Android MiniClient - Amazon Fire TV - Installation Issues/Questions
 

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

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

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.

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.

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.

@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 :(

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Amazon Refurb of Fire TV Gen 2 (4K) is $65 today. I picked up another 3.

-Travis

Hey Stuckless,

Just curious if you were messing around with a FireTV Branch this weekend?!?!

Thanks for all of your efforts...

-Travis

Unfortunately, my only windows to do anything is sat/sun (mornings), and this wekend I have family from out of town, and next weekend is the same... So it's likely it'll be 2-3 weeks before I can even look at this :(

Finally got a fire stick, and thought I would share my experience

... sage navigates about equal to an hd100. only one video in my recorded tv directory will play correctly.. All videos after the first, will only play audio with a blank screen until you restart sage, and then the same problem.. All my saved movies and shows in my movies folder all play fine. all my stuff is saved on the same drives on the network.

That sounds about right for regular FireTV (although the navigation on a FireTV is pretty decent), but Amazon has made it difficult to do video playback for sure.

Sorry meant to post this a long time ago but life got *very* busy. Here's an apk that people can try on their FireTV's (Tested on all models, works great on newest box/stick. Older box works decent and older stick *technically* works but isn't a great experience.)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7ml899ml3...lient.apk?dl=0

To get it to work make sure you go into the settings on the server picker screen and check "Use Exoplayer".

Works:
* Standard TV formats (Mpeg2-TS/PS w/ac3 audio)
* h.264 in mp4, mkv

Known Issues:
* Deinterlacing is terrible, only really a problem in sports.
* Subtitles don't work
* Changing audio tracks doesn't work

Thanks for posting... I got tied up into other things so I never did get a chance to pull in the Amazon ExoPlayer updates :(

Do you know if Amazon has any plans on upgrading to the 2.x ExoPlayer release?

I don't know when they plan on porting the amazon changes to the 2.X branch, but until they do its probably easier to just leave FireTV forked. That new FLIRC stuff you're doing now won't work on it anyway so its not a big loss in the short term.

At least it is still on the list....I am getting by with it on the Fire TV as is. I am curious what might be the realized advantage using Amazon ExoPlayer? The main issues I have at this time with the MiniClient are as follows:

1) The interlacing issue noted above...horrible with sports.
2) The video pauses between on the hour mark when a show spans multiple hours.

Thanks again for the work on this regardless.

-Travis

Do you get that "pause" on an HD300? I don't see that second one as being a client issue... seems like there is something going on with the server.

I don't know if ExoPlayer would help with #1... I suspect not.

I tried to install the miniclient apk file on firestick, and it keeps failing half way through on the install from my Mac


Problem solved... had to uninstall the previous miniclient. log file said error because of downgrade when trying to install

I have been trying to get the MiniClient working on my FireTV2 (2015) boxes. I have tried the latest MiniClient release (v1.2.4) and evilpenguin's APK (v1.0.7) in this thread.

So far, not much luck.

One problem I have is that I don't see any video when playing back my recordings (I have audio). I tried enabling/disabling Exoplayer, and then I would get is no audio at all.

Another problem I run into is that when I try to get to my imported videos (located on my NAS device), the MiniClient screen locks up. Sometimes, I can see the videos on the NAS, but usually I get the lock-up instead.

AzJazz

Just got my Amazon Fire TV stick last night as part of a 1 month DIRECTV Now promotion.

I loaded up the latest SageTV client from the Amazon App Store and gave it a whirl. At first it didn't work so I clicked the EXOPlayer switch in the settings and watched recorded content without any problems.

I immediately loaded Gemstone and found that menu navigation is not as snappy as my HD300 (but still plenty fast). Turned off animations but didn't make a big difference. I'll try the stock UI tonight as a baseline check.

I'm not really sure if this is the latest and greatest version of this Client for Fire TV (is there a side-load version out there?), but my 5 minute lazy approach to making it work resulted in a couple of hours of solid viewing. I did notice a few blips while watching basketball - could be the de-interlacing issue I've seen mentioned?

Overall I'm liking the FireTV stick. It's practically on top of my router and the picture and stream was totally solid for Amazon Originals and SageTV.

I need to try watching live TV and some converted movies tonight but so far I'm thinking this may be a better platform for SageTV than some of the previous comments led me to believe.

-uberpixel

Okay - my initial enthusiasm has been tempered. Tried watching some mpeg2 files last night (from my OTA HDHR) and found that they did not play. Using EXOplayer the playback was heavily stuttered and unwatchable. No joy with IJK either.

Ripped Blu-ray played okay but for some reason it defaulted to the director's cut audio and I couldn't figure out a way to change the track.

Also noticed that there is an audio sync issue when watching live TV (H264) on both the FireTV Stick and the MiBox. I rarely watch live TV unless I'm catching up to a sporting event so I've never noticed this before on the MiBox but tried a side by side comparison to confirm.

Tried watching live TV on a H264 stream that was protected by Parental Controls and couldn't get the on-screen keyboard to go away. I backed all the way out of the SageTV app and still couldn't get it to go away. Had to power cycle the FireTV stick to fix it.

I realize that FireTV is not a platform that has been a focus for this MiniClient so not sure what to say here other than - it sure would be cool if it worked better on FireTV... I have yet to find one streamer to do everything I need (SageTV, Amazon Prime, Youtube, DirecTV Now). The MiBox is close but the lack of a proper Amazon Prime app is annoying.

-uberpixel

FYI, ShieldTV just added an official Amazon Prime app :).

I was excited about that... until I took the update and there is no Amazon Prime app :( I guess even though we can watch Amazon Prime (in a browser) in Canada, it didn't make to the Shield's Firmware... I'm guessing they use a different firmware for Canada :(

Curious if the FireStick you received is the original version and not the recently released unit with a bunch more power.

-Travis

Bummer, they must have regional firmware. The app shows up for me in the US and works nicely in brief testing. Much nicer than the app on my BluRay player I was using before.

It's the newest version.

-uberpixel

I didn't have to do this in the U.S. but this is said to work to get the Amazon app on the Shield in other locales: