Fork of SageTV MiniClient for Android TV

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Thank you! Amazon uses a 1280x720 file for the icon. I could not find a large enough SageTV logo for it, so I spent a few hours looking for a font that was similar. Found one of Googles fonts that was very similar. Only minor differences. I did my best to recreate it in a larger size. Glad that you like it!

Josh

I guess they need that for larger screen TV’s, higher resolution?

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Good news everyone!

I was able to get the Android Client approved on Amazon App Store! It is now available on Most amazon devices. I had to make a few changes for approval, which I am going add to the next release.

1. When on the login screen for placeshifter when you hit the DPAD select key and the keyboard is not shown, it will open the keyboard. I needed to do this to make the login screen acceptable to them. It does make logging in easier.

2. I removed the property that would go to the home screen when closing the connection. This property produced unexpected behavior in certain situations. This setting was set on by default, and I was worried that just changing the default may not pass if I got the same tester. So to make sure this would pass I removed the option.

If you notice that the icon on the home screen is gray or not properly displaying you can click the options button when the icon is selected and remove it from the recently used apps list. The next time you launch the app it will re add the icon properly.

Thanks,
Josh

THANK YOU!!!!

I've been able to get the client installed on a Shield previously, but always struggled to get it installed on the Firesticks. With your new fork, it went pretty smooth. The keyboard is still not perfect (I don't think the delete or clear buttons work as expected and pressing the "Automatically Log-in" option brings up the keyboard again - I just hit the "space bar" button to select the option and close out the keyboard), but at least it works well enough to get it up and running.

[phelme]

so, maybe I missed this... any idea why the APK shows up just fine on my phone in the PlayStore but doesn't on my Sony Android TV?

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by phelme

so, maybe I missed this... any idea why the APK shows up just fine on my phone in the PlayStore but doesn't on my Sony Android TV?

I was able to install it from the Play Store onto my 2015 Sony TV. If you go to the web browser based app store on a computer, and try to install from there it will tell you if it is not compatible for some reason.

Anyone else having this issue?

Thank,
Josh

[randyth]

Really enjoying this new branch on a Fire TV Stick 4K, but I do have some issues: Live TV works great with the default settings, but I find I have to disable Exoplayer and hardware decoders to watch Recordings; otherwise the video is either choppy (with Exoplayer) or audio-only (without Exoplayer but with hardware decoders).

Anyone find the "perfect" settings for a Fire TV Stick 4K yet?

In any case, it is quite usable as-is. Thanks so much for creating this, jvl711.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by randyth

Really enjoying this new branch on a Fire TV Stick 4K, but I do have some issues: Live TV works great with the default settings, but I find I have to disable Exoplayer and hardware decoders to watch Recordings; otherwise the video is either choppy (with Exoplayer) or audio-only (without Exoplayer but with hardware decoders).

Anyone find the "perfect" settings for a Fire TV Stick 4K yet?

In any case, it is quite usable as-is. Thanks so much for creating this, jvl711.

My Firetv 4K Settings

EXOPLAYER YES
EXOPLAYER FFMPEG Audio Extension ... Preferred Always use if possible.

Also make sure you are using OPENDCT with HDHomerRun unit.

[randyth]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

My Firetv 4K Settings

EXOPLAYER YES
EXOPLAYER FFMPEG Audio Extension ... Preferred Always use if possible.

Also make sure you are using OPENDCT with HDHomerRun unit.

Thanks for this. I am using HDHomeRun tuners, but for OTA only (no cable for me!). Does OPENDCT help/work with OTA recordings?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by randyth

Thanks for this. I am using HDHomeRun tuners, but for OTA only (no cable for me!). Does OPENDCT help/work with OTA recordings?

If not using OPENDCT you will have problems OPENDCT works with CONNECT OTA tuners ....

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...&postcount=135

[jpwegas]

Randy,
The link nyplayer posted as all the details.

Quick summary:

• Sage talking to HDHR devices directly stores the recordings in an MPEG-PS container.
• The exoplayer in the Android miniclient doesn't play MPEG-PS containers well (tested on Shield and FireStick 4k).
• If existing recordings using MPEG-PS containers are remuxed into MPEG-TS containers they work fine on HD300 extenders, Shield, and FireStick 4k. This conversion is very fast because it's not re-encoding the video/audio, just changing the container format.
• If you use OpenDCT to talk to the HDHR device I believe the default is to save in MPEG-TS, which plays well on those three players.

--John

P.S. If you re-encode existing recordings from MPEG-PS -> MPEG-TS containers, I found you have to do a full rescan of all your media by stopping Sage, backing up Sage.properties, adding "force_full_content_reindex=true" to Sage.properties, and restarting. Note this can take a while if you have a lot of recordings, so don't do it right before you expect something to record.

[randyth]

Well, I appear to have successfully installed OpenDCT and switched to it by adding the new OpenDCT tuners and deleting my old ones in SageTV's Setup->Setup Video Sources. I can now use a browser (IP address of host machine at port 9091) to see what OpenDCT is up to and it accurately reflects what I'm watching or recording in SageTV. FYI, both the SageTV server (stuckless/sagetv-build) and OpenDCT (CraziFuzzy/opendct-docker) are running on a QNAP NAS as Docker containers.

However, I can't say anything is better. I have the same issues, except that I now can't use Exoplayer to watch live TV -- I get a very long error message that doesn't stay on the screen long enough for me to read. The first part of the error reads something like this: "Exo2MediaPlayer - com.google.Android.exoplayer2.source. UnrecognizedInputFormatException. None of the available extractors..."

I feel like I'm missing something obvious but cant' figure out what.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by randyth

Well, I appear to have successfully installed OpenDCT and switched to it by adding the new OpenDCT tuners and deleting my old ones in SageTV's Setup->Setup Video Sources. I can now use a browser (IP address of host machine at port 9091) to see what OpenDCT is up to and it accurately reflects what I'm watching or recording in SageTV. FYI, both the SageTV server (stuckless/sagetv-build) and OpenDCT (CraziFuzzy/opendct-docker) are running on a QNAP NAS as Docker containers.

However, I can't say anything is better. I have the same issues, except that I now can't use Exoplayer to watch live TV -- I get a very long error message that doesn't stay on the screen long enough for me to read. The first part of the error reads something like this: "Exo2MediaPlayer - com.google.Android.exoplayer2.source. UnrecognizedInputFormatException. None of the available extractors..."

I feel like I'm missing something obvious but cant' figure out what.

If you are still creating mpg files make sure in the sage.properties file that all occurrences of the properties below are all set to false.... Shutdown SageTV first.

encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=true
to
encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=false

[Telecore]

There might be one thing that was not specifically mentioned yet - in order to get the Android clients to play the OTA HDHR tuner stream (in .ts file) - it has to be "cleaned up" by OpenDCT by remuxing through ffmpeg (but not transcoding) - so there may be some settings in OpenDCT that you need to change. You need to stop the SageTV service, then stop the OpenDCT service before changing the file - then re-start OpenDCT, then the SageTV service.

below is part of my opendct.properties file:

consumer.dynamic.channels.ffmpeg=
consumer.dynamic.channels.media_server=
consumer.dynamic.channels.raw=
consumer.dynamic.default=opendct.consumer.FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl
consumer.ffmpeg.ccextractor_all_streams=true
consumer.ffmpeg.ccextractor_custom_options=
consumer.ffmpeg.ccextractor_enabled=false
consumer.ffmpeg.circular_buffer_size=7864320
consumer.ffmpeg.enhanced_logging=true
consumer.ffmpeg.fix_stream=true
consumer.ffmpeg.limit_logging=true
consumer.ffmpeg.linux_logging=true
consumer.ffmpeg.log_stream_details_for_all_programs=false
consumer.ffmpeg.max_analyze_duration=5000000
consumer.ffmpeg.min_analyze_duration=165440
consumer.ffmpeg.min_probe_size=165440
consumer.ffmpeg.min_upload_id_transfer_size=65536
consumer.ffmpeg.no_program_timeout_ms=10000
consumer.ffmpeg.rw_buffer_size=65536
consumer.ffmpeg.thread_priority=9
consumer.ffmpeg.thread_rename_logging=false
consumer.ffmpeg.transcode_limit=6
consumer.ffmpeg.upload_id_enabled=true
consumer.ffmpeg.upload_id_port=7818
consumer.ffmpeg.use_compat_timebase=false

...(below is the entry for one of the HDHR quatro tuners)...

sagetv.device.-1474962137.always_force_external_unlock=false
sagetv.device.-1474962137.consumer=opendct.consumer.DynamicConsumerImpl
sagetv.device.-1474962137.delay_to_wait_after_tuning=0
sagetv.device.-1474962137.device_name=HDHomeRun HDHR5-4US Tuner 10703FE9-3
sagetv.device.-1474962137.encoder_listen_port=9000
sagetv.device.-1474962137.encoder_merit=0
sagetv.device.-1474962137.encoder_pool=atsc_10703fe9
sagetv.device.-1474962137.exclusive_server_address=
sagetv.device.-1474962137.fast_network_encoder_switch=true
sagetv.device.-1474962137.last_channel=18-21-1
sagetv.device.-1474962137.transcode_profile=

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

If you are still creating mpg files make sure in the sage.properties file that all occurrences of the properties below are all set to false.... Shutdown SageTV first.

encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=true
to
encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=false

I asked Narflex about this setting a few weeks ago:

Now sure if this is a bug or "as intended":

Sage.properties has a setting encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream

I thought setting this to false would generate MPEG-TS files instead of MPEG-PS files.

However, when testing, I shut down Sage, changed all the occurrences of encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream from true to false, restarted, and recorded something from my HDHR Quatro, which Sage records from directly (not using OpenDCT or another network encoder).

The result was a file with a .ts file extension, but ffprobe reports the file is actually MPEG-PS ("input" shown as "mpeg", whereas MPEG-TS containers would show the "input" as "mpegts"):

Input #0, mpeg, from 'ShippingWars-NotWithaWhimperbutaBang-60182708-0.ts':
  Duration: 00:07:07.32, start: 1.069356, bitrate: 2214 kb/s
    Stream #0:0[0x80]: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 192 kb/s
    Stream #0:1[0x1e0]: Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p(tv), 704x480 [SAR 40:33 DAR 16:9], Closed Captions, max. 4874 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc

mediainfo also confirms it's actually MPEG-PS:

Complete name                : ShippingWars-NotWithaWhimperbutaBang-60182708-0.ts
Format                       : MPEG-PS
File size                    : 227 MiB

So when this setting is false it doesn't seem to actually create recordings as MPEG-TS containers.

His reply:

This setting used to work a long time ago, but then things got changed at one point and I know we never fixed it so it works properly. So this doesn't surprise me.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by Telecore

There might be one thing that was not specifically mentioned yet - in order to get the Android clients to play the OTA HDHR tuner stream (in .ts file) - it has to be "cleaned up" by OpenDCT by remuxing through ffmpeg (but not transcoding) - so there may be some settings in OpenDCT that you need to change. You need to stop the SageTV service, then stop the OpenDCT service before changing the file - then re-start OpenDCT, then the SageTV service.

Telecore,
Thanks for mentioning this, I had mistakenly assumed it was the default behavior.

--John

[sic0048]

This works well on a FireTV 4k. I have also installed it on a older Firestick (previous generation - no voice remote). There are a few quirks, but it does work.

Here are the quirks:
- I seem to have to log in every time the app starts. This is true even after selecting the "automatically login" option. I don't have this issue on the FireTV model (it does log in automatically).
- It's a little slow to get a usable picture when initially starting playback. By slow I mean it takes about 2-3 seconds before the image and the sound are normal. On the 4k device, things are stable instantly.

The log in issue is annoying enough to stay away from the older devices (unless this can be fixed somehow). I just wanted to note that it does work however.

I've just ordered a Firestick 4k to try it out on. It's too good a deal to pass up on right now with the $25 off coupon (4KFIRETV) bringing the price down to just $25.

[tvmaster2]

What version number is this you’re talking about, sic0048?

[Eternal]

is it possible to add touch scrolling to the ui and things like swipe to go back or is it too late for that?
scrolling through lists still requires using the scrollbar like a desktop application

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Eternal

is it possible to add touch scrolling to the ui and things like swipe to go back or is it too late for that?
scrolling through lists still requires using the scrollbar like a desktop application

You can change the touch scroll mappings etc ... in settings.

[Eternal]

i see the swiping, but it doesnt look like you can hold and scroll like a standard app can

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Eternal

i see the swiping, but it doesnt look like you can hold and scroll like a standard app can

Yeah I see what you want I just set Swipe down and up to channel down/page down channel up/page up.