Android MiniClient - Amazon Fire TV - Installation Issues/Questions

[Daweeze]

Hello,

To my surprise, I just discovered the SageTV MiniClient was available for the Fire TV. I am running a Gen 2 Fire TV unit and would like to get it going. I upgrade my old 7.x system last night to 9.x successfully. Currently I have Windows 10 as my Server and 6 HD300 units as extenders. I do not use any other Clients or PlaceShifter. I did not see a walk-through on how to setup the MiniClient or what is required on the Server-Side. I have a few questions/issues so far:

1) After inputting my Server Hostname and IP, the MiniClient is asking for a Login and Password. I am not sure what these might be or if I have to set them up on the Server.

2) With the Fire TV, the screen to input the Login and Password pop up an On-Screen Keyboard that doesn't appear to do anything and cannot be exited which requires a reboot of the Fire TV as it is stuck on-screen even if the background app is closed and you are at the Home Screen of Fire TV. Entry of the Server Hostname and IP of the server used this method during setup and did not have this issue.

3) How do you delete/remove a Server in the MiniClient App?

Thanks for all of your effort with this project!

-Travis

[stuckless]

I don't want to diminish your hopes... but FireTV is probably the worse box to run the MiniClient and in my experience, video playback will be problematic... (if you search for FireTV and read the posts here, it's not good).

That being said, if it's asking for a username/password it's because it's in a "placeshifter" mode... ie, the FireTV is on a different network than your sagetv server.

[Daweeze]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I don't want to diminish your hopes... but FireTV is probably the worse box to run the MiniClient and in my experience, video playback will be problematic... (if you search for FireTV and read the posts here, it's not good).

That being said, if it's asking for a username/password it's because it's in a "placeshifter" mode... ie, the FireTV is on a different network than your sagetv server.

Thanks for your help. I was able to get it to work by moving to the wired connection which was on the same subnet.

Actually, at least for TV, it's working great. I am not sure if it's a Fire TV vs Fire TV Gen2 issue people experienced or not. I do need help with the following though:

1) Sage MiniClient Volume is a lot lower than the regular Fire TV App level, I couldn't find a way to change the internal SageTV volume so I could match it and rarely need to control my volume on my TV. Right now it's a huge difference and since the Amazon TV remote doesn't have many buttons, I thought it might be in the OSM but it wasn't. Any suggestions?

2) I still have a Server setup in the App that I want to remove that was a typo. How do I remove it from the list?

Thanks again, this is awesome.

-Travis

[Daweeze]

Hey Stuckless,

Would setting media_player_uses_system_volume=true do anything for me in the case above or does that only affect clients on PC Based systems?

Thanks,

-Travis

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Daweeze

Thanks for your help. I was able to get it to work by moving to the wired connection which was on the same subnet.

Actually, at least for TV, it's working great. I am not sure if it's a Fire TV vs Fire TV Gen2 issue people experienced or not. I do need help with the following though:

1) Sage MiniClient Volume is a lot lower than the regular Fire TV App level, I couldn't find a way to change the internal SageTV volume so I could match it and rarely need to control my volume on my TV. Right now it's a huge difference and since the Amazon TV remote doesn't have many buttons, I thought it might be in the OSM but it wasn't. Any suggestions?

2) I still have a Server setup in the App that I want to remove that was a typo. How do I remove it from the list?

Thanks again, this is awesome.

-Travis

Originally Posted by Daweeze

Hey Stuckless,

Would setting media_player_uses_system_volume=true do anything for me in the case above or does that only affect clients on PC Based systems?

Thanks,

-Travis

I don't know much about the media_player_uses_system_volume property... so i can't really say what that would do.... i know the miniclient, on it's own, doesn't use this property, but I don't know what the effect would be to set it on the server.

As for removing entries... i think if you long press select for the entry it will show a menu where you can edit/remove the item.

[Daweeze]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I don't know much about the media_player_uses_system_volume property... so i can't really say what that would do.... i know the miniclient, on it's own, doesn't use this property, but I don't know what the effect would be to set it on the server.

As for removing entries... i think if you long press select for the entry it will show a menu where you can edit/remove the item.

Ok. To be clear though, is there a volume control setting within the MiniClient like the HD300 has or it is set to a Line-Level volume that does not have the ability to change? If it does, I might need to connect a bluetooth keyboard to change the volume. Also, if it does, could it be added to the OSD keyboard?

Thanks,

-Travis

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Daweeze

Ok. To be clear though, is there a volume control setting within the MiniClient like the HD300 has or it is set to a Line-Level volume that does not have the ability to change? If it does, I might need to connect a bluetooth keyboard to change the volume. Also, if it does, could it be added to the OSD keyboard?

Thanks,

-Travis

If you have the SageTV web interface installed, you can adjust the volume using the web remote for the extender from there. I ran into a similar situation and that allowed me to turn the volume all the way up.

[Daweeze]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

If you have the SageTV web interface installed, you can adjust the volume using the web remote for the extender from there. I ran into a similar situation and that allowed me to turn the volume all the way up.

Great suggestion. I had removed it the Web Interface a few years back. I added the plugin again and was able to move the volume to full. That said, the volume is not changed by the slider value on the screen. Even though the TV shows Sage as muted (when I press mute on the web control) the audio does not change. Any other ideas guys? I wonder if there is something that can be added to the MiniClient App to deal with the audio offset.

-Travis

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Daweeze

Great suggestion. I had removed it the Web Interface a few years back. I added the plugin again and was able to move the volume to full. That said, the volume is not changed by the slider value on the screen. Even though the TV shows Sage as muted (when I press mute on the web control) the audio does not change. Any other ideas guys? I wonder if there is something that can be added to the MiniClient App to deal with the audio offset.

-Travis

I'm certainly open to suggestions... I just have no ideas of my own as to what to do here.

[evilpenguin]

@Sean - I'm having a lot of luck with the Amazon port of exoplayer. I had to roll the app back to before you refactored for exoplayer 2.x but playback on the FireTV 4K has been solid across TV and imported video. I'm gonna try out FireTV 1 and Stick 1/2 on Monday to see how they work.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

@Sean - I'm having a lot of luck with the Amazon port of exoplayer. I had to roll the app back to before you refactored for exoplayer 2.x but playback on the FireTV 4K has been solid across TV and imported video. I'm gonna try out FireTV 1 and Stick 1/2 on Monday to see how they work.

Is the Amazon port of ExoPlayer available, somewhere? I can look at creating a separate branch of the MiniClient with the Amazon "version" of ExoPlayer. (or you can maintain a "firetv" branch).

The FireTV is a good player.. but given Amazon's changes that beak other players... I'm not really recommending anyone buy one

[evilpenguin]

Yep it's right here:

https://github.com/amzn/exoplayer-amazon-port

If you spin up a new branch is new happy to help maintain it, now that I know this exists I plan on putting the HD300's back in storage and using this exclusively!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Yep it's right here:

https://github.com/amzn/exoplayer-amazon-port

If you spin up a new branch is new happy to help maintain it, now that I know this exists I plan on putting the HD300's back in storage and using this exclusively!

Do you have handle on what is different in the Amazon port of ExoPlayer? I don't have much success with the "main" ExoPlayer But, I'm glad it's working well for you on FireTV.

My "window" of working on this has passed for this weekend, but, maybe I start that branch next weekend. It would be good to have this as an option for FireTV users.

[evilpenguin]

That'll give me some more time to verify it, I really want to check the new FireTV Stick. That thing is a solid streamer and the only thing I'm hoping to have plugged into all my 1080p TVs.

I don't know much about the Android media stack but this project has got me curious how much capability we can squeeze out a FireTV so I might do some digging.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

That'll give me some more time to verify it, I really want to check the new FireTV Stick. That thing is a solid streamer and the only thing I'm hoping to have plugged into all my 1080p TVs.

I don't know much about the Android media stack but this project has got me curious how much capability we can squeeze out a FireTV so I might do some digging.

So, to clarify... You tried the ExoPlayer 2.x that shipped with the miniclient, but it didn't work well, but the Amazon port does work well? I'm looking at the commits in the Amazon port and they have done a number of fixes and enabled a few things as well.

[Daweeze]

I am using The MiniClient on the Fire TV Gen 2 for Live TV only. I haven't even tried to use it for Movie Playback. It has been a really good Client at this point. I am using the ExoPlayer setting and the version that came with the latest MiniClient release. Truthfully, I would love to continue using SageTV but I think the MiniClient is my solution to a migration to Plex I have been working on for a few months. My intention would be to sell my 6 HD300's and continue using MiniClient on the Amazon Fire TV's until Plex DVR is able to do satisfactory Live TV which may be some time. Since I am migrating all of my media to H.265/HEVC, I figured the full-blown 4K capable FIre TV is my tested and proven choice for me. I will have to offload 4 of the Fire Stick v1 units at some point too. I am interested in trying any Amazon Optimized branch as well.

[evilpenguin]

The new stick *should* do HEVC also if you don't need 4K (I'd need a clip to verify though). Plex is great for movies but the lack of comskip support and long seek times really kill it as a potential DVR for me. Oddly enough Plex also can't play back my Blu-ray rips without transcoding either where as Sage just plays them directly.

[Daweeze]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

...Plex is great for movies but the lack of comskip support and long seek times really kill it as a potential DVR for me. Oddly enough Plex also can't play back my Blu-ray rips without transcoding either where as Sage just plays them directly.

People are now starting to get comskip working with the Plex DVR as a Post-recording process. I won't really use the DVR until they give me a Grid-Based guide and the seek and Live TV functions are supported. It also has Official Amazon Echo support coming so that will be nice. Regarding the Blu-Rays, on the Fire TV nothing is transcoded for me anymore, everything is Direct Play. I am encoding my entire collection to H.265/HEVC MKV with direct and non-re-encoded audio tracks. It's awesome, I get to keep all of my commentary tracks etc as well. The pain in carving up the Extra features and placing them in the Extras subfolders since they can't play DVD/Blu-Ray Menus. The only time I need transcoding is for my iPhone playback. You probably have to change your H.264 level on your Plex clients to match the level you encoded them at so they will stop transcoding.

Here's some Bullet Points on the issue:

• Changing the Maximum H.264 Level global setting can allow many files to Direct Stream or Direct Play. Videos use the H.264 Level to define a maximum bitrate for the video as well as decoding parameters.
• A H.264 level below that of the source video will force the video to transcode.
• A H.264 level slightly higher than the recommended is usually safe.
• Selecting the "None" value may be safe based on you media.
• Changing the H.264 Level above the device's recommended value could possibly result in severe playback stability issues or device instability. Please exercise caution when adjusting this setting.

-Travis

[SWKerr]

I use the FireTV(4k) for local video playback but I am still using SageTV as my DVR backend.

I have been using MCEbuddy to rename files to and Emby friendly format and them compressing them to an mp4. On the FireTV I just use Kodi for playback with no significant playback issues. I use and Emby plugin to manage the Kodi Library. I do have occasional issues with files not naming in a format that Emby will import but they are relatively few. If MCEbuddy does not find a good match it will keep the SageTV recording id so everything still scans in SageTV as well.

Live TV is not really an issue for me. I seldom watch anything live except sports which is I still watch slightly delayed. For Live TV I have found I can just open the in progress file from the file system with Kodi and watch any in-progress recording. Emby also has HDHR support and DVR so I can stream live OTA recording but I find I never do.

I would like to use the SageTV mini client for playback but have never been able to get it to work. The latest version (sagetv-miniclient-1.0.8) will play most mp4 files ok with the ExoPlayer but the MPEG2 (HDHomeRun) files will not play. The ExoPlayer will play the HDPVR files ok as well. Currently I just use the SageTV Mini client to setup recordings but it would be better if I could watch TV as well.

[panteragstk]

I think I might grab one of the firetv sticks to play around with. Even if it can't work perfectly with sage I'll still use it.

I can help test some of this stuff too.