[Android MiniClient] Now in BETA

[Gustovier]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

I've been playing with RC1 on my SHIELD and tablet. It's looking really good! Playback is still not 100% smooth on my tablet, but there is no pixelation anymore and skipping works great. (And even though it was a little stuttery it wasn't bad enought to make me pull up Phoenix Remote instead.) The SHIELD on the other hand looks/operates perfectly.

I do not have a nVidia remote. Instead I use the nVidia gamepad or a Harmony. What I would like to see, (which I don't think would be too hard, but what do I know), is have more button mappings. I know it was mentioned before that there might be a button mapping setup option in the future, but for now I'm just talking about a few more hardcoded ones. For example:

* Right stick up/down = Channel (page) up/down
* Right stick right/left = Chapter next/prev
* Right bumper = Delete
* Right trigger = Home

Those are the main buttons I'm missing, but could also use say right/left stick buttons set to guide/info.

I would actually like the sticks to stay as they are and use the bumper or trigger as page down/up.

So I guess this goes to say that folks will have different preferences. But not having the page down/up is painful without the option of long press of direction pads implemented.

[Dargason]

I don't have a Shield (though I kinda wish I did, given your glowing reports) but is it possible to remap stuff using the built-in sageTV "Commands" menu in the detailed setup?

I've got a 2015 Fire TV, and it works pretty well, but it software transcodes nearly everything (I have only OTA stuff) and the 1080i stuff isn't deinterlaced. So everything is watchable, but you have to ignore combing effects. (And I wouldn't mind having a few extra remote buttons)

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Jabroni

Short recording (~20megs) used for this test, not sure if you want to try it on your enviroment

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...42642487-0.mpg

I just did a quick test on my phone, and this video started out black for about 3-4 seconds and then I got a picture. I'll have to hook up with the computer to watch the logs as it is playing to see what is happening here. (I'll do it on the weekend)

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

I do not have a nVidia remote. Instead I use the nVidia gamepad or a Harmony. What I would like to see, (which I don't think would be too hard, but what do I know), is have more button mappings. I know it was mentioned before that there might be a button mapping setup option in the future, but for now I'm just talking about a few more hardcoded ones. For example:

* Right stick up/down = Channel (page) up/down
* Right stick right/left = Chapter next/prev
* Right bumper = Delete
* Right trigger = Home

Those are the main buttons I'm missing, but could also use say right/left stick buttons set to guide/info.

Add an issue to the github issues site so that I don't forget. I use the issue tracker to figure out what to work on next.
https://github.com/OpenSageTV/sagetv-miniclient

Originally Posted by Dargason

I don't have a Shield (though I kinda wish I did, given your glowing reports) but is it possible to remap stuff using the built-in sageTV "Commands" menu in the detailed setup?

I've got a 2015 Fire TV, and it works pretty well, but it software transcodes nearly everything (I have only OTA stuff) and the 1080i stuff isn't deinterlaced. So everything is watchable, but you have to ignore combing effects. (And I wouldn't mind having a few extra remote buttons)

I have a newer FireTV... I'll play with it this weekend but I thought it handled mpeg2, h264, etc. I haven't tried the test files on it for a while. When I did have play around the FireTV it seemed to work well... I just hated the Amazon Navigation

As for button mappings, I'm not sure what the sagetv one does... Likely it's an IR to SageTV command mapper, and it won't work for this case. The challenge when doing a mapping for this client, is that in order to make a 5 button remote work well, it needs to know the state of the application, and make decision based on that. So, right now, using the nvidia remote, I can pretty much do everything, and it works somewhat intuitive. If I'm watching a video and I press select, it was pause/play, but if I bring up a dialog over the video and press select it will send enter. All of that logic is pretty hard coded right now, which makes creating a button mapper even harder. It's on my TODO list though. (not sure if I ahve an issue for this or not, if not, you can add one)

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by phantomii

Just a thought, is there any value in reaching out to the Kodi Team and seeing if their video processing/playback could be lifted from that app and dropped into the sage app??? It seems to play most everything I throw at it? And I realize nothing is just that simple but if they have the knowledge and have solved some of the issues we see it might present options?

I think better returns might be had in creating a 'standard' set of video formats, and building a robust transcoder into SageTV. I know many 'videophiles' are against transcoding, and that it isn't 'pure' content - but honestly, the transcoders out there today are so good, it's getting harder and harder to make that argument anymore. If SageTV had a system to 'process' every file dropped into it's lap and remux, or re-encode, it to get it within a small set of 'standards', everything downstream becomes so much simpler.

[odledm]

Ok, so I had to post something on this today. I installed RC2 on my 1st gen fire tv (ethernet connected) which had recently seen the upgrade to fireos 5.0.5 and I am very impressed. I'm still running sage 7 as the server but plan to upgrade to 9 when I have more time. Most of my watching consists of OTS TV through HDHomerun Duals (so 1080i/720p mpeg2) and my ripped movies.

The icons are fixed (which I'm sure had more to do with the upgrade of the os than anything you did), the blocky pixelation on what I think was 720p recordings which I attribute to the ijk hardware decoding of mpeg2 is fixed. 1080i content is very watchable, with some minor artifacts, but I think it is probably as good as it will get without a mpeg2 hardware deinterlacer. Comskip was working. I tried playing a blueray rip of Planet Earth and it played but it seemed like the video wasn't quite keeping up with the audio. I'll play around with it some more when I have time, but right now I definitely would consider this ready for the family to use.

For those videophiles out there I don't think you will be pleased with this app on the 1st gen fire tv, you are probably going to want to spring for something with all the requesent hardware decoders (sounds like the Shield is the one to beat right now), but for the average joe, that wants to put this on a secondary tv, I think the 1st gen firetv with this app works pretty well.

Thanks Sean for all the great work on this.

[SteveW]

Originally Posted by SteveW

First off, great work Sean!

So I'm using beta 6 on an S5. I'm still figuring out the controls, but 1080i HDPVR files play fine. It does not work for me if I enable Exoplayer. Timeline increments, but video doesn't move and there is no sound. As long as I don't use Exoplayer everything is great.

For the first time today I tried to use it outside my lan. The client is prompting me for the place shifter user ID and password. I can't find any sequence of screen presses or swipes or hard keys that will bring up the keyboard so that I can login in and carry on. Am I missing something ?

Tnx
-Steve

Just tried using Exoplayer in RC 2 on my HDPVR recordings and video now plays. Only thing missing is sound. My HDPVR recordings are using the SPDIF connection. Don't know if that's what's making the difference between sound in IJK and no sound in Exo...

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by SteveW

Just tried using Exoplayer in RC 2 on my HDPVR recordings and video now plays. Only thing missing is sound. My HDPVR recordings are using the SPDIF connection. Don't know if that's what's making the difference between sound in IJK and no sound in Exo...

ExoPlayer only supports audio-passthrough (unless the audio is mp3). IJK doesn't do any audio passthrough, so it decodes and plays all audio.

So, unless you need audio passthough, I'd use IJK.

[7up]

Can 2nd gen FireTV proplerly deinterlace mpeg2 with latest system update? 1st gen wasn't great although I haven't checked it after latest system update

[ptzink]

Stuckless, thank you for your awesome work on this. I have been checking in on the progress of the android miniclient for months now and testing occasional builds on my Nexus 5. It works so well on my Nexus 5 that I decided to pull the trigger on a Shield TV. So, my questions while I wait on my Shield are:

1. I am assuming the client still needs to be sideloaded. Will it be available to install as a true Android TV app on the Shield once you put it on the Play Store?
2. Since it is a sideloaded app is there any way to get it to show up on the home screen or do you have to go through a launcher app like Sideload Launcher?
3. Any tips or tricks to your setup to get it to run smoothly on the Shield with audio passthrough?

Thanks again for your work on this!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by ptzink

Stuckless, thank you for your awesome work on this. I have been checking in on the progress of the android miniclient for months now and testing occasional builds on my Nexus 5. It works so well on my Nexus 5 that I decided to pull the trigger on a Shield TV. So, my questions while I wait on my Shield are:

1. I am assuming the client still needs to be sideloaded. Will it be available to install as a true Android TV app on the Shield once you put it on the Play Store?
2. Since it is a sideloaded app is there any way to get it to show up on the home screen or do you have to go through a launcher app like Sideload Launcher?
3. Any tips or tricks to your setup to get it to run smoothly on the Shield with audio passthrough?

Thanks again for your work on this!

For now you will need to side load it. I am working on a play store version, and I'm hoping to be done that in a couple weeks.

When you side load apps on android, they show up like any other app.

In my setup, I use IJKPlayer that doesn't support audio passthrough... If you need audio pass through, you'll want to change the player to use ExoPlayer. I use IJKplayer because it's really solid player. I find Exo to be a little less reliable. I have no idea when/if we'll get audio passthrough working for ijkplayer.

[ptzink]

Well, I got my Shield TV and am having mixed results with the MiniClient. Exoplayer does not work at all in my setup. Video freezes pretty much immediately and there is no sound. My DVRed shows are in mpeg2 format (.mpg extensions) in 720p and 1080i formats. IJK Player seems to play back pretty well, but there is no audio passthrough. My movie collection does not play at all on either player. They are all DVD rips (.VOBs). Perhaps these are known issues that I missed earlier in the thread? Let me know if there is anything I can provide on the issues.

[ptzink]

Originally Posted by kklee

My Shield TV was updated to 3.0 today.

The RC2 mini client is working perfectly using the Exo player, whereas before the 3.0 upgrade, it would get totally confused by comskip resulting in the Shield TV's audio disappearing until the unit was restarted.

Thanks again for all the great work you've done on the mini client

kklee, what format are your recordings in? I have had no luck with the Exo Player and am updated to v. 3.0.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by ptzink

Well, I got my Shield TV and am having mixed results with the MiniClient. Exoplayer does not work at all in my setup. Video freezes pretty much immediately and there is no sound. My DVRed shows are in mpeg2 format (.mpg extensions) in 720p and 1080i formats. IJK Player seems to play back pretty well, but there is no audio passthrough. My movie collection does not play at all on either player. They are all DVD rips (.VOBs). Perhaps these are known issues that I missed earlier in the thread? Let me know if there is anything I can provide on the issues.

Sadly, ExoPlayer is not going to give the best video playback (been discussed many times). It's just way too picky about the stream parsing. That being said, I have a bunch of mpeg2 ps/ts streams that I use for testing, and ExoPlayer seems to play them. I do get, from time to time, random errors when I go to play it... and then I try again, and it works. Other than pass-through, I would not recommend using Exo. I will continue to pull in ExoPlayer updates for each new release, and maybe the player will get better over time. Right now, it's considered to be a single purpose player. ie, if you know that all your media is in a particular audio/video format, then it'll likely be a good lightweight player (I think they use it for YouTube, since they know exactly what the encoded files will be).

I tried to use ExoPlayer for a couple weeks on my .ts recordings. It would randomly fail to play some recordings, but work fine on others, and there is no real reason for it

The VOB isn't an issue, so much as it's not going to be supported (I'm pretty sure it's come up before in another posts). I don't intend to write a DVD player for android I did speak to Jeff about this, since he did just that for HD300... but it's not a trivial task, and as such, it's not something that I'll likely tackle (at least not in the short term). At some point, I might look at seeing if I can do something like have it play the largest track, but, doing full DVD menus is not likely to ever happen.

[ptzink]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Sadly, ExoPlayer is not going to give the best video playback (been discussed many times). It's just way too picky about the stream parsing. That being said, I have a bunch of mpeg2 ps/ts streams that I use for testing, and ExoPlayer seems to play them. I do get, from time to time, random errors when I go to play it... and then I try again, and it works. Other than pass-through, I would not recommend using Exo. I will continue to pull in ExoPlayer updates for each new release, and maybe the player will get better over time. Right now, it's considered to be a single purpose player. ie, if you know that all your media is in a particular audio/video format, then it'll likely be a good lightweight player (I think they use it for YouTube, since they know exactly what the encoded files will be).

I tried to use ExoPlayer for a couple weeks on my .ts recordings. It would randomly fail to play some recordings, but work fine on others, and there is no real reason for it

The VOB isn't an issue, so much as it's not going to be supported (I'm pretty sure it's come up before in another posts). I don't intend to write a DVD player for android I did speak to Jeff about this, since he did just that for HD300... but it's not a trivial task, and as such, it's not something that I'll likely tackle (at least not in the short term). At some point, I might look at seeing if I can do something like have it play the largest track, but, doing full DVD menus is not likely to ever happen.

Stuckless, thanks for the response. Since Exoplayer is so finicky, any chance of providing audio passthrough in IJK Player? Considered any other players?
Bummer about the DVD rips. Guess I can just use Kodi for those. Most of my rips don't have menus, but I never bothered with compressing them since my collection is humble and I have the hard drive space. Is there a "lossless" compression format you would recommend for video similar to .flac for music files? File size is not as important as quality and 5.1 sound to me.

[ptzink]

One more thing I forgot to ask: Do you think server version impacts video playback at all? I am still running 7 and not 9.
Thanks again. I really appreciate all of your work on this.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by ptzink

Stuckless, thanks for the response. Since Exoplayer is so finicky, any chance of providing audio passthrough in IJK Player? Considered any other players?
Bummer about the DVD rips. Guess I can just use Kodi for those. Most of my rips don't have menus, but I never bothered with compressing them since my collection is humble and I have the hard drive space. Is there a "lossless" compression format you would recommend for video similar to .flac for music files? File size is not as important as quality and 5.1 sound to me.

I do have a huge collection of DVDs, but I've never bothered to rip and store them, and when I do, I usually rip them to MP4 or MKV.

Originally Posted by ptzink

One more thing I forgot to ask: Do you think server version impacts video playback at all? I am still running 7 and not 9.
Thanks again. I really appreciate all of your work on this.

I don't think the server version, at this point, would make much difference in the streaming. I've done a couple of minor server changes, but they are mostly for helping with the "dumb" remotes.

[drewg]

Replying here rather than the client comparison thread..

I just tried RC2 with exoplayer on my shield (running the new Android 6.0 build). Whenever I play any of my recordings, there are a few seconds of motion, and then a still image then some motion, etc. It is like the client is bogged down in a high CPU use state, or lock contention or something. The receiver goes nuts (clicking into surround sound mode, and out of it). The same recordings play just fine with the default player.

I tried enabling / disabling native refresh/resolution, as well as the streaming method (dynamic vs pull),

This is with a v7 server.

Drew

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by drewg

Replying here rather than the client comparison thread..

I just tried RC2 with exoplayer on my shield (running the new Android 6.0 build). Whenever I play any of my recordings, there are a few seconds of motion, and then a still image then some motion, etc. It is like the client is bogged down in a high CPU use state, or lock contention or something. The receiver goes nuts (clicking into surround sound mode, and out of it). The same recordings play just fine with the default player.

I tried enabling / disabling native refresh/resolution, as well as the streaming method (dynamic vs pull),

This is with a v7 server.

Drew

care to make a 50mb sample available? I can download it and add it to my library and see what happens.

Also, if you haven't rebooted the Shield in a few days, try rebooting, and see if that helps. CPU shouldn't be an issue here, since the file is using hardware decoder (or else it wouldn't play), but, it could be network. Are you WIFI or Wired? Also, Sage7 should be OK for the server.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by stuckless

care to make a 50mb sample available? I can download it and add it to my library and see what happens.

Also, if you haven't rebooted the Shield in a few days, try rebooting, and see if that helps. CPU shouldn't be an issue here, since the file is using hardware decoder (or else it wouldn't play), but, it could be network. Are you WIFI or Wired? Also, Sage7 should be OK for the server.

I'm wired, 1Gb/s to the (linux) server. The same files (and higher b/w BD rips) play fine in kodi on the same shield. I really think it has to be something about my environment.

I'll send you a sample (will PM you the URL).

Thanks for looking (and for writing this thing!)

[ThePaladinTech]

So I have successfully sideloaded the android miniclient. and what can i say? *WoW*

Thank you so much for making this! I left sage a couple years ago because most of my extenders died. As I told my brother "I can come home now!"

I forsee a few more Nexus Players in my future, and possibly converting my mom back to sage tv as well.