Android MiniClient 1.4.3

[stuckless]

Version 1.4.3 is released. It's been pushed to Bintray and Google Play.

Here's the Changelog.

- sls: feat: Added more touch mappings
- sls: feat: Added more key mappings
- sls: feat: NAV OSD and KEYBOARD are able to be mapped in key/touch mappings
- sls: feat: Added Hotpot mappings (useful for mouse/touch ie, ChromeOS/Tablet)
- sls: refactor: OpenGL and GDX now share 90% same code
- sls: fix: OpenGL transparency issue with shapes
- sls: feat: Added debug keys and commands view
- sls: feat: Added httpls streaming support (debug/test only)

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Version 1.4.3 is released. It's been pushed to Bintray and Google Play.

Here's the Changelog.

Thank you Sean. The opacity is perfect now! I have switched over to using opengl now.

Josh

[phantomii]

Hey Stuckless,

First let me extend my sincerest appreciation for all your hard work on the Android Client. With the releases of 1.4.2 and 1.4.3 I am having about the best performance and stability I have seen with SageTV since it went Open Source. Fantastic work.

I am really grateful for the recent addition to the client which enables the ability to modify the key settings. I almost asked for something like this at one point but opted not to do so. However, since you have done this I do have an additional minor addition if you could do so when you next update the code.

I am using the attached Remote with my Android Mini Clients and SageTV. This works very well with the exception of the fact that I do not seem to have a channel up and channel down button when watching live TV. I can now map these to the up and down arrows so I do have this option. It would though be nice if this functioned with the channel up/down pgup/pgdn button. However, when watching live TV these buttons seem to move the playing to the current time for up and about 8-10 seconds back for down. A second press of down does not move it back further in the timeline. If it were possible to add the capability to have these keys do a channel up and channel down when on live TV that would be great from my perspective.

These keys do seem to page up and page down in the program guide. Not sure what key presses these are actually send though I do know SageTV sees them.

I use this remote with several Android devices and it works very well. Since it uses a USB interface dongle it even works well with the newer shield.

This cost about 13.00 USB so is relatively inexpensive. I would also be willing to send you one if it would make the addition of the desired keys easier for you to do.

Thanks in advance for when (or if as I know you have a life outside of SageTV) you consider making this adddition.

John

[stuckless]

@phantomii it would appear that the remote is sending "some" command and we are sending that command to sagetv. Seems like the remote is sending a page up and page down on the channel up and channel down buttons on the remote.

In 1.4.3 I added a debug keys view that is used to do this sort of testing. typically you'd enable this, and then do some testing, and then turn it off, since what it does is show every keypress and sagetv command that is being sent. So, in the Settings (ie, the android app setting where you configre the mappings), there are 2 options... "debug key presses" and "debug sage commands". Turn those then, then go into sagetv, and press the channel up and channel down buttons. This should tell us what command the remote is sending, and what command we are sending to sagetv.

I'm don't explictly have a mapping for page up / page down in the mappings, so, maybe that needs to be added.

Do that testing and let me know the remote keys that are being sent.

[phantomii]

Thanks so much. Did the testing as described and these are the results:

When pressing the PG + (Channel Up) button on the remote I see:
Command: Page Up 55
page_up - NORM - 92


When pressing the PG - (Channel Down) button on the remote I see:
Command: Page Down 56
page_down - NORM - 93

If you can add these next time you do work that would be awesome.

As a side note, this remote also has an air mouse which is kinda handy for some things. I find for the money this is a pretty good cheap solution for a basic TV setup.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by phantomii

Thanks so much. Did the testing as described and these are the results:

When pressing the PG + (Channel Up) button on the remote I see:
Command: Page Up 55
page_up - NORM - 92


When pressing the PG - (Channel Down) button on the remote I see:
Command: Page Down 56
page_down - NORM - 93

If you can add these next time you do work that would be awesome.

As a side note, this remote also has an air mouse which is kinda handy for some things. I find for the money this is a pretty good cheap solution for a basic TV setup.

Yeah, I checked in the code, and while we map Channel Up/Down we don't actually map Page Up/Down, so this should be an easy fix. Thanks for troubleshooting this. I'll try to get this out over the weekend.

[phantomii]

I did not think it would be a big deal since you had already added the key mapping code. Thanks for offering to fix it but please do not feel like it is critical for me to get done in a hurry. If you are doing some fixes this weekend, cool otherwise it can wait till you do some. Spend some time enjoying life and family!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by phantomii

I did not think it would be a big deal since you had already added the key mapping code. Thanks for offering to fix it but please do not feel like it is critical for me to get done in a hurry. If you are doing some fixes this weekend, cool otherwise it can wait till you do some. Spend some time enjoying life and family!

There is a 1.4.4 release that adds the ability to map the Page UP/DOWN commands, so you can map those to Channel UP/DOWN

Here's the thing...

The MiniClient was configured to send Page UP/DOWN if that's what the remote was sending. The problem is that SageTV server will only change channels if it get Channel UP/DOWN. By default Page UP/DOWN will still send Page UP/DOWN, so, you need to remap those. What I don't know is what will sagetv do, if you are in the guide and you hit page UP/DOWN, which will now send Channel UP/DOWN? Will the guide treat that as a Page UP/DOWN even though we are sending Channel UP/DOWN. My guess is no.

So, while you get the Chanel UP/DOWN behaviour in the video section, you might, in the process lose the Page UP/DOWN behaviour everywhere else.

This is a limitation of the remote itself. ie, the remote never sends a Channel UP/DOWN and it assumes that all programs will just treat Page UP/DOWN differently based on the context of where it receives it.

So, if you get into this scenario where, you can still reconfigure the MiniClient to act differently, but, you'll be doing more mapping. The "Smart Remote" option, which is enabled by default, is recommended to be turned off when using a full remote, as you are. But, you can enabled it, and if you do, then when video is playing you can configure page up/down to send Channel UP/DOWN, but the default when no video is playing is still Page UP/DOWN. This still might not get you there. Since, I'm not sure what would happen if you dropped to the guide with video playing and then hit page up/down. If you do enable smart remote, though, be sure to review the default configuration, since the smart remote is out of the box, configured to make life easier for people (like myself) that only use the Shield 8 button remote.

You can also work around this by remapping Page UP/DOWN to be Channel UP/DOWN and then remap your left/right color buttons to be Page UP/DOWN.

Typically something like this, should really be managed at the sagetv server, where, it decides what to do with a Page UP/DOWN request when video is playing.

Hopefully this changes gets you some mileage, but, keep in mind, I have no way of testing these changes either. ie, i can't simulate the page up/down key presses in the emulator for some reason.

[trk2]

Sean, I'm a little confused. Shouldn't the default commands for channel up and page up both be command 11 (and command 12 for channel down and page down) which would then resolve this issue?

[Tiki]

Maybe I’m missing something but Sage has a command that is both page up and channel up (and another for page down/channel down). I don’t have the Android client, but I map the channel up/channel down buttons on all my remotes that way.

They will change channels when watching tv, but move up and down through lists (or the EPG) one page at a time.

[trk2]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Maybe I’m missing something but Sage has a command that is both page up and channel up (and another for page down/channel down).

This is what I meant by Command 11 and 12.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by trk2

Sean, I'm a little confused. Shouldn't the default commands for channel up and page up both be command 11 (and command 12 for channel down and page down) which would then resolve this issue?

I wasn't aware that SageTV's Channel UP/DOWN (11,12) was also a Page UP/DOWN as well. Goes back to my comment that this should manages in the SageTV server, and it appears that it is. So yeah, the default for both channel up/down and page up/down should be sage's 11,12 commands.

Originally Posted by Tiki

Maybe I’m missing something but Sage has a command that is both page up and channel up (and another for page down/channel down). I don’t have the Android client, but I map the channel up/channel down buttons on all my remotes that way.

They will change channels when watching tv, but move up and down through lists (or the EPG) one page at a time.

Again, wasn't aware the channel up/down command in sagetv did both. So that's good news. The MiniClient (much like any client really), needs to explicitly map a remote code coming into the hardware into something that sagetv can understand. So, remotes on Android can send CHANNEL UP/DOWN and they can send PAGE UP/DOWN. I mapped the hardware channel up/down to the sagetv channel up/down and I mapped the hardware page up/down to the sagetv page up/down (seems reasonable). This has nothing to do with configuring this inside of SageTV, this explicitly has to do with how the hardware that is running the client needs to accept remote codes and pass them to sagetv. (this explained in further detail in another post some where).

So, right now, you can map the Page UP/DOWN in the MiniClient to send the SageTV Channel UP/DOWN, and you are good. Eventually, when I do another release, I'll set the defaults for Channel UP/DOWN and Page UP/DOWN to be the SageTV Channel UP/DOWN.

[Tiki]

Sage actually has multiple similar commands:

Up - 4
Page up - 55
Channel up / page up - 11
Up / channel up - 53
Volume up - 13
Up/Volume up - 101
Scroll Up - 107

Strangely, I don’t see a command that is only channel up.

Also, the page up/ channel up command can be used to skip tracks on a dvd.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Sage actually has multiple similar commands:

Up - 4
Page up - 55
Channel up / page up - 11
Up / channel up - 53
Volume up - 13
Up/Volume up - 101
Scroll Up - 107

Strangely, I don’t see a command that is only channel up.

Also, the page up/ channel up command can be used to skip tracks on a dvd.

I get that I have all the sagettv commands. All 109 of them. SageTV has a Page UP/DOWN command (55,56), and as such, it seemed logical to map the remote Page UP/DOWN to the SageTV Page UP/DOWN commands instead of the Channel Up/Down 11,12, since that was mapped to the remote's Channel Up/Down. In retrospect, that was wrong.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I get that I have all the sagettv commands. All 109 of them. SageTV has a Page UP/DOWN command (55,56), and as such, it seemed logical to map the remote Page UP/DOWN to the SageTV Page UP/DOWN commands instead of the Channel Up/Down 11,12, since that was mapped to the remote's Channel Up/Down. In retrospect, that was wrong.

The SageTV remote has channel up/down buttons so that is their primary purpose. Secondarily the core was programmed to use those as page up/down in other contexts. So while it may seem backward it lines up with the remote.

[phantomii]

Thanks for the update Stuckless. Works fine for the Channel up and down now though I did not do any exhausting tests of other functions. Read through the various threads and not clear on all the points but suffice to say working as expected at this point. Thanks so much.

[cat6man]

let me add one more big thank you to stuckless.
the miniclient is both stable and fast........very impressive and much appreciated

[cat6man]

i'm running hdmi from nvidia shield to an NAD AVR, then hdmi video on to a lg 4k oled tv.

i've got audio sync problems with the miniclient running on nvidia shield.
i get it with sage recorded shows as well as torrent downloads of non-us broadcasts.

however, when i play netflix on the shield, i get no audio/video sync problem and when i play the same problematic videos on MrMC client on the shield, there is also no problem.

therefore, it seems to be sagetv miniclient specific........otherwise, a great, stable and fast client.

any suggestions? is it exoplayer?

edit: i see with MrMC/Kodi/SPMC/etc that there are a lot of pvr programs that are integrated as plugins. could sageTV v9 be integrated into those media players?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by cat6man

edit: i see with MrMC/Kodi/SPMC/etc that there are a lot of pvr programs that are integrated as plugins. could sageTV v9 be integrated into those media players?

I've answered this question a 100 times, so I won't get into the details, other than to say, it's possible if we rewrite sagetv or rewrite the miniclient, both of which are likely never going to happen.

As for ExoPlayer, it's a video player for "perfect" video streams. It's not a good player for recorded content where the recorders sometimes have imperfections in the streams. ExoPlayer is great for app like Netflix and Youtube because they control the video streams. My suggestion is to use IJKPlayer since it's a ffmpeg based player and can deal with some imperfections in the streams.

[VCRUser]

In the past couple of days, my playback has been crashing regularly on my MiBox. I had version1.3.5 and thinking an update might fix it, updated to the now current 1.44, which didn't solve the problem. The message that displays is "server connection lost." It only seems to occur (so far) with .mpg files that are produced by my Hauppauge encoders. Mostly, I run files through the converter and they end up as either mp4 of mkv, depending on which profile I use. However, I don't bother shows I watch within a few days of airing, and those are the ones that are in the mpg format.

A quick test shows that the files converted to mp4 or mkv formats are fine, but the unconverted mpgs stop after just a couple of minutes of playback.

I don't have this problem on my Android tablet or on PlaceShifter or the UI on the server. I also tried Amazon Prime and it works fine as well, so the MiBox's connection to the server or anything else seems not to be the source.

Since I've only had the Mi-Box a short time, I don't remember whether I have previously played mpg files successfully, but given my typical usage patterns, it seems at least possible if not probable.

Just a quick addition: I tried setting Exoplayer on, but then got no sound. I then checked "Disable exoplayer passthrough" but still no sound. So I undid those and got the sound back, but mpg video still crashes after a couple of minutes.