MX Player off the play store with no success.

3. When searching for media, I've noticed the search seems to act a little funny; For instance, searching for "Iron" would expect "Iron Man" to be returned, but it doesn't... how does the search really work?

Does anyone else experience this issue or know how to fix?

Thanks!

for #1 could you post a screenshot, so that I can see it. There is no way for a user to change the colors (at this time)

for #2, the video playback is largely dependant on the capabilities of the server. ie, the video is transcoded on the fly to be playable on the device so depending on the type of video, hd, etc, if the server isn't powerful enough, then it might result in jerkiness.

for #3, I haven't noticed this myself... and I do use the feature. I just searched for "iron" in "media files" and it came back with all of my iron man media files. Are you sure you are searching the media files and not the airings, etc? (btw, I just noticed the search box is really, really, small, which is another issue)

I have to spend some time on this app in the next few weeks.

[pingmustard]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I can't say that that I've noticed this myself... but to be honest, I rarely use the video playback feature



for #1 could you post a screenshot, so that I can see it. There is no way for a user to change the colors (at this time)

for #2, the video playback is largely dependant on the capabilities of the server. ie, the video is transcoded on the fly to be playable on the device so depending on the type of video, hd, etc, if the server isn't powerful enough, then it might result in jerkiness.

for #3, I haven't noticed this myself... and I do use the feature. I just searched for "iron" in "media files" and it came back with all of my iron man media files. Are you sure you are searching the media files and not the airings, etc? (btw, I just noticed the search box is really, really, small, which is another issue)

I have to spend some time on this app in the next few weeks.

#1 - please see attachment.

#2 - Ok, scratch this issue. I re-ran more tests, and it seems like MX Player works reasonably well to play in non-transcoded mode. I was also able to playback in the transcoded, but I did notice my CPU fairly high. I think the real probably was because my WIFI was connected at ~50mbs; had to switch to the 5ghz N to change to 150mbs!

#3 - Scratch this as well; I tested again and searching seems to work much better as expected... I'll keep an eye and report back if I can reproduce.

[pingmustard]

Is it possible to change the parameters used to launch vlc? I was trying to find a way to change the "-I dummy" to "-I http" so that it would also load the http web remote so the video stream can be controlled by another remote app. I tried modifying c:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\STVs\Phoenix\streaming\vlcstream.sh to change the parameter but it doesn't seem to take effect. Using process explorer shows the vlc.exe is still launched with "-I dummy".

Anyone tried this or know if another way to remotely control video is possible? I've seen people say rewind/fwd is not possible, but since it's just operating over VLC, I don't really see why it should be not.


Sample VLC launched:

c:\vlc\vlc.exe -I dummy --mms-caching 0 "R:\Videos\New Videos\sample.mp4" vlc://quit "--sout=#transcode{width=480,height=360,fps=25,vcodec=h264,vb=500,venc=x264{aud,profile=baseline,level=30,keyint=30,ref=1},acodec=mp3,ab=96,channels=2}:std{access=livehttp{seglen=5,delsegs=false,numsegs=0,index=C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\userdata\Phoenix\streaming\76127df1-4956-3f1a-b434-5efa9cb94820\4162316.m3u8,index-url=http://10.11.12.15:8080/sagex/streaming/files/76127df1-4956-3f1a-b434-5efa9cb94820/4162316-########.ts},mux=ts{use-key-frames},dst=userdata/Phoenix/streaming/\76127df1-4956-3f1a-b434-5efa9cb94820/4162316-########.ts}"

[stuckless]

You can use an external script to start vlc... but I'm not sure it will give you what you are after. The Video Player still goes through the proxy connection that I create so I'm not sure a player would even know about the vlc control url, or where to find it... ie, the Player doesn't know it's talking to vlc... it just communicates via the phoenix REST apis.

Many people have asked that I add the ability to "control" vlc but this is a huge undertaking, and I haven't done much playing around with it.

Perhaps if you give more details on exactly what you trying to do, I can see if there is a possible solution.

[pingmustard]

Originally Posted by stuckless

You can use an external script to start vlc... but I'm not sure it will give you what you are after. The Video Player still goes through the proxy connection that I create so I'm not sure a player would even know about the vlc control url, or where to find it... ie, the Player doesn't know it's talking to vlc... it just communicates via the phoenix REST apis.

Many people have asked that I add the ability to "control" vlc but this is a huge undertaking, and I haven't done much playing around with it.

Perhaps if you give more details on exactly what you trying to do, I can see if there is a possible solution.

I have an S4 and a samsung Note; I'm not sure if it's only a Samsung thing but I am actually able to run 2 windows. My idea would be to launch MX Player to playback video from VLC on one window, and use the other window to open a browser to the VLC Remote. That way if I needed/wanted to rewind/ffwd, I could use the browser.

Could you elaborate on what you mentioned with the external script? Maybe I could take a stab and see if that might foot the bill

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by pingmustard

I have an S4 and a samsung Note; I'm not sure if it's only a Samsung thing but I am actually able to run 2 windows. My idea would be to launch MX Player to playback video from VLC on one window, and use the other window to open a browser to the VLC Remote. That way if I needed/wanted to rewind/ffwd, I could use the browser.

Could you elaborate on what you mentioned with the external script? Maybe I could take a stab and see if that might foot the bill

I was just looking at the code... and it appears that I didn't quite finish this ability I am looking to doing a new phoenix update in the next couple of weeks... this release MAY add the ability to add some vlc options (if i can get time for it).

I am working on some plex stuff... and this is forcing me to update some stuff in phoenix, so I'll see what I can get done on this front.

[brewston]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I am working on some plex stuff... and this is forcing me to update some stuff in phoenix, so I'll see what I can get done on this front.

Stuckless - Any hints what you are up to ? I'm really liking plex at the moment

[Dargason]

I, too, am curious. I just bought a roku 3 and reinstalled Plex. I'm considering plexpass too.

I just realized how much I miss the "I'm working on something... " tease.

[tvmaster2]

I still love your Android app, dude. Lets me schedule and check recordings remotely...great stuff

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by brewston

Stuckless - Any hints what you are up to ? I'm really liking plex at the moment

Originally Posted by Dargason

I, too, am curious. I just bought a roku 3 and reinstalled Plex. I'm considering plexpass too.

I just realized how much I miss the "I'm working on something... " tease.

It's not much... I got a Roku 3 for xmas (mainly for netflix) and I installed the existing Plex Agents for SageTV and it works as advertised.

The part about Plex that I miss (compared to sagetv) is all the 'views' I have setup in Phoenix. For example, I have 2 core views that use daily.

Unwatched TV - Grouped By Show - Ordered by my recent airing
Unwatched Movies - Movies that I've added recently, but not yet watched

Anyways, long story short... I'm writing a SageTV/Plex Channel that enables me to configure a top level menu of whatever views I want to see. From there, I can navigate into the views to get the content, etc.

This would enable me utilize the Phoenix view system to present media in the same organization that I have on SageTV.

This is a completely different than the existing SageTV Agent for plex, since the agent enables you to import media, whereas as Channel, is like a separate app, (ie, like the youtube app, etc)

I'm about 3/4 way done... When I release it, I'll put a posting on the sagetv forums, in case people want to try it out.

Here's a G+ Album of some screen shots using the Plex Web Interface
https://plus.google.com/photos/10159...15206594113041

Sadly, the roku interface is not quite a nice