Android/AndroidTV Placeshifter client (Discussion)

[wayner]

What about skipping? One crucial feature for me is usable SKipFwd and SkipFwdX2 for watching sports. My experience, albeit limited, with Kodi and Plex is that they are not anywhere near as good as SageTV on this.

[phantomii]

I have finally gotten around to testing my "Matricom G-Box Q" with Alpha 06 and Alpha 08. With 06 I had the 1/8 screen in the upper left corner though it seemed to correct itself for some reason after playing a video or two. Version 08 worked great from the initial load and I had no real issues with it. Only did some basic testing but I would definitely consider it a good MiniClient. I would say it was as good or better than the HD200s and HD300 I have. Very awesome. Thanks!

BTW, I paid around $90-$100 for the units on Amazon.......

[dinki]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Thanks, and to be clear, I was offended by the comments, but I do wanted people to realize that the scale of this project will never compete with the 13+ years and 450 developers of Kodi

It is interesting that Kodi for android has some issues... but it's likely that for Android, they have to rewrite the player (or parts of it) and it's limited compared to their native implementation.

I do hope that is a typo and I did not offend you. My intent was to provide feedback from my testing on my hardware and was never meant to be seen as a complaint. My thinking is that many others will be using similar hardware and perhaps this information would be valuable.

Originally Posted by stuckless

I have not... I only have h264 encoded files, personally. Have you tried to turn off hardware acceleration in the Preferences, to see if it plays the same or differently?

I just tried this and playback does start but then seems to freeze up and the video appears to just pause. I can stop playback and start again but it does the same thing. I would imagine that hardware acceleration would be a must for this device.

[Foggy]

w/ v0.08 on my Nexus 7 (2012)...

Additional testing gave me some interesting results.

Watching TV via the Guide
- The video and audio start out positioned correctly, but then the video starts to slip behind the audio and continues to lag further and further behind.
Both video and audio are very smooth.

Watching recordings
- the video and audio are in sync
- watching HD (720p @ 60fps) recordings - the video pixilates constantly, but when watching a SD (480i @ 29.9fps ) recording the video is good.
------
Nexus 7 (2012), v5.1.1
SageTV v7.1.9 (licensed) on Win7-64bit

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by dinki

I do hope that is a typo and I did not offend you. My intent was to provide feedback from my testing on my hardware and was never meant to be seen as a complaint. My thinking is that many others will be using similar hardware and perhaps this information would be valuable.

Speaking of Typos, my comment should have read, "Thanks, and to be clear, I was NOT offended by the comments..."

So, I realized you were not complaining, but leaving out a crucial "not" can make all the difference

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wayner

What about skipping? One crucial feature for me is usable SKipFwd and SkipFwdX2 for watching sports. My experience, albeit limited, with Kodi and Plex is that they are not anywhere near as good as SageTV on this.

Agreed. Skipping is a must have, and in fact, if I can't get commercial skipping and skip forward/reverse working smoothly, then I would consider this a failure

Originally Posted by phantomii

I have finally gotten around to testing my "Matricom G-Box Q" with Alpha 06 and Alpha 08. With 06 I had the 1/8 screen in the upper left corner though it seemed to correct itself for some reason after playing a video or two. Version 08 worked great from the initial load and I had no real issues with it. Only did some basic testing but I would definitely consider it a good MiniClient. I would say it was as good or better than the HD200s and HD300 I have. Very awesome. Thanks!

BTW, I paid around $90-$100 for the units on Amazon.......

That's very good news... I took a look at that box when you posted about it before... it seems like a great deal for $100.

Originally Posted by Foggy

w/ v0.08 on my Nexus 7 (2012)...

Additional testing gave me some interesting results.

Watching TV via the Guide
- The video and audio start out positioned correctly, but then the video starts to slip behind the audio and continues to lag further and further behind.
Both video and audio are very smooth.

Watching recordings
- the video and audio are in sync
- watching HD (720p @ 60fps) recordings - the video pixilates constantly, but when watching a SD (480i @ 29.9fps ) recording the video is good.
------
Nexus 7 (2012), v5.1.1
SageTV v7.1.9 (licensed) on Win7-64bit

Eventually, I need to get "placeshifting" working as well. When that is working, it will likely transcode those files on the server, and make them playable on wifi devices. I think for your videos, the player cannot keep up with the stream, over wifi, for 720p@60fps. I think ideally, it should, but, there is alot of re-buffering going on behind the scenes, so likely frames are getting dropped.

[KarylFStein]

I tried on my SHIELD and it now works! Unfortunately playback is pixelated like on my tablet. What I mean is that on both devices there will be a totally clear frame then as there is movement it'll get blocky around where the movement occurs in the scene. Then a second or two later another clear frame followed my more blockiness. Not knowing much about video encoding I'm guessing I'm seeing a "key" frame properly but then the parts of it that change before the next key frame are not being decoded properly.

Note that my SHIELD is hardwired onto the LAN and that even on my tablet WiFi it'll stream the same file in Phoenix Remote no problem.

BTW, it now has a cool SageTV logo on Android TV instead of the generic green robot thingy!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

I tried on my SHIELD and it now works! Unfortunately playback is pixelated like on my tablet. What I mean is that on both devices there will be a totally clear frame then as there is movement it'll get blocky around where the movement occurs in the scene. Then a second or two later another clear frame followed my more blockiness. Not knowing much about video encoding I'm guessing I'm seeing a "key" frame properly but then the parts of it that change before the next key frame are not being decoded properly.

Note that my SHIELD is hardwired onto the LAN and that even on my tablet WiFi it'll stream the same file in Phoenix Remote no problem.

BTW, it now has a cool SageTV logo on Android TV instead of the generic green robot thingy!

What are the file types that are pixelated?

[dranockcir]

Wow Sean, you have done an awesome job with this! I tried it on a Nexus 7 and it worked great playback and all. I know you have lots to do but could I ask how I can input the placeshifter login info. I am trying it remotely and I get two text entry fields, guessing this is the user and password fields for the remote placeshifter to connect, but I can't enter anything in to them. Is there an ini or properties file I could enter this login information into?

Rick

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by stuckless

What are the file types that are pixelated?

Both MPEG2 (InfiniTV4 > SageDCT > ffmpeg) and TS (Hauppauge 2250 OTA).

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by dranockcir

Wow Sean, you have done an awesome job with this! I tried it on a Nexus 7 and it worked great playback and all. I know you have lots to do but could I ask how I can input the placeshifter login info. I am trying it remotely and I get two text entry fields, guessing this is the user and password fields for the remote placeshifter to connect, but I can't enter anything in to them. Is there an ini or properties file I could enter this login information into?

Rick

I have no idea what this means I've never used the placeshifter so, I'm not sure if you are saying that SageTV UI is presenting you with these 2 fields, or my application (which I'm doubtful). I'll definitely need a lot more information, given that other than connecting to sagetv via the HD300 on a LAN, I've never actually used it for placeshifting.

From the android app point of view, it has no idea that the SageTV UI is prompting you to enter information. Eventually, I can look at updating the SageTV protocol to send a "SHOW_KEYBOARD" type of command that can loosely interpreted by a client, such as and Android Device to show the soft keyboard, but today, none of that exists.

I am, working on adding the ability to transmit all the standard keys to sagetv from the app, so, if you were to hook up a bluetooth keyboard it could be used to send key strokes... but that doesn't exist, yet, either

[dranockcir]

On the server, in settings, you enter your placeshifter users. They have a login and a password then when you connect to your sage server from outside your LAN you are prompted for your user name and password by the server. There is a check box that you can check where the mini client will auto login by storing the user name and password.

I have set an account for you on my server and sent you a PM with user and password so you can see what I am talking about. If you fire up the the placeshifter on your computer you'll see what I mean. Then if you try it with your Android version you'll see what I mean. :-)

Rick

[gary201]

How would one force a client to rerun the configuration wizard upon startup?

I thought I'd give the android client a test, and went through it okay, but then was fiddling around and reran it, now I can't navigate to it anymore because the menu item is off the top edge of the screen. I've tried removing the app entirely and reinstalling it and that doesn't seem to work.

Also, how do you force the keyboard to work when running on a tablet and viewing the system information display (e.g. to enter the "5309" to enable extras)?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by gary201

How would one force a client to rerun the configuration wizard upon startup?

I thought I'd give the android client a test, and went through it okay, but then was fiddling around and reran it, now I can't navigate to it anymore because the menu item is off the top edge of the screen. I've tried removing the app entirely and reinstalling it and that doesn't seem to work.

Also, how do you force the keyboard to work when running on a tablet and viewing the system information display (e.g. to enter the "5309" to enable extras)?

You can find the properties file for your device in the server clients folder you can delete it. Then you can rerun the wizard.

C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\clients

[Foggy]

Sean,
potential enhancement suggestions:

1)Add an option in the preferences to allow the user to select the maximum resolution video stream this client will accept. 480i, 720p, 1040i, etc...
(This request assumes what I'm asking makes sense.) This might force transcoding back to the server.

2) add an option to rename the default server. Minor.
Current work around - add new server and removed original server.

Do you have a preferred method to collect enhancements? Since these are not bugs, I did not want to add them to github.

[Foggy]

Sean,
apparently I was the fourth person to download v0.09. Like a good little (foolish?) user, I installed the latest and greatest version. Thank you.

Only .... I did not see any visual differences. Do you have a brief changelog for the different versions or is it way too early for that sort of stuff.

[Gustovier]

Sean,

You might be able to use any windows media center remote with your nexus device (just plug In the USB receiver into one of the USB ports).

Sounds like you might not be getting that Nividia shield. Do you think it's time for folks to start donating? The Nvidia shield supports mpeg2 hardware decode (nexus tv supports this with marshmallow) , hardware deinterlace and Dolby digital/dts passthru.

[stuckless]

[QUOTE=Foggy;580362]Sean,
potential enhancement suggestions:

1)Add an option in the preferences to allow the user to select the maximum resolution video stream this client will accept. 480i, 720p, 1040i, etc...
(This request assumes what I'm asking makes sense.) This might force transcoding back to the server.
[quote]

The placeshifter (ie, desktop version) has the ability for force transcoding, if I recall. I'll like do something, either what they do on the desktop, or something else... I haven't looked at it too much.

Originally Posted by Foggy

2) add an option to rename the default server. Minor.
Current work around - add new server and removed original server.

Do you have a preferred method to collect enhancements? Since these are not bugs, I did not want to add them to github.

You can add these to the issue tracker... just use [ENHANCEMENT] in the subject.

Originally Posted by Foggy

Sean,
apparently I was the fourth person to download v0.09. Like a good little (foolish?) user, I installed the latest and greatest version. Thank you.

Only .... I did not see any visual differences. Do you have a brief changelog for the different versions or is it way too early for that sort of stuff.

09 was basicaly a very small change that I did to enable sending keystrokes (ie, a-z0-9) to sagetv from an external usb or bluetooth keyboard. I couldn't test it, so I just built it, and had another use test it... The new changes don't work, completely

Originally Posted by Gustovier

Sean,

You might be able to use any windows media center remote with your nexus device (just plug In the USB receiver into one of the USB ports).

Sounds like you might not be getting that Nividia shield. Do you think it's time for folks to start donating? The Nvidia shield supports mpeg2 hardware decode (nexus tv supports this with marshmallow) , hardware deinterlace and Dolby digital/dts passthru.

I haven't heard differently about the shield... but if it's been mailed, then it might take some time, probably coming form the US... once it gets to Canada, they'll take it by dog sled to my place

As for funding... I've started an Indigogo compaign... but I haven't gone live with it... i think that might be a good way to do the funding... unless others have some ideas.

[mechling-burgh]

Do the Indigogo campaign This is something I would gladly pitch in for. You have put a lot of hard work into this and I'm willing to pitch in. I can't program so I greatly appreciate the work you guys do here.

[Gustovier]

Yup probably about time to set the indiegogo up.

Stuckless, also what was the issues you had with using exoplayer. I'm a little worried that with it being made by Google and other Devs (such as plex) contributing to it that it might support more features than the ijk player. Such as supporting native hardware decoding / frame rate switching / hardware deinterlace that some players have. For instance the plex devs not to long ago submitted support of trueHD sound to exoplayer. Looking at the github repo exoplayer it seems the devs are very active and respond pretty quickly to possible issues. It also supports some types of drm which might be helpful if dtcp-ip is ever added in so we can get premium channels from silicon dust prime tuners (of course this would require a lot of work , $$, and for the source to go closed)

I just want to make sure that the best player possible is chosen early upfront before a ton more work goes into it.