Fork of SageTV MiniClient for Android TV

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Sorry, I know I have posted a ton of stuff lately. I will try and summarize them. Let me know if I missed something or have questions.

Fixed Transcoding in HD:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/40951674

All of the fixes or updates for this will be posted here. I have not made any "functionality" changes to this since I did testing with you. I added some extra debug working with Bill yesterday, but there was no functionality changes. I have submitted the changes for the Sage.jar for inclusion into SageTV.

Fix for SageTV conversion issue:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/41162541

This is not related to the Fixed transcoding. This is a bugfix for an issue that I made when adding changes for the format detector plugin. This was already submitted and accepted into the SageTV core.

Fix to SageTV Android Client for Android 11

I expedited the release of 1.6.2 to fix an issue with Android 11 and Pixel 3xl. I was not anticipating releasing this so soon, but thought it would possibly reduce some headaches if other people ran into the same issue I did.

Thanks that helped a lot with testing I was getting Chipmunk Audio but with what you posted above everything appears to be working great. Must have had the wrong Jar before.

[jvl711]

Hi All,

I just wanted to let you all know that I have been fighting with Amazon App Store again. They are saying that the current version is crashing on launch when they are trying to test. They have provided no info beyond that, and I have been unable to reproduce on either of my firesticks or any other device I have tried (Android Emulator, Pixel 3xl, Sony Android TV).

I have sent a request to support to see if they could send any additional info, like a stack trace, but I have not received a response.

Again, I submit the app to Google, and it goes thru quickly without issue. Submit to amazon, and mysteriously it has issues???? I do not understand why they make it so difficult. This time could be much better spent than chasing issues with 0 details.

Josh

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Hi All,

I just wanted to let you all know that I have been fighting with Amazon App Store again. They are saying that the current version is crashing on launch when they are trying to test. They have provided no info beyond that, and I have been unable to reproduce on either of my firesticks or any other device I have tried (Android Emulator, Pixel 3xl, Sony Android TV).

Josh

That is too bad. I know I've had my share of issues with Amazon as well. If you haven't tried this already, maybe completely uninstall the older version and then install the new version to launch it. Maybe there's some change in an upgrade vs new install because of cached data, etc.

[wayner]

Google has released a new Chromecast that is more of a traditional streamer and runs Android TV. This should be able to run SageTV, should it not?

https://www.theverge.com/21495609/go...remote-control

FYI - it is $50.

[KryptoNyte]

I've been using the Fire stick 4k for a couple weeks now as the primary device on one of my TV's, connected via wifi 5ghz LAN at home (no transcoding). Things seem to be working well, with the exception of one thing that I can't seem to resolve.

When I start watching a recorded show, and then fast forward through it a few times (holding down the >> button on the Fire stick remote to shuttle), then at some point during the recording I hit pause [and eventually play], it returns the pointer in the timeline to an earlier location in the recording, yet it continues playing at the expected location, until I hit >> again and it warps me back to this same earlier location. This behavior is repeatable every time, and always returns me back to this same earlier location. I can't determine why it's doing it or how to make it stop, but it makes watching a long football game (prerecorded) very difficult if there are numerous periods of fast forwarding/seeking.

I'm using the latest miniclient fork 1.6.2 I believe, and the latest transcoding JAR.

[hb4]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I've been using the Fire stick 4k for a couple weeks now as the primary device on one of my TV's, connected via wifi 5ghz LAN at home (no transcoding). Things seem to be working well, with the exception of one thing that I can't seem to resolve.

When I start watching a recorded show, and then fast forward through it a few times (holding down the >> button on the Fire stick remote to shuttle), then at some point during the recording I hit pause [and eventually play], it returns the pointer in the timeline to an earlier location in the recording, yet it continues playing at the expected location, until I hit >> again and it warps me back to this same earlier location. This behavior is repeatable every time, and always returns me back to this same earlier location. I can't determine why it's doing it or how to make it stop, but it makes watching a long football game (prerecorded) very difficult if there are numerous periods of fast forwarding/seeking.

I'm using the latest miniclient fork 1.6.2 I believe, and the latest transcoding JAR.

I was experiencing the same thing and found miniclient issue #87 in GitHub from 2018 that suggested changing the Streaming Mode to 'Pull'. That seemed to fix it.

My problem with the Firestick 4K at this point is I can't play 1080 recordings without serious halts. 720 recordings work fine. Changing streaming mode to Fixed and transcoding to 720 still produces halts, which make me wonder whether it's really my puny 6Mbs remote DSL connection as I'd assumed.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by hb4

I was experiencing the same thing and found miniclient issue #87 in GitHub from 2018 that suggested changing the Streaming Mode to 'Pull'. That seemed to fix it.

When set to 'Pull' every show that I watch immediately skips straight to the end and then asks if I want to delete the recording. Even for shows that have never been watched.

[hb4]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

When set to 'Pull' every show that I watch immediately skips straight to the end and then asks if I want to delete the recording. Even for shows that have never been watched.

I'm using the beta client with the revised Jar. My FS4K settings are:

Streaming Mode: Pull
ExoPlayer: Checked
Use OpenGL UI: Checked
Use Native Resolution: Checked
Exit App when on Stand By: Checked
Terminate on Pause: Checked
Auto Connect: Checked

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

When set to 'Pull' every show that I watch immediately skips straight to the end and then asks if I want to delete the recording. Even for shows that have never been watched.

Same here plus with Pull you lose transcode options etc ...

[hb4]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Same here plus with Pull you lose transcode options etc ...

How about the other selections? I experienced that skip to end 'feature' as well. If I recall, checking OpenGL UI corrected that for me.

[nyplayer]

Seeking has always been a problem ... Josh has stated he will be looking into this.

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Seeking has always been a problem ... Josh has stated he will be looking into this.

Work has been a little crazy as of late, but when I get some spare time I will take a break from the SageTVTranscoder stuff and take a look at ExoPlayer timeline issues.

The main difficulty is it does not seem that ExoPlayer returns the "true" position in the media file. I think it might be counting from the last seek. So Stuckless added code to the mini client to keep track of the offset of the position Sage told it to start playback to where it is in playing back.

So in short I do not think exoplayer is that great at timeline. I will do my best with it. It annoys me as well!

Josh

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Work has been a little crazy as of late, but when I get some spare time I will take a break from the SageTVTranscoder stuff and take a look at ExoPlayer timeline issues.

The main difficulty is it does not seem that ExoPlayer returns the "true" position in the media file. I think it might be counting from the last seek. So Stuckless added code to the mini client to keep track of the offset of the position Sage told it to start playback to where it is in playing back.

So in short I do not think exoplayer is that great at timeline. I will do my best with it. It annoys me as well!

Josh

What is funny is EXOPLAYER is used on EMBY and I believe PLex and they have no problem seeking .. I tend to believe it is the way SageTV serves the video file to the miniclient. Just my opinion. I have tested the same files in SageTV and EMBY and the seeking problem is only on SageTV.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by wayner

Google has released a new Chromecast that is more of a traditional streamer and runs Android TV. This should be able to run SageTV, should it not?

https://www.theverge.com/21495609/go...remote-control

FYI - it is $50.

Bump - anyone get the new Chromecast yet and try the SageTV client?

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

What is funny is EXOPLAYER is used on EMBY and I believe PLex and they have no problem seeking .. I tend to believe it is the way SageTV serves the video file to the miniclient. Just my opinion. I have tested the same files in SageTV and EMBY and the seeking problem is only on SageTV.

That is possible. There is a "custom" datasource to get the media file to ExoPlayer.

Thanks,
Josh

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by wayner

Bump - anyone get the new Chromecast yet and try the SageTV client?

Ordered one waiting on it.

[hb4]

I thought about trying it, but when I saw that the remote had even fewer controls than the Firestick I decided to wait until I know more about how to assign tasks to buttons. On the Firestick when I tried to set a Favorite, the keyboard did not revert to the app or set the text string as a Favorite. It just went back to the Favorite opening screen. Not sure how/what to set to fix that.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by hb4

I thought about trying it, but when I saw that the remote had even fewer controls than the Firestick I decided to wait until I know more about how to assign tasks to buttons. On the Firestick when I tried to set a Favorite, the keyboard did not revert to the app or set the text string as a Favorite. It just went back to the Favorite opening screen. Not sure how/what to set to fix that.

I want it for other reasons than SageTV ... I have movies I bought on Google ... also want to run the HDHomeRun APP on it to view DRM... Also it runs Channels DVR

[phelme]

Originally Posted by wayner

Bump - anyone get the new Chromecast yet and try the SageTV client?

yep just got mine yesterday (cancelled my original order with Google as it was weeks out and went with Best Buy, had it in 2 days )

Anyway... does it work with the mini-client? Yes, it's available via the store and plays every container I threw at it. Oh BTW, finding the app was a bit weird. Just putting in "SageTV" showed only crap on YouTube. Had to add the word "app" for it to appear. Easiest to do by using the voice function.

But... the remote I had high hopes for has fewer physical buttons than even Amazon's Fire TV stick. No shuttle, no play/pause/stop, no menu key (instead we get physical buttons for Netflix and YouTube, yeah! ). Have to rely very heavily on the pop-up for ff/rew to get around. For some reason the keyboard pop-up doesn't bring up anything either for entering numbers and such, i.e. couldn't change ff/rew timings, so that's an issue (maybe it needs to send a different code?). If I remember right I ended up turning off Smart Navigation in the end because holding down buttons for "long press" wasn't working reliably as expected. Yes, one can use the d-pad for quick 5 second jump aheads. I'll mess around with it more today (I'll have to go in the config file manually to fix the shuttle timings).

So my verdict is while the hardware is certainly up for it, the remote is not great shakes for DVR-like use, the Fire TV stick fairs better. It's made for one click jump aheads and navigating a YouTube like scrollbar where you can select and move the thumb around.

I'll have to install Plex and see how well it works.

Oh the one interesting thing is it does have an IR blaster. You can tell it your TV and receiver/soundbar codes for power and volume adjustment.

[wayner]

Anyone aware of any cheap remotes that can send controls via IP?

I have a Control4 Home Automation system. It uses Zigbee to connect most devices, including remote controls.

I was able to adapt a Control4 driver for SageTV that sends IP commands, the same commands that are used in the SageTV web UI. These commands should work on AndroidTV clients as well, so that would solve the problem with these crappy remote controls for AndroidTV devices. If the Chromecast has Bluetooth then perhaps you could also use Harmony remotes with Bluetooth to control these devices.

Another way of doing this, although not ideal, is to run the SageTV web UI on an old phone or tablet and use that as your remote control.