Android/AndroidTV Placeshifter client (Discussion)

[Fuzzy]

Looks like there's an issue with the manual server entry. It seems to be using the 'Server Name' field as the target for the connection, instead of the 'Server Address or Locator ID'.

Switching them no input has allowed my to connect to my server remotely (Set the server name to my domainort and server address to just a random string), but then the next issue I come up with is the login screen (which actually doesn't load up any images, and shows a blank screen with the two text fields (which I can't enter anything into on my phone without a keyboard).

[tmiranda]

Feedback on my Nexus player:

- UI looks a lot better. It's still hard to see which menu item is highlighted. (I'm using the default STV)

- It plays recordings from my HDHD and HDR 2250

- If video is playing and I press the back button, the menu comes up but the video continues to play full screen in the background (and I have it set to play in the preview window).

Great progress Sean.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Looks like there's an issue with the manual server entry. It seems to be using the 'Server Name' field as the target for the connection, instead of the 'Server Address or Locator ID'.

Switching them no input has allowed my to connect to my server remotely (Set the server name to my domainort and server address to just a random string), but then the next issue I come up with is the login screen (which actually doesn't load up any images, and shows a blank screen with the two text fields (which I can't enter anything into on my phone without a keyboard).

I think we are at a point where we can probably start entering bugs for these types of things. I've added the Manual Server entry using the wrong field as a bug.

https://github.com/OpenSageTV/sagetv-miniclient/issues

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I see you have the Nexus Player as working and not working mine is fully works.

Some are working and some are not, so, that's why it's in both lists.

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Feedback on my Nexus player:

- UI looks a lot better. It's still hard to see which menu item is highlighted. (I'm using the default STV)

- If video is playing and I press the back button, the menu comes up but the video continues to play full screen in the background (and I have it set to play in the preview window).

I'm ok if you want to enter issues for those...
https://github.com/OpenSageTV/sagetv-miniclient/issues

[KarylFStein]

It has been working fine on my Galaxy Tab S 10.5 (2014). Starting with the 0.06 release video is blocky, (pixelated?), though, and VLC won't even work. Before that VLC stuttered, but the other player was smooth.

[rickw]

Feedback using v0.06-alpha on a Nexus 7 (2013 WiFi)

• UI looks really nice
• Video Playback for my HDHOMERUN (.ts) recordings works when I UNCHECKED "Use VLC" in the preferences. (VLC is installed)
• Gestures work, but are cumbersome.

Great Work!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

It has been working fine on my Galaxy Tab S 10.5 (2014). Starting with the 0.06 release video is blocky, (pixelated?), though, and VLC won't even work. Before that VLC stuttered, but the other player was smooth.

Originally Posted by rickw

Feedback using v0.06-alpha on a Nexus 7 (2013 WiFi)

• UI looks really nice
• Video Playback for my HDHOMERUN (.ts) recordings works when I UNCHECKED "Use VLC" in the preferences. (VLC is installed)
• Gestures work, but are cumbersome.

In the next build I'm likely to remove VLC player. I added both because I wanted to see if one worked better than the other... and it's becomming clear that ijkplayer is doing a better job. I don't have the bandwidth to fully support both, so I think that moving forward, vlc is out, and ijkplayer is in

[cncb]

Originally Posted by stuckless

In the next build I'm likely to remove VLC player. I added both because I wanted to see if one worked better than the other... and it's becomming clear that ijkplayer is doing a better job. I don't have the bandwidth to fully support both, so I think that moving forward, vlc is out, and ijkplayer is in

I don't know anything about the various players, but will ijkplayer support HD audio and PGS subtitles for MKV files? What about good deinterlacing for 1080i MPEG2 content? (I'm hoping for a true replacement for the HD300.)

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by cncb

I don't know anything about the various players, but will ijkplayer support HD audio and PGS subtitles for MKV files? What about good deinterlacing for 1080i MPEG2 content? (I'm hoping for a true replacement for the HD300.)

That makes two of us I don't know anything about players, either So, I have no idea for the answers to your questions

What I can tell you is that ijkplayer is a ffmpeg/ffplay based player, ported to Android that will use hardware decoding, if available.

[dinki]

Originally Posted by dinki

Great progress! I've managed to get this working on my phone (Moto G) and Nexus Player. Both play SD content well over wifi for LiveTV. I did, however, have issues trying to play recordings. The UI seems to freeze up on both devices and I am unable to move from that screen. I guess I should enable logging

Also, it seems that full screen video plays behind all menus/epg.

HD content on both devices played audio fine but video was pixelated in high motion scenes. I tried watch a football game and had weird pixels all over the motion areas.

Originally Posted by stuckless

Yeah, I don't ahve the "preview" video mode working yet, so if you are playing a video and jump to a menu, it'll play the "preview" fullscreen.

BTW, are you wifi or ethernet?

I'm running wireless. Just bought a USB->Ethernet adapter so hopefully it's just a shoddy connection. It could very well be as the SD stuff seems to work well.

I saw Fuzzy ask about transcoding but I'm not sure of what your answer meant. Are you transcoding on the server and would this help with slower connections and remote connectivity outside of the LAN?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by dinki

I'm running wireless. Just bought a USB->Ethernet adapter so hopefully it's just a shoddy connection. It could very well be as the SD stuff seems to work well.

I saw Fuzzy ask about transcoding but I'm not sure of what your answer meant. Are you transcoding on the server and would this help with slower connections and remote connectivity outside of the LAN?

The transcoding is a feature for remote playback, and server side, has been implemented since SageTV v4. Currently, you can't even connect this Placeshifter remotely, as there's issues logging on (no keyboard doesn't help). It may not be that trivial once remote connections are handled for the server to do the transcoding, as the connection between the client and server is the same no matter what, just what's in the stream is different. The current focus Sean's got is extender replacements on local LAN's.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by stuckless

In the next build I'm likely to remove VLC player. I added both because I wanted to see if one worked better than the other... and it's becomming clear that ijkplayer is doing a better job. I don't have the bandwidth to fully support both, so I think that moving forward, vlc is out, and ijkplayer is in

No qualms from me. I tried using VLC and it crashed.

[Jabroni]

This project is start to look really promissing I just tested on one of my Nexus Players (runnning Android 6.0)

Heres some results:

- Playback from an HDHomeRun was fine (MPEG2 content).
- Playback from live tv from a network tuner, which writes the file recording as an ASF file (Slingbox), plays for a few seconds and then video just freezes.


Im gonna try later on on a DVB4Sage live channel (h264) and report back if it played back the live channel

[brewston]

Tested on Android TV developer box - ADT-1 running 5.0.2 (Disabled VLC based on other's feedback)

Live TV (SD MPEG2 & HD H.264) play back video & audio OK
Pressing Android TV home button during playback causes audio to continue (Reported this under issues on github)

[jvl711]

Hi,

I know you are only looking at a few devices, but I wanted to give some feedback incase it was helpful.

Device: Sony TV (xbr65x850c) with Android TV built in. Wired 10/100 ethernet.

Recorded HDHomeRun Prime Mpeg2_ts: Plays, but it is pretty choppy pixelated. Video jumps to the beginning even when you tell it to resume, but it does appear to skip commercial points properly.

Video h.264 mkv standard def: Seems to play well without any hiccups or pixelation.

VLC: Would not playback either mpeg2 or h.264.

FYI... Interestingly I found the performance to be similar between the SonyTV and my Nexus 6.

[brewston]

Does ijkplayer have the facility for on screen media playback controls ? Not all Android TV remotes (eg the Shield TV remote) have media buttons, would there be a chance of on screen controls ?

Thanks & excellent work

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by brewston

Does ijkplayer have the facility for on screen media playback controls ? Not all Android TV remotes (eg the Shield TV remote) have media buttons, would there be a chance of on screen controls ?

Thanks & excellent work

The OSD playback controls would be possible no matter which player is used. Keep in mind even when VLC is used, it is embedded, so as a developer you need to manage the OSD controls.

Sadly most android tv remotes are taking a page from apple and creating really dumbed down remoted It might be that we'll need to find a decent 3rd party remote with more buttons, which will likely provide a better experience on OSD controls.

[Jabroni]

Originally Posted by stuckless

The OSD playback controls would be possible no matter which player is used. Keep in mind even when VLC is used, it is embedded, so as a developer you need to manage the OSD controls.

Sadly most android tv remotes are taking a page from apple and creating really dumbed down remoted It might be that we'll need to find a decent 3rd party remote with more buttons, which will likely provide a better experience on OSD controls.

Would there be a way to map other keys from keyboard/bluetooth remote ?? I tried chaning on the Settings pane to remap buttons but they werent being detected (using a bluetooth keyboard on Nexus Player). I need to figure out too if the Harmony hub paired with the Nexus Player allows numbers/extra buttons input from the remote (hxxp://www.amazon.com/Logitech-915-000238-Smartphone-Entertainment-Automation/dp/B00N3RFC4Q )

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Jabroni

Would there be a way to map other keys from keyboard/bluetooth remote ?? I tried chaning on the Settings pane to remap buttons but they werent being detected (using a bluetooth keyboard on Nexus Player). I need to figure out too if the Harmony hub paired with the Nexus Player allows numbers/extra buttons input from the remote (hxxp://www.amazon.com/Logitech-915-000238-Smartphone-Entertainment-Automation/dp/B00N3RFC4Q )

The short answer is yes... but I've only added support for a very small number of buttons. ie, I need to map them first in the App to a SageTV function, and then it should work.

[moothekow]

Tested the .6Alpha version using my LG G4.

UI is a bit sluggish.

I turned off the VLC player before testing - and so far MKV H.264 playback (including fast forward/rewind) and my OTA mpeg2 playback seem to be working quite well. MKV file looked fantastic... streaming ESPN seemed kind of iffy -- something about it looked off (a little bit choppy and/or pixel-y?).. didn't get a long chance to play around to quite put my finger on it -- but just sharing in case it's of any use to know .

Was running over 802.11AC wifi.

Solid work on getting the project to this point already!

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by stuckless

The short answer is yes... but I've only added support for a very small number of buttons. ie, I need to map them first in the App to a SageTV function, and then it should work.

I wasn't going to mention this now, but what about context switching? For example if video is playing and you have a gamepad A to me should toggle Pause/Play with B as Back, (just based on the Android experience I have with the SHIELD and Galaxy Tab). It seems like input should not be a static mapping...