Live Channels - Android TV

[PiX64]

I've been following along closely since the recent AWESOME announcements, and I haven't seen mention of this yet. I am hoping that with Narflex involvement I can make this a reality.

I have moved entirely to Android TV devices including 1 soon to be 2 NVidia Shield TVs and 2 Nexus Players. The Live Channels are awesome. What I am hoping for is that this can be leveraged as a front end for a SageTV backend.

Now I haven't taking a look at what APIs or functionality is available in L or M builds for that matter with respect to Live Channels, but I am hoping that integration with a PVR is in fact possible. I also realize that only certain devices so far, such as the Nvidia Shield tv can play mpeg2 directly and without some sort of a transcoding service this may make this idea a bit more difficult. For OTA however.. this seems like a perfect match to me.

Is there any interest from the community in seeing this progress?

IF So and its not just me, then I will start digging in and seeing what is possible.



~Mike

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Is there any interest from the community in seeing this progress?

Most certainly.

Android TV is a great platform and one of its unique features is the ability for 3rd party apps to implement a TV Input Service that feeds the system's native EPG (i.e. 'Live Channels').

I think that a first version of a SageTV client for Android TV should provide that base functionality. That is, be a TV Input Service that tunes Live TV by talking to a SageTV backend. Perhaps the next feature would be exploring using an Overlay for program options (e.g. closed captioning, record, etc). That'd be a good start.

For those who aren't familiar, here's what the native Android TV EPG looks like using the HDHomeRun as a source. However, using things as-is isn't ideal since Sage won't know that the tuner is in use which can lead to failed recordings.

[brewston]

I've got an ADT-1 and NP. Waiting for Nvidia TV to release in the UK. So I'd be interested in this. Although, TBH, if it's live TV only, I can get that from my HDHR. Never the less, I'm happy to test it

I played around with this a few months ago :

https://github.com/googlesamples/and...-sample-inputs

and the *theory* is that you present a URL to the live stream to TIF and it appears as a channel. I couldn't get it working though (This was trying to stream from DVB Link software)

*edit*

Here's the thread where I tried to figure out the stream URL from Sage http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61994

[stuckless]

I've spent my share of time looking through the Android TV stuff as well. I even created a simple proof of concept App to test some of the features, but I never played with the TIF stuff.

To be honest, I'm not even sure how valuable something like the TIF stuff is. When I moved to SageTV, I haven't watched a live TV stream in years. The only time I've actually gone to the guide in the traditional sense, is when my in-laws visit and I'm trying to find a sports channel to put on

I can see the TIF being valuable if you are actually allowing channels to be scheduled and recorded (ie, a PVR), but for live tv, most of us are trying to get away from Live TV and TV on demand (something that we've all enjoyed for many years) is really taking over, especially with things like Netflix, etc.

If you are looking to provide sagetv as an input, then I think you'll need write a plugin for that. Basically you'll want to register a URL handler that serves up an xml file of all the channels, with a customer url like, '/livetv/channel/video.ts', and then register another URL handler that handles the /livetv/ service and then uses the channel to start a manual recording for the channel, and then starts to stream back the recorded file contents.

I just find AndroidTV so lacking on the video playback front, that I recently boxed up my AndroidTV units and replaced them with Roku 3 boxes. That hurts, given how much of an Android fan I am

[cncb]

The Roku (still) doesn't do MPEG2 at all, so how is that your go-to device?

I might be getting a Shield TV in the near future so I might also be interested in this integration. Although I am probably more interested in "porting" the extender code/miniclient to be an Android TV app which Jeff recently said should be possible and might not be too difficult.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by cncb

The Roku (still) doesn't do MPEG2 at all, so how is that your go-to device?

I might be getting a Shield TV in the near future so I might also be interested in this integration. Although I am probably more interested in "porting" the extender code/miniclient to be an Android TV app which Jeff recently said should be possible and might not be too difficult.

Firsly, I don't have any mpeg2 content. My recorders are HDPVR which produce .ts files (h264 I think).

Secondly, I've given up on the pipe dream that AndroidTV (or Roku) can do anything more than just simple streaming. As such, Roku/AndroidTV units were basically Plex and Netflix front ends.

My main reason for ditching my AndroidTV units were networking issues. I'd lose WiFi and would not be able to reconnect. rebooting would do nothing. If I left it off overnight, and try it the next day, it would start using WiFi again... for a couple days. My Rokus never had this issue, so I ditched the AndroidTVs for Rokus.

I do agree that getting the miniclient running on Android would not be hard, but, getting video playback working on an Android device will be extremely difficult, do do it reliably, as the HD300 can do.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Firsly, I don't have any mpeg2 content. My recorders are HDPVR which produce .ts files (h264 I think).

Secondly, I've given up on the pipe dream that AndroidTV (or Roku) can do anything more than just simple streaming. As such, Roku/AndroidTV units were basically Plex and Netflix front ends.

My main reason for ditching my AndroidTV units were networking issues. I'd lose WiFi and would not be able to reconnect. rebooting would do nothing. If I left it off overnight, and try it the next day, it would start using WiFi again... for a couple days. My Rokus never had this issue, so I ditched the AndroidTVs for Rokus.

I do agree that getting the miniclient running on Android would not be hard, but, getting video playback working on an Android device will be extremely difficult, do do it reliably, as the HD300 can do.

The GPU's just have lesser capabilities compared to desktop GPU's. For example, the Raspberry Pi is limited to H.264 high@4.0 at 1080p. The same limitation that the HD100 has. This precludes playback of full Blu-ray quality video on those devices. As far as the Pi is concerned I don't know what the MPEG2 playback limitations are.

MPEG2 playback is largely limited by licensing. With the Pi the end user can pay a small fee for the license. But since most web content is now H.264 it doesn't make sense for device manufacturers to spend the extra money for a license that almost none of their users will be taking advantage of.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Secondly, I've given up on the pipe dream that AndroidTV (or Roku) can do anything more than just simple streaming. As such, Roku/AndroidTV units were basically Plex and Netflix front ends.

I've been hoping that the ShieldTV would become a new extender.

With the ShieldTV now having mpeg2 support, and always having good H.264 support (I think), what's the limiting factor that makes them unsuitable for anything beyond simple streaming?

[jm9843]

I think the viability of this depends on what your expectations are. If you want a truly complete HD300 replacement with all of the requisite media playback capabilities (HD bitstreaming, refresh rate switching) and UI plugins, etc. - then I think that's a ways off. Some of those capabilities would only be available on specific devices and only after rumored upcoming updates. The Shield TV 2.0 upgrade in particular.

But there's a lot that can be accomplished today if you limit the scope, take the "app view" of things, and leverage Sage for live TV and DVR scheduling/recording purposes. Allow Kodi/Plex to handle local media playback - including SageTV recordings until someone decides to take on a native recordings browser/player on Android TV.

As far as Android TV networking issues or MPEG2 questions: the simple answer is to anoint the Sheild TV as the targeted hardware. It's leagues ahead of the other boxes and should have no problems dealing with the requirements around broadcast TV.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

For example, the Raspberry Pi is limited to H.264 high@4.0 at 1080p. The same limitation that the HD100 has. This precludes playback of full Blu-ray quality video on those devices. As far as the Pi is concerned I don't know what the MPEG2 playback limitations are.

This is not accurate for the Pi. Even my Pi1 can handle H264, high@4.1. It can also even play full 3D/MVC in recent Kodi builds.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by cncb

This is not accurate for the Pi. Even my Pi1 can handle H264, high@4.1. It can also even play full 3D/MVC in recent Kodi builds.

Ok, the Raspberry Pi FAQ does say Blu-ray quality video up to 40Mbit/s. At least with RasPlex I have had trouble with most, if not all, Blu-ray titles in H.264, VC-1, and MPEG2. They just would not play without major start/stop issues. Could be that RasPlex had inefficiencies. However, they made changes that forces high bitrate video to be transcoded rather than natively decoded.

[Korny]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Ok, the Raspberry Pi FAQ does say Blu-ray quality video up to 40Mbit/s. At least with RasPlex I have had trouble with most, if not all, Blu-ray titles in H.264, VC-1, and MPEG2. They just would not play without major start/stop issues. Could be that RasPlex had inefficiencies. However, they made changes that forces high bitrate video to be transcoded rather than natively decoded.

Could it be USB issue/network issue since the PI 1/2 share network and USB interfaces, also both Pi have the same video decoding hardware. Also for mpeg2 do you have the license for it?

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Korny

Could it be USB issue/network issue since the PI 1/2 share network and USB interfaces, also both Pi have the same video decoding hardware. Also for mpeg2 do you have the license for it?

Yes, I bought the MPEG2 & VC-1 licenses for my Pi.

Not sure about it being a networking issue. At the time I was using wired ethernet rather than a USB WiFi adapter.

[Narflex]

If you want to make an Android TV extender, I'd suggest porting the placeshifter code to Android. Then throwing away the MPlayer side of it for playback and using the android media player framework instead. It shouldn't be too horrible to implement all that.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Narflex

If you want to make an Android TV extender, I'd suggest porting the placeshifter code to Android. Then throwing away the MPlayer side of it for playback and using the android media player framework instead. It shouldn't be too horrible to implement all that.

Yeah, I'm actually in the process of doing that... Of course the existing code is AWT based, so I can't really use any of it I'm currently studying the GFXCMD2 and The OpenGL implementation to see how much effort it might be. Doesn't look too bad, to be honest.

Quick question though... The android media framework sort of sucks. But, for the purposes of the placeshifter, does it transcode to h264 (or some other format) on the server and send that across, or does it send the raw file?

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Yeah, I'm actually in the process of doing that... Of course the existing code is AWT based, so I can't really use any of it I'm currently studying the GFXCMD2 and The OpenGL implementation to see how much effort it might be. Doesn't look too bad, to be honest.

Quick question though... The android media framework sort of sucks. But, for the purposes of the placeshifter, does it transcode to h264 (or some other format) on the server and send that across, or does it send the raw file?

It converts to MPEG4 Part 2. H.264 is MPEG4 Part 10.

[nyplayer]

I would love to see a Nexus Player SageTV app.

[7up]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I would love to see a Nexus Player SageTV app.

+1 for SageTV app running on Android TV.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Quick question though... The android media framework sort of sucks. But, for the purposes of the placeshifter, does it transcode to h264 (or some other format) on the server and send that across, or does it send the raw file?

If you're on the same subnet, doesn't the server just stream the file to a Placeshifter client?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by reggie14

If you're on the same subnet, doesn't the server just stream the file to a Placeshifter client?

I have no idea