Seems like this is not going to work.
Installed the app on my Amazon Fire TV, did a quick config and started working with it. Simple channel changes caused XBMC to crash. Trying to play live TV often produced sound and no video. Trying to play back recorded shows produced sound for 10 seconds, no video and then stopped. Also got a lot of this:
Going to take a look at the log later. Has anyone had any success with live TV on AFTV? Was so hoping this was going to work as a replacement DVR. Doesn't look like it's going to happen.
Roveer
Worked fine for me for months on Gotham 13.2.
Running Gotham 13.2
Just put it on my g Box Midnight MX2 and for some reason on one of the channels within 30 seconds the audio has jumped ahead of the video. Seems like the longer I let it run the further ahead the audio gets. On the other channels the audio seems to stay in sync just fine.
gBox Midnight MX2 too slow to consider. 3-5 seconds between selections before you see anything happening. Will fail the WAF.
Guess I'm going to throw my rPI at it and see what it does.
On the hardware acceleration side sure you have mediacodec disabled and libstagefright enabled (you will need to restart xbmc for the change to register).
I am running SPMC which is based on Gotham 13.3.3.
Works great for me - only issue is the lack of deinterlace but it is tolerable and a known issue.
Tolax
(2014-11-12, 19:06)tolax Wrote: [ -> ]On the hardware acceleration side sure you have mediacodec disabled and libstagefright enabled (you will need to restart xbmc for the change to register).
I am running SPMC which is based on Gotham 13.3.3.
Works great for me - only issue is the lack of deinterlace but it is tolerable and a known issue.
Tolax
I probably do not have those settings. I will look when I get home. Thanks,
Roveer
I've been pounding on this setup with the windows XBMC and I'm not seeing any any of the problems that I'm having on the Android ARM version. It hasn't crashed once and besides being slow, it's doing everything it should.
I'm still not sure that I'll be able to use this setup in my household. It's a little too feature rich and as such complicates navigation. It's also just a tad too slow which causes people to think that it's frozen up.
My goal was:
Replace (3) 8+ dollar / month STB's from Verison
Provide PVR service (losing their DVR, another 19.99/month)
I've been pretty satisfied with XBMC for my NAS stored movies & TV shows as I've managed to hide just about everything and all they have to do is to select the movie and it plays. It's very simple, 1-2 menu's deep, select and go. On AFTV it's center button to select and back button to go back. No other features to mess with. The whole family get's it and it works great. With the Live TV there's still too many menu's, menu bar's, selections, side scrolling to make it simple enough for my wife & kids. Example, watching a tv show in live TV you hit the select button it brings up a menu bar at bottom with up arrow, down arrow, rewind, pause, stop, forward, picture of a tv screen, button that says epg, button that says txt, button with movie reel, button with speaker, button with circle. Problem with all these options is 1 their confusing for simple users, daunting. Some features rarely if ever used, but the biggest problem is behind almost every options (because of the way live tv works in a SERVERWMC, PVR.WMC setup) is the lag associated with doing just about every option. It's just too far away from the STB experience to expect someone to accept it. After about an hour trying to navigate with it, you decide it's easier to scrape up the 8 bucks for a STB. Wish it wasn't true, but it is.
Still looking for a way to achieve my 2 goals above, but with the problems I'm having, I don't think this is the answer.
Roveer
Pressing select while watching a movie brings up the exact same osd as in live TV so how come that isn't an issue too? You might be able to change key mappings for liveTV screen so it doesn't pop that up if you really want.
Can you explain what you mean by lag whenever you select anything? Is this on the windows client? Personally I have Intel nuc based clients and they are very good. Low powered devices like ftv atv rpi seem to need more effort/tuning due to lower processing ability.
But just because it's talking to a backend doesn't mean there is much latency. Post a server WMC log and XBMC debug log and we could see if we spot any strange issues?
How many channels and recordings do you have? If you trim those down to what you actually require it may help slower devices be more responsive
Update...
I had mediacodec enabled. I disabled it, restarted XBMC and I don't think it has "crashed" since. That's the good news. Every so often when you chance to a different channel or try to play back recorded shows you'll get audio, no video for exactly 9 seconds then the audio stops. Attempting to go "back" produces a screen that looks like this:
So I recorded 3 shows last night and I think It won't play 2 of the 3. The same thing happens on live TV as well. Sometimes it plays the channel, sometimes it doesn't.
I guess the prudent thing to do is to post a log file at this point. I'll make that my next task.
tolax: Why do you use SPMC over regular XBMC? I remember in the initial days of the fire TV I had tried SPMC and didn't really see a difference. Is there a reason I should be using it on my Fire TV's? Thanks.
(2014-11-12, 22:17)scarecrow420 Wrote: [ -> ]Pressing select while watching a movie brings up the exact same osd as in live TV so how come that isn't an issue too? You might be able to change key mappings for liveTV screen so it doesn't pop that up if you really want.
Can you explain what you mean by lag whenever you select anything? Is this on the windows client? Personally I have Intel nuc based clients and they are very good. Low powered devices like ftv atv rpi seem to need more effort/tuning due to lower processing ability.
But just because it's talking to a backend doesn't mean there is much latency. Post a server WMC log and XBMC debug log and we could see if we spot any strange issues?
How many channels and recordings do you have? If you trim those down to what you actually require it may help slower devices be more responsive
Your are correct. Only problem is, to my family watching a movie is select movies, select movie it starts to play. If you want to pause it hit the pause button. That's it. They never hit select. They don't need to. All they do is play and pause and stop and back. Nothing else. Navigating the TV app is much more difficult and requires that they see and have to deal with these menu's. It's even confusing to me and I'm XBMC Savvy. I'm still looking at it, but right now, I can see they won't like it. Maybe I can somehow make it easier.
Concerning Lag, remember I'm running a AFTV (Amazon Fire TV) which is considered a low power box. I don't have $300+ to be building NUC's behind every tv. There's a price point and it's 83 bucks for a Fire TV. For everything I use XBMC for right now it works great. I think that the Live TV function might be a bit too much for Fire TV. Every function, displaying guide, changing channels, just entering Live TV has a 3-5 second lag. Everyone knows what it's like to have a laggy experience on an electric device. It just seems broken. You find yourself hitting buttons a second time because you think it didn't take. That's the current experience.
Right now I'm connected to a HDHOMERUN Prime with about 20 channels of digital cable defined. Don't yet have a Cable Card installed so I'm using the digital tuner. As for recordings I have a total of 3.
I'm going to setup the pastebin app because I want to share my logs and try and figure out what's happening with the picture and inability to play shows (post above) so I'll share them here once I have it all set up.
OK,
I turned on debugging, restarted XBMC, navigated to live tv, recordings and selected one of the recordings that I'm having problems with. It plays audio only, no video, only for 9 seconds and then no more audio. Attempts to go back result in the crazy screen from my previous posts. If I go to the main screen and hit the "stop" button I don't get the crazy screen.
Here is the log file:
http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=350153
Here is the log file from the Server.WMC backend:
http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=350178
Is there a more appropriate place I should be posting this for help? Thanks.
Roveer
Try switching your hardware accelerators(MediaCodec vs. libstagefright) and let me know if that fixes the issue. If switching to MediaCodec fixes it, then switch back to libstagefright and use the below logic in the advancedsettings.xml to not use libstagefright for MPEG-2 videos. This is what I had to do for my FireTV to get it working correctly with recordings.
<advancedsettings>
<video>
<stagefright>
<!-- -1 is default, 0 is never used this codec, 1 is always use this codec, bypassing blacklist -->
<usempeg2codec>0</usempeg2codec>
</stagefright>
</video>
</advancedsettings>
(2014-11-14, 21:22)merschdawg06 Wrote: [ -> ]Try switching your hardware accelerators(MediaCodec vs. libstagefright) and let me know if that fixes the issue. If switching to MediaCodec fixes it, then switch back to libstagefright and use the below logic in the advancedsettings.xml to not use libstagefright for MPEG-2 videos. This is what I had to do for my FireTV to get it working correctly with recordings.
<advancedsettings>
<video>
<stagefright>
<!-- -1 is default, 0 is never used this codec, 1 is always use this codec, bypassing blacklist -->
<usempeg2codec>0</usempeg2codec>
</stagefright>
</video>
</advancedsettings>
I'll give this a try. I'm currently using advancedsettings.xml to implement MySQL so I already have a file going. I'll add these settings and see what happens. I can tell you that my current configuration is (via the settings/video) menu to have libstagefreight enabled and mediacodec disabled. My original settings were both enabled. On either configuration I got the same behavior. I'll try these settings and see what happens. I'll report back.
Roveer
(2014-11-14, 21:22)merschdawg06 Wrote: [ -> ]Try switching your hardware accelerators(MediaCodec vs. libstagefright) and let me know if that fixes the issue. If switching to MediaCodec fixes it, then switch back to libstagefright and use the below logic in the advancedsettings.xml to not use libstagefright for MPEG-2 videos. This is what I had to do for my FireTV to get it working correctly with recordings.
<advancedsettings>
<video>
<stagefright>
<!-- -1 is default, 0 is never used this codec, 1 is always use this codec, bypassing blacklist -->
<usempeg2codec>0</usempeg2codec>
</stagefright>
</video>
</advancedsettings>
Switched the codec's and the recorded programs all played just fine. As a matter of fact better than fine. I was seeing interlacing artifacts origionally and now that it's using mediacodec the picture quality is much improved. I then switched the codec's back and put the advancedsettings changes in place and and the recorded media plays just fine. I think you may have just solved my live tv problems. My greatest thank you for helping.
Roveer
@roveer: It sounds like you and I are following the same path to get rid of all those FIOS STB rental fees. I've had great success building a central HTPC with Ceton Infinitv6 running ServerWMC and XBMC on multiple AFTVs. I agree with you the confusing interface for watching live TV is the biggest hurdle for getting the whole family on board with the system. I've had some success using CEC to control XBMC using the TV remote. My next step is going to be trying to modify the XBMC remote key mappings to be a little more intuitive. If this doesn't work I may try FLIRC or even develop a Skin for kids.
Good luck!
merschdawg06,
I was wondering why you said "If switching to MediaCodec fixes it, then switch back to libstagefright and use the below logic in the advancedsettings.xml" Why not just leave the settings switched? Does the advancedsettings.xml do something different?