Android App: Phoenix for SageTV

[brewston]

Looks good. At the moment I'm not fully using Plex for Sage recordings as I have a working extender and the fact that I'm using the Chromecast for Plex (ie no remote)

I would like to install it when you release it though

Cheers

[pingmustard]

The last couple of discussion has got me pondering... the two views you mentioned are things I would normally love to see as well! Having said that, am I safe to assume the following (I'm new to plex so please correct my mis-conceptions):

1. Phoenix Android has the pro of accessing more of the SageTV features (tv airings, videos, music, recordings).

2. Plex client (for android) is better for actually streaming/transcoding content AND rewind/fast forward?

Does anyone else have some thoughts/feedback on plex integration with SageTV?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by pingmustard

The last couple of discussion has got me pondering... the two views you mentioned are things I would normally love to see as well! Having said that, am I safe to assume the following (I'm new to plex so please correct my mis-conceptions):

1. Phoenix Android has the pro of accessing more of the SageTV features (tv airings, videos, music, recordings).

2. Plex client (for android) is better for actually streaming/transcoding content AND rewind/fast forward?

Does anyone else have some thoughts/feedback on plex integration with SageTV?

This is probably an accurate assessment. While I'm working on enabling better streaming in the Android App (as a result of the plex work), I think that Plex will always be a better streamer. The work that I'm doing for a plex channel, augments the existing plex Agent/Scanner, by exposing Phoenix views. This means, I create create Plex views for Upcomming Recordings, and MAYBE allow for some simple things, like searching for airings and schedule a manual recording (Plex is very limited in what I can do).

The Andrioid App will hopefully get better streaming support over time (more a limitation of the streaming server than android itself), but this app allows for more interaction of the core sagetv server (searching, scheduling, etc).

[ptaylor]

Stuckless, thanks for writing this. I loaded it on my FireTV yesterday and, though I'm still trying to figure out how to make my own views, it's pretty sweet.

I did run into one issue, probably due to the form factor of FireTV versus the typical Android device... When you get a long list of shows, using the up and down buttons on the remote doesn't get you very far, like 6 shows down the list. If I have a keyboard attached and hit the page down button to get to the bottom of the list (like 150 shows down), then I can go back up using only the up button on the remote...

I think there should be something I can do to improve the grouping though. I'd like the shows to be grouped together by series, so my list isn't so long... (That list of 160+ episodes is only about a half dozen shows)

[BobbyDing]

Originally Posted by ptaylor

Stuckless, thanks for writing this. I loaded it on my FireTV yesterday and, though I'm still trying to figure out how to make my own views, it's pretty sweet.

Hi ptaylor,
I'm hoping to get a FTV later this year and I'm just curious how you loaded this app (sideload, playstore, etc...)?

Thanks!

[ptaylor]

I think I did it through the Play store. You can install the Play store if you root your FireTV. Right now, you can, thanks to Towelroot, but there's no telling when Amazon will fix the hole.

You can read about rooting it here, if interested: http://www.firetvnews.com/how-to-roo...mazon-fire-tv/

It's not required to root it, though. There's an option on the menu to allow you to enable developer mode, at which time you can side-load things. It's just really convenient to browse to the Play store on my desktop, pick out software that I want, and hit the Install button, then wait a minute or two, and it's there waiting for me on the FireTV. (You do have to run another app to register your FireTV with Google as something other than a FireTV, but once you've done that, lots of apps are able to be downloaded.. Doesn't mean they will work, but you can download them and try)

Some touchscreen apps will work fine with FireTV, like the Xfinity Go app. The only issue with most apps designed for touchscreen is you need a mouse. If an app requires multitouch for something, I don't have a good answer for that yet, but most don't.

Anyhow, if you want to root yours, I suggest getting one sooner rather than later.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Sorry see that you are running 2.3 By "stock" I just mean the Android Video Player that comes with the device. It didn't get httpls support until 4.x (if I recall), so you will need a 3rd party video player that supports http live streaming.

Finally got a new phone running Android 4.4.2
Got Phoenix installed & up and running fine, aka was using successfully, remotely via no-ip DNS servers. Then, for no reason I can figure out, the phone stopped communication with my Sage server via xxxxx.no-ip.org:8080
Then...it just started communicating again (yesterday to today).
Can't figure out why. I didn't change anything. All I can think of is that no-ip servers were down.
Any thoughts on what some other causes could be, like Jetty problems, etc.?

[reggie14]

Are people still using this app successfully? I've run into a couple major problems with this app on new devices. First, the app crashes when I attempt to look at many/most Phoenix views on the app. For instance, if I try to open the Scheduled Recordings, the app immediately crashes on a Droid Maxx, Droid Turbo and Nexus 9. It does continue to run OK on my Nexus 7 (2013), but I'm guessing it won't after I update to Android 5.0.

The second problem is that earlier this week I noticed this app started using large amounts of data in the background- 1.5GB of mobile data in this particular case. I've never noticed that before. I wasn't even using the app. I tried to use it, it crashed, then I stopped trying. Yet it was continuing to use data.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Are people still using this app successfully? I've run into a couple major problems with this app on new devices. First, the app crashes when I attempt to look at many/most Phoenix views on the app. For instance, if I try to open the Scheduled Recordings, the app immediately crashes on a Droid Maxx, Droid Turbo and Nexus 9. It does continue to run OK on my Nexus 7 (2013), but I'm guessing it won't after I update to Android 5.0.

The second problem is that earlier this week I noticed this app started using large amounts of data in the background- 1.5GB of mobile data in this particular case. I've never noticed that before. I wasn't even using the app. I tried to use it, it crashed, then I stopped trying. Yet it was continuing to use data.

has worked fine for me on a four-year-old MyTouch 4G, and now running fine on a Samsung S4. On the S4, background data in just under one month has been 4kb.

I'd try reinstalling if all else fails

[waynedunham]

Is there a way to move all my Phoenix app settings to a new phone? I'm in the process of switching carriers and phones and don't want to have to go back and rebuild everything I've changed and my connections in a new install on a new phone.

[BobbyDing]

Just installed Phoenix on an unrooted FTV (latest firmware) and it works very well. I have it set up as a selection in SPMC. The only exceptions (for me) are that you must use a mouse right click to bring up the play menu for a recording, and after I select "Play on Device" it wants me to choose a player (no option for "Use always"). Once I select SPMC it plays the recordings beautifully.

I know the app is designed to work with a touch screen, but I'd rather not have to use reach for a mouse for this one app. It would also be nice to set it to use SPMC as its default player. Has anybody run into these bumps and found a work around?

Thanks!

Bobby

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Is there a way to move all my Phoenix app settings to a new phone? I'm in the process of switching carriers and phones and don't want to have to go back and rebuild everything I've changed and my connections in a new install on a new phone.

Unfortunately no I haven't hooked into the "sync" apis, yet.

Originally Posted by BobbyDing

Just installed Phoenix on an unrooted FTV (latest firmware) and it works very well. I have it set up as a selection in SPMC. The only exceptions (for me) are that you must use a mouse right click to bring up the play menu for a recording, and after I select "Play on Device" it wants me to choose a player (no option for "Use always"). Once I select SPMC it plays the recordings beautifully.

I know the app is designed to work with a touch screen, but I'd rather not have to use reach for a mouse for this one app. It would also be nice to set it to use SPMC as its default player. Has anybody run into these bumps and found a work around?

Thanks!

Bobby

Sadly, this app is not well suited for TV (I've tried, but it's just not good ) Rather than try to hack one into working better on TV (which would require lots of effort), I think I might just build a "simpler" tv/tablet app.

You might want to follow me on google+ (sean dot stuckless at gmail dot com), since I really don't spend much time here anymore

as for the menu issue... you could try holding the "select" button and seeing if that behaves like a right click. ie, on a touch device, you press and hold, and sometimes a long press on the select button may behave the same way.

[BobbyDing]

Originally Posted by stuckless

You might want to follow me on google+ (sean dot stuckless at gmail dot com), since I really don't spend much time here anymore.

Thanks! I follow you already, but don't get much time to scan my G+ account. This'll give me a reason to do so!

Originally Posted by stuckless

as for the menu issue... you could try holding the "select" button and seeing if that behaves like a right click. ie, on a touch device, you press and hold, and sometimes a long press on the select button may behave the same way.

I realized this a couple days ago in a Homer Simpson moment (DOH!) when playing with the app on my tablet. The next challenge was scrolling the shows. Using the up/down arrows I had to continuously go from top to bottom in order for more shows to appear at the bottom in the folder view (AFTV weirdness?). I was wondering if there might be a way to have the stock remotes left/right arrows emulate pg-up and pg-dn in just your app, but then settled on setting up an old WD Live remote I had with a Flirc receiver in the usb port of the AFTV. The WD remote has all the same buttons as the stock AFTV remote, plus three more to which I assigned to pg-up, pg-dn and stop keystrokes. I'm using MXplayer to play the videos, since that returns nicely to the sage app when it's done playing. It all works now. Though simpler app would be great for the WAF if you can ever swing the time!

Thanks again!
.

[scoful]

Just tried side-loading to no avail. Seems like this might be a good platform for an inexpensive extender - especially with open source around the corner. It looks to me like Amazon is open for developers - it'd be awesome if this was available on the Amazon market.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by scoful

Just tried side-loading to no avail. Seems like this might be a good platform for an inexpensive extender - especially with open source around the corner. It looks to me like Amazon is open for developers - it'd be awesome if this was available on the Amazon market.

Someday I might take a stab at this.

[scoful]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Someday I might take a stab at this.

Maybe a kickstarter campaign? I really think this is the best route for affordable and readily available extenders and would inject some adrenaline into the revival of the platform - low cost, much requested features like Netflix, Prime Video, better Youtube integration etc. and dirt cheap to boot!

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by scoful

Maybe a kickstarter campaign? I really think this is the best route for affordable and readily available extenders and would inject some adrenaline into the revival of the platform - low cost, much requested features like Netflix, Prime Video, better Youtube integration etc. and dirt cheap to boot!

You can already get most this functionality (that being playback of content sourced from your sage server) with Plex. To truly be an 'extender', it would need to actually use the sage UI, which, as you can imagine, is going to be a bit more work (a hunch, at this point, as we don't really know what its going to take to port miniclient to other platforms - yet).

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

You can already get most this functionality (that being playback of content sourced from your sage server) with Plex. To truly be an 'extender', it would need to actually use the sage UI, which, as you can imagine, is going to be a bit more work (a hunch, at this point, as we don't really know what its going to take to port miniclient to other platforms - yet).

Agreed... and to be honest, while I use this app daily, I use it mainly to check the recording schedule, check was recently recorded (ie, what can I watch tonight), and to schedule new recordings (which I delegate to the mobile web ui).

I'm not sure I would even focus on playback. I've spent alot of time playing with playback for this app, and others, and it's really not a simple task. Plex works well, and I'd recommend that people use Plex, or even XBMC, to do playback.

So, any focus that I might have on building a new app (or even updating this one) would only be to manage features that you can't really do with Plex.

[stuckless]

Just a follow up... I played with writing and AndroidTV specific app (because I needed to learn the apis) and it's open sourced, here.

https://github.com/stuckless/phoenix-app-ng

People can play with that, if they want. Again, the playback is not great, since getting reliable playback is not trivial.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Agreed... and to be honest, while I use this app daily, I use it mainly to check the recording schedule, check was recently recorded (ie, what can I watch tonight), and to schedule new recordings (which I delegate to the mobile web ui).

I'm not sure I would even focus on playback. I've spent alot of time playing with playback for this app, and others, and it's really not a simple task. Plex works well, and I'd recommend that people use Plex, or even XBMC, to do playback.

So, any focus that I might have on building a new app (or even updating this one) would only be to manage features that you can't really do with Plex.

agreed, this is a great app for checking recordings, schedules, Sage web-tie-in, and to impress geek types who think their Apple TV is awesome. It's ability to use ANY video playback app is also impressive, especially since that includes portrait & landscape playback modes (are you listening, PLEX?).
Sadly, as you say, playback quality over remote connections is its' only weak point. Show art impresses everyone I show.