Android MiniClient 1.3.6-dev (beta)

[stuckless]

There is a new miniclient release on Bintray ONLY.
https://bintray.com/opensagetv/saget...ient/1.3.6-dev

This version will likely become a 1.4.0 release at some point. It has a completely rewritten UI engine for rendering. By default, this new UI renderer is enabled by default, but, you can revert to the old renderer in the settings if you experience issues.

In 1.4.0 I'd like to completely remove the old UI rendering code.

This new render should perform better than that the old renderer and it should look better (smoother). You likely don't need to run at native resolution, so, it is disabled by default but can be changed in the settings.

Provide any feedback here.

thanks

[jvl711]

Interesting! What is the main change in the rendering? Do you think it will render images a little better than the old one. Looking forward to trying it out and trying to learn from your code .

Thanks again for all of your hard work!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Interesting! What is the main change in the rendering? Do you think it will render images a little better than the old one. Looking forward to trying it out and trying to learn from your code .

Thanks again for all of your hard work!

Without getting too technical... the old renderer was a wrapper library around opengl. the miniclient UI was designed around opengl, but, opengl is a beast to learn, so I decided to take a short cut and use a wrapper library. I finally decided to take a stab to using the opengl library natively. The end result is that the client is closer to the HD300 implementation in that it is using opengl directly. My initial tests show that using a screen size of 1280x720 and then upscaling the UI to the TV size performs well, and, looks smooth. This is what the HD300 does. The Android MiniClient (old ui) always rendered at native resolutions which could use more memory and potentially be slower. For SageTV the UI is designed at 1280x720 so there isn't any advantage of rendering at the native screen size.

[jvl711]

Hi,

I did some very quick initial testing. I did see a few issues.

1. It does not look like opacity is working on shape objects. So if you draw a object as a focus selector on a text button or image the object covers the text or image instead of being opaque. I saw the same exact issue with the rendering on the HTML opengl example you were working on. It rendered almost exactly the same.

2. The render quality is lower than the old method. I have a 65" 4k TV, and when using the OpenGL render it was very clear from 10 + feet away that there was a drastic reduction in quality. This was especially noticeable on poster art and backgrouds.

Let me know if you need any additional info. I can attempt to do screen caps if I can figure out how to do that on Android TV .

Josh

[stuckless]

Thanks... I have couple of questions...

1. What client are you using (MiBox, Shield, etc)?
2. I don't see the issue with #1. I test in Gemstone and Default STV and both render fine. That being said, i did fix an issue this morning with opacity and the shapre renderer, so this might be fixed in another dev build.

> 2. The render quality is lower than the old method. I have a 65" 4k TV, and when using the OpenGL render it was very clear from 10 + feet away that there was a drastic reduction in quality. This was especially noticeable on poster art and backgrouds.

Did you enable native resolution? By default, I'm rendering the same resolution as the HD300 (1280x720), but you can enable native resolution as well. The old UI always rendered in native.

It's funny because in my home env, which is just 1080p TV, this new renderer is much clearer.

Originally Posted by jvl711

Hi,

I did some very quick initial testing. I did see a few issues.

1. It does not look like opacity is working on shape objects. So if you draw a object as a focus selector on a text button or image the object covers the text or image instead of being opaque. I saw the same exact issue with the rendering on the HTML opengl example you were working on. It rendered almost exactly the same.

2. The render quality is lower than the old method. I have a 65" 4k TV, and when using the OpenGL render it was very clear from 10 + feet away that there was a drastic reduction in quality. This was especially noticeable on poster art and backgrouds.

Let me know if you need any additional info. I can attempt to do screen caps if I can figure out how to do that on Android TV .

Josh

[stuckless]

Try, this build to see if the shape rendering improves...

https://bintray.com/opensagetv/saget...nt/1.3.6-dev-1

BTW, the keymap code has undergone a severe refactoring... so report an unexpected key handling

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Try, this build to see if the shape rendering improves...

https://bintray.com/opensagetv/saget...nt/1.3.6-dev-1

BTW, the keymap code has undergone a severe refactoring... so report an unexpected key handling

Hi Sean,

I tried the dev-2 build. It was much better. Two observations.

1. The opacity is working, but it is doing a strange thing where the rectangle object is split in two triangles, with each triangle with a different opacity.... In my stv I also have rectangles that are not filled and are just lines, which also have transparency. The lines look like they are being rendered with low quality. Looks like you are much closer though. Maybe a few tweaks and you should have it.

2. Images are rendering with better quality than the old method now!!! Images look real good, but for some strange reason when I scroll in a list of images they start to look a bit pixelated. So load a menu, and images look great. Scroll down in the list and they look pixelated. I am guessing maybe something is happening on the redraw???? I do not know much about OpenGL, so I am guessing.

Let me know if you think you need screen caps as examples. These observations are a bit hard to describe.

You asked what I am using to run the client. I am using Sony TV with Android TV built in. Believe it not it works great on it. I am using dev-2 now, but I am not using opengl rendering in prime time yet.

Josh

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Hi Sean,

I tried the dev-2 build. It was much better. Two observations.

1. The opacity is working, but it is doing a strange thing where the rectangle object is split in two triangles, with each triangle with a different opacity.... In my stv I also have rectangles that are not filled and are just lines, which also have transparency. The lines look like they are being rendered with low quality. Looks like you are much closer though. Maybe a few tweaks and you should have it.

2. Images are rendering with better quality than the old method now!!! Images look real good, but for some strange reason when I scroll in a list of images they start to look a bit pixelated. So load a menu, and images look great. Scroll down in the list and they look pixelated. I am guessing maybe something is happening on the redraw???? I do not know much about OpenGL, so I am guessing.

Let me know if you think you need screen caps as examples. These observations are a bit hard to describe.

You asked what I am using to run the client. I am using Sony TV with Android TV built in. Believe it not it works great on it. I am using dev-2 now, but I am not using opengl rendering in prime time yet.

Josh

Could you post a couple of pictures, especially of the rectangle issues. Are you using the default STV, Gemstone, or another STV?

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Could you post a couple of pictures, especially of the rectangle issues. Are you using the default STV, Gemstone, or another STV?

Here is one with old render, and new render. The STV is my own homegrown one.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Here is one with old render, and new render. The STV is my own homegrown one.

I was able to reproduce the triangles issue using the PhoenixLite.xml STV. I've updated a dev-3 build.

https://bintray.com/opensagetv/saget...nt/1.3.6-dev-3

BTW, there was a bug in prev build where telling it to use native resolution still didn't do that. I find that when native resolution is turned on, it does look better, but, still looks decent on my tv without native resolution.