Fork of SageTV MiniClient for Android TV

[jpwegas]

Another video test:

Playing a video with the following Format according to Sage:

MPEG2-PS[H.264 16:9 720p@60fps, Dolby Digital/384Kbps@48KHz 5.1, Subpic SRT]

gives the error in the attachment.

--John

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

How is your Firmware on the Primes ?

Model: HDHR3-CC
Device ID: 131A192A
Firmware: 20200521

I'm on an older version:

Hardware Model HDHR3-CC
Firmware Version 20190417

I hadn't updated since there didn't seem to be any critical changes for the Prime.

I'll update and do a new recording to see if that changes anything.

--John

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

If you can upload a Video I will test it on my Shield.

Sent you a PM with a link to a 30s sample that gives me that weird audio on the Shield.

--John

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

Sent you a PM with a link to a 30s sample that gives me that weird audio on the Shield.

--John

your sample will not show Video or Sound on my FireTV or Shield (tried all Settings). It plays on my PC Client.

What version of OPENDCT (OpenDCT_0.5.29_x64) are you using ? ... My server is a windows 10 Mini PC.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

your sample will not show Video or Sound on my FireTV or Shield (tried all Settings). It plays on my PC Client.

What version of OPENDCT (OpenDCT_0.5.29_x64) are you using ? ... My server is a windows 10 Mini PC.

I'm using my prime_encoder network encoder on Ubuntu, which basically does the same thing as OpenDCT - stream from the Prime and then run the result through ffmpeg to clean up the stream data. Maybe it's time to switch to OpenDCT.

So weird that all my recordings play fine on HD300s and the computer.

--John

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

I'm using my prime_encoder network encoder on Ubuntu, which basically does the same thing as OpenDCT - stream from the Prime and then run the result through ffmpeg to clean up the stream data. Maybe it's time to switch to OpenDCT.

So weird that all my recordings play fine on HD300s and the computer.

--John

I believe the developer of prime_encoder network encoder is Josh (jvl711) ... that I believe is no longer supported he uses OPENDCT.. So obviously it is messing with the recordings.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I believe the developer of prime_encoder network encoder is Josh (jvl711) ... that I believe is no longer supported he uses OPENDCT.. So obviously it is messing with the recordings.

Josh (jvl711) developed PrimeNetEncoder (https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62055)

I wrote prime_encoder (https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60815) prior to his work. It is not as comprehensive or complete as PrimeNetEncoder or OpenDCT but it's been working fine for me for the most part. Recordings are fine when viewed on the HD300s but I want to move a solution that will support other options like the Shield or FireStick 4K.

The names are unfortunately similar.

--John

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

your sample will not show Video or Sound on my FireTV or Shield (tried all Settings). It plays on my PC Client.

Thanks for testing that, I'll work on getting that fixed!

--John

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Hi All,

New beta that adds a setting for the FFmpeg Audio Extension. I am hoping this is the last beta before I release 1.5.1

Let me know if you guys see any issues. If not I will publish to Play Store.

1.5.1 Beta 3

Looking good enough to publish.

[jpwegas]

Ok, I updated my "ffmpeg stream cleanup" options in prime_encoder to make sure the output format was explicitly mpegts and now new recordings work great on the miniclient! Audio works great, 5.1 works, stereo works on TVs without an audio receiver, video pauses are gone, FF and REW work very well! The FireStick 4k can get stuck briefly if I'm jumping around a lot, but the Shield preforms awesome. And it doesn't seem to matter which ffmpeg audio option I select in the miniclient. Thanks nyplayer for helping me to debug what ended up being my recording format problem!

Here's the weird thing:
I have 3 types of recording devices: 1x HDHR Prime, 1x HDHR Quatro, and 2x HDPVR2s. The Prime and HDPVR2s I record using prime_encoder. They work now. But the Quatro I just used Sage's build in support. Sage is doing all the recording - no prime_encoder, not OpenDCT, etc. And THOSE recordings exhibit the same audio weirdness and video pauses. So whatever Sage's default container/format is in these cases (at least in Linux) doesn't work on the Android mini client.

If I look at the recordings using ffprobe, the ones recorded by Sage directly are listed as "mpeg", and the new ones are listed as "mpegts".

nyplayer - are you running ALL of your sources through OpenDCT? Or maybe the Windows Sage records these in a slightly different container?

Thanks Josh for your work on the Android client. Now that I've corrected my recording format, it's working wonderfully, and might be a way to support 4k recordings eventually.

--John

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

Ok, I updated my "ffmpeg stream cleanup" options in prime_encoder to make sure the output format was explicitly mpegts and now new recordings work great on the miniclient! Audio works great, 5.1 works, stereo works on TVs without an audio receiver, video pauses are gone, FF and REW work very well! The FireStick 4k can get stuck briefly if I'm jumping around a lot, but the Shield preforms awesome. And it doesn't seem to matter which ffmpeg audio option I select in the miniclient. Thanks nyplayer for helping me to debug what ended up being my recording format problem!

Here's the weird thing:
I have 3 types of recording devices: 1x HDHR Prime, 1x HDHR Quatro, and 2x HDPVR2s. The Prime and HDPVR2s I record using prime_encoder. They work now. But the Quatro I just used Sage's build in support. Sage is doing all the recording - no prime_encoder, not OpenDCT, etc. And THOSE recordings exhibit the same audio weirdness and video pauses. So whatever Sage's default container/format is in these cases (at least in Linux) doesn't work on the Android mini client.

If I look at the recordings using ffprobe, the ones recorded by Sage directly are listed as "mpeg", and the new ones are listed as "mpegts".

nyplayer - are you running ALL of your sources through OpenDCT? Or maybe the Windows Sage records these in a slightly different container?

Thanks Josh for your work on the Android client. Now that I've corrected my recording format, it's working wonderfully, and might be a way to support 4k recordings eventually.

--John

I use OPENDCT for all my sources... Primes and Connects. I use the OPendct Pooling System as I need to Share the tuners with SageTV and other Apps.

[pjpjpjpj]

Dropping in to say that I'm anxiously reading all of your posts and am excited about the progress and thankful for the hard work you are all doing.

I've posted in previous threads about the fact that I've struggled with getting MPEG-2 OTA recordings (straight into Sage from HDHR) to play on the miniclient on my Fire Sticks, both 1080p (newer gen) sticks and 4K sticks. I know others have said they've had better luck with it working on Amazon products but I've tried all the various encoder settings and none have worked well enough that I would ever consider having the family rely on that over an HD300. We also have lots of home videos with a camcorder that recorded to 1080p M2TS, so having that work is huge for me as well. If you can get all of these working (along with the door opening for 4K streaming from Sage), that makes Sage viable for the foreseeable future even after all the available HD300s out there die of old age.

I have no skills to help out but wanted to let you know what there are people out here who are appreciative of what you are doing, even if they aren't speaking up in the thread. You guys rock!

[nyplayer]

Those that record straight to SageTV from the HdHomeRun OTA tuners have you tried a different BDA setting ... maybe choose Default or NEXTPVR and see if that works.

[sacrament055]

Have not tried that but I can certainly make the adjustment and see what happens.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I've posted in previous threads about the fact that I've struggled with getting MPEG-2 OTA recordings (straight into Sage from HDHR) to play on the miniclient on my Fire Sticks, both 1080p (newer gen) sticks and 4K sticks. I know others have said they've had better luck with it working on Amazon products but I've tried all the various encoder settings and none have worked well enough that I would ever consider having the family rely on that over an HD300. We also have lots of home videos with a camcorder that recorded to 1080p M2TS, so having that work is huge for me as well. If you can get all of these working (along with the door opening for 4K streaming from Sage), that makes Sage viable for the foreseeable future even after all the available HD300s out there die of old age.

That sounds exactly like the problems I was having with MPEG-2 OTA usability on the miniclient and it was not something I would move the family to, it was not a usable experience. But now that I understand that it is an issue with the recording format, the Shield and FireStick 4k are very usable with the tests I did yesterday.

If you haven't switched to OpenDCT, you might want to give it a try to see if that fixes the problem for you as well.

I wonder if it's possible to fix the format Sage is using for the direct recording. Or maybe the recommendation should be just use OpenDCT for any HDHR products.

--John

[sacrament055]

NextPVR setting for the HDHomerun didn't change much. Still getting choppy video with garbled audio. Seems like OpenDCT might be the only way to make this work.

[nyplayer]

I tried to setup SageTV on a VM to use without OPENDCT and it does not even have BDA SageTV anymore... Will not work probably because I installed 64 bit and the HDHomeRun software looks for Sage 32 bit. So my recommendation is to move to opendct which uses HTTP tuning for Connects and Primes.

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

Josh (jvl711) developed PrimeNetEncoder (https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62055)

I wrote prime_encoder (https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60815) prior to his work. It is not as comprehensive or complete as PrimeNetEncoder or OpenDCT but it's been working fine for me for the most part. Recordings are fine when viewed on the HD300s but I want to move a solution that will support other options like the Shield or FireStick 4K.

The names are unfortunately similar.

--John

I think you may have been the one I got the idea from for the one I made. I needed something to work with Windows, and the other solution at the time was limited in which OSes it supported, and required the windows firewall... So I wrote something that had less requirements.

I moved to OpenDCT because it has tighter integration with FFmpeg. I was forking the process and grabbing the stdout to process files. I have been using OpenDCT for ~1-2 years. Works really well. I did use my solution for a long time before ditching though.

[sacrament055]

I just realized I hadn't restarted my SageTV Service after switching to NextPVR in the HD Homerun Setup. Once I restarted I could not longer stream live TV at all with Sage so that's not gonna work. Seems it will need Open DCT or whatever the equivalent might be within sagetv natively.

[jvl711]

Status Updates....

I posterd 1.5.1 on the Play Store... Just waiting on approval from the Google gods, then it should be available. Release is also posted to the GitHub repo. FYI. It is the same as 1.5.1_beta3.

I got my Firestick 4k delivered and installed! Live OTA MPEG-2 is flawless! Most other files worked flawlessly. I only needed to use IJK for an old Divx file. Impressed with usability speed. I definitely think it is a very reasonable client for $50. I now have two different devices to test on.

I am still working on getting the Amazon App Store listing approved . The first issue was an error about intellectual property. I was able to work that out by giving them the License file from the repo. Now they want access to a server with instructions to be able to fully test the client . So now I need to make my development sage server available to them for some testing. Not very keen or happy about that.

Could the ones with Amazon devices, could you please let me know how important having a store listing is to you. I just want to make sure this headache is worth it.

On Deck

I am going to look at Placeshifter usage through FireTV 4k. I am going to see if there is anything I can do about the login process.

I am going to play with enabling transcoding in the client. So I am going to try and properly report to SageTV which codecs the Android client supports and see if Sage is able to transcode the ones we do not on the fly. Not sure how/if that will work. For instance there are a lot of android devices that do not support MPEG2. It would be cool if it could be transcoded to h.264 on the fly. Might be a pipe dream.

If I run across code that requires cleanup, I will do that along the way.

Thanks,
Josh