[chocco]

I agree that the real problem is potentially losing a fantastic developer. I know that Kodi will eventually get round to making these fixes, but the fact of the matter is that in one week, Koying has done for free something that will probably mean milllions of dollars in revenue for Nvidia (a Kodi sponsor) as people who were holding back buying a Shield because of the passthrough issue will now flood to buy one. Nvidia are probably kicking themselves for not paying Koying themselves erlier to make their year end accounts look better! All Kodi devs are excellent and to put in such commitment unpaid is truly staggering. From an Android perspective, losing Koying is a massive setback. As I said earlier though, he's given me a perfect build for my Shield which I won't need to update for a considerable period of time. You should release this officially as Kodi Shield interim APK. There's certainly no reason not to. And Koying should be on the New Years honours list as a result![/align]

[Skank]

BTW, this has been rejected for Jarvis.
Some Kodi people have a hard time accepting that an Android box might be better than their obscure Linux NUC's or whatever, apparently, and do what I consider obstruction.

Being sick of those games, I resigned as Android/AML maintainer for Kodi.

SPMC will relive, apparently...

What?

no no no
dont go away please
You´ve done such a great job !

im going from windows pc and even openelec too, and now on android

android is maturing for sure
so why should people keep stickign to their old box if android can be even better

But one thing is for sure, we definately need you to stay for android kodi

Your work cant be appreciated enough

[BayoD]

I agree that the real problem is potentially losing a fantastic developer. I know that Kodi will eventually get round to making these fixes, but the fact of the matter is that in one week, Koying has done for free something that will probably mean milllions of dollars in revenue for Nvidia (a Kodi sponsor) as people who were holding back buying a Shield because of the passthrough issue will now flood to buy one. Nvidia are probably kicking themselves for not paying Koying themselves erlier to make their year end accounts look better! All Kodi devs are excellent and to put in such commitment unpaid is truly staggering. From an Android perspective, losing Koying is a massive setback. As I said earlier though, he's given me a perfect build for my Shield which I won't need to update for a considerable period of time. You should release this officially as Kodi Shield interim APK. There's certainly no reason not to. And Koying should be on the New Years honours list as a result![/align]

I am exactly who you are talking about. I held out for a few months on buying the Shield and even after buying it I didn't set it up until I discovered this thread. I can imagine there are several other people who went through the same thought process. I am delighted with this experimental build and will use it until Kodi 17 is available.

This goes to show just how much of an impact that Koying's input has had and I hope that he changes his mind about resigning. I also hope that the rest of the Kodi team are able to adopt a more flexible approach to future interim releases. I can appreciate the need to ensure that only refined final products are released but there must be scope for occasional interim builds which address specific platform requirements. I can't imagine it would happen that often.

Thanks again for giving the added functionality I required for my Shield and I will likely be buying another one and encouraging my brothers to do the same.

[TurtlePlaneAxe]

Hi, I'm really disappointed to see that audio passthrough is being "removed" from Jarvis, just wondering how I can stop my device updating to a final release?

I originally installed it from the Play Store on the Shield TV, have since updated with the experimental passthrough versions. when Jarvis final is pushed to Play store will my box automatically update it or will it keep current build because it was installed manually?

Cheers for all the hard work guys.

[hdmkv]

Looks like the discussion about Koying's "hack" has moved to private quarters... which is good, but bottom line is, agree w/Skank; we all need Koying's efforts in Android in Kodi, whether mainline or fork (would much prefer former though).

[artou]

Looks like the discussion about Koying's "hack" has moved to private quarters... which is good, but bottom line is, agree w/Skank; we all need Koying's efforts in Android in Kodi, whether mainline or fork (would much prefer former though).

+1 for both points, but from my very distant point of view I think FernetMenta is correct to challenge sustainable and long term solutions, so I would use a forked pass-trough solution until v.17 with great satisfaction

[Sandhills Hillbilly]

I really hate to hear this as I was about to pull the trigger and buy a Shield and AV system because of this thread. Now I don't what to do so I can get away from using the laptop with Kodi. PC motherboards are too centered on gaming these days. Still would have to buy a good video card to get all the video benefits that the Shield offers.

Please please reconsider.

[chocco]

I really hate to hear this as I was about to pull the trigger and buy a Shield and AV system because of this thread. Now I don't what to do so I can get away from using the laptop with Kodi. PC motherboards are too centered on gaming these days. Still would have to buy a good video card to get all the video benefits that the Shield offers.

Please please reconsider.

I'd pull the trigger if I were you! On this thread you have the download you need to get have a great Kodi set up. The shield has a lot of potential too. We're led to believe that a firmware update is imminent, most likely upgrading to Marshmallow and, given the time since the last update, a fair few other upgrades as well. It's a top tier processor at a good price so I don't think you can go too far wrong.

More importantly....Koying was lurking in this thread earlier..so hopefully some sort of reconciliation is on the cards? I'm too scared to ask.

[Ned Scott]

Looks like the discussion about Koying's "hack" has moved to private quarters... which is good, but bottom line is, agree w/Skank; we all need Koying's efforts in Android in Kodi, whether mainline or fork (would much prefer former though).

+1 for both points, but from my very distant point of view I think FernetMenta is correct to challenge sustainable and long term solutions, so I would use a forked pass-trough solution until v.17 with great satisfaction

This is very true. FM is entirely right to challenge this. If this was an isolated issue then Koying would be frustrated, but not so much that he was considering leaving. However, he has been constantly blocked on several Android fixes by FM, and this is the straw that broke the camel's back. It's not really about this specific issue, but about growing tension.

I think FM and some others feel that Android gets too many "free passes" from the normal rules already. Android has been the source of both success and great frustration for the project, both with code and with the users (the flood of cheap devices, etc). He's worked his ass off to get Kodi's core platforms up to snuff, rewriting major parts of the program. And then here comes Android wanting to change something big during the beta cycle, and that is very frustrating. It feels like being in the shadows even though you are holding the project up.

That's what I speculate is going on from their perspective.

From the other side there is a different perspective. You have Koying and others who are trying to keep up with demand and bringing Android in line with the other platforms. They're struggling against the sometimes-slow evolution of Android, waiting for improved APIs, dealing with poor firmware on many devices and non standard tricks that they use, hoping that Google can unite the platform. He's basically the only Android dev on the team and has everyone looking at him, expecting him to fix things and push the platform forward. In the last year a ton of Android "hacks" have been removed, replaced by code that meets Kodi's platform-agnostic standards.He's trying to keep his head above water.

So here we are, close to v16 release, and something happens. Maybe a Google fix or something, I don't know, but Koying, Martijn, and others feel that they could reasonably add pass through for v16. They know it's not normally allowed, but they've weighed the pros and cons, they've looked at the risks, and the demand from the users, and they think it's worth it. It has enough support in the team to be added, so Koying double downs and gets the code ready.

Due to the frustration that FM felt in the past, he disregards the consideration that Koying and Martijn have done. He feels it is more important to the project to put his foot down, but that also means he's not considering the is wishes of the whole team. This has happened before. Koying only worked on this because he expected FM to respect the decisions made by him and the release manager. FM thinks this is just another Android hack/free pass that needs to be stopped. This is how two reasonable and smart people get locked into a standoff, both feeling ignored by the other.

The actual feature doesn't matter. FM needs to look past frustration and not take it personally, and not look down on Koying or Android. Koying needs to believe that there is a way to work on Kodi without always being blocked, even if passthrough doesn't make it in for v16.

That's my guess. I could be wrong.

[FernetMenta]

Good story by a man who was banned from the project. For all who did not know: Ned was removed from the team. Oh right, he left before we finally were able to execute.

[fritsch]

You miss something in your speculation:

FM has seen the need that Android uses a fully different way of doing PT than any other platform and he was sitting down with me and we implemented it - for kodi v17. It is already finished and ready in our master branch. It has cost us long weeks of work for a platform, that you see - is clearly not "our personal" primary platform - just done for kodi, for the complete platform :-(. Btw. all other "features" that for example the linux community is waiting for - all those thousands of NUC devices - we have delayed for v17, too - because Android was not ready at the time we proposed it.

Too much work has been done for Android in the background to just now get some code, affecting _all_ other platforms, in current implementation - all platforms windows, ios, Pi, everything, is routed through a copy / pasted Passthrough Android object, which fails to initialize and afterwards the old code path is taken... this was never tested, it even does not build on the named platforms - but the PR is there never the less.

The other issue with the code is, that it broke API by adding additional formats all binary addons won't understand and needed adjustments.

So two things here:
a) totall untested code on all platforms not Android
b) Feature merge after beta5 cycle


I clearly see the need of users to have passthrough, to have 4k support and what not - I can really understand that. We all want features, we want them now or the day before now ... but when developing large software one needs to take great care ...

My proposal is as follows:
- Don't merge this code to Jarvis branch. It is dead code, already rewritten and replaced in our master branch anyways
- Release a special APK build on v16 for shield users. So those that need passthrough just can use it. It is so easy to provide a special build and post it here

[hdmkv]

Thank you; I can empathize with both POVs. Too bad Android is such a wild west, and Google's own support of Android & Android TV has been so frustrating.

My proposal is as follows:
- Don't merge this code to Jarvis branch. It is dead code, already rewritten and replaced in our master branch anyways
- Release a special APK build on v16 for shield users. So those that need passthrough just can use it. It is so easy to provide a special build and post it here

Sounds like a good compromise.

[fritsch]

Good story by a man who was banned from the project. For all who did not know: Ned was removed from the team. Oh right, he left before we finally were able to execute.

Fernet - come on. That was not his point, basically - no one is talking about the real point anymore and that sucks. All this discussion is not about "who has the biggest balls or who is the nice guy and who is the bad guy". We are all not nice always and not everything we do is always right.

I tried to summarize the situation from a code perspective above. I hope we find a solution _for_ our users (providing a final Jarvis build with those PT stuff for those that want to use it and not directly jump onto v17).

[Ned Scott]

Good story by a man who was banned from the project. For all who did not know: Ned was removed from the team. Oh right, he left before we finally were able to execute.

You wanted to ban me, but almost no one supported that. So then you wanted me off the team. You're far more important than I am, and you threatened to leave if I didn't go. You rejected every apology I made, every concession I tried to make. You rejected every offer to leave you alone and just have me work in my own area, and never talk to you. To give you space, so both of us could co-exist. You were angry, and you were not interested in anything but getting rid of me.

You put it to a vote, and I wasn't interested in finding out how many people in Team Kodi felt the same way. Maybe it was a majority, maybe not. Either way, I was crushed. I was in the most depressed and rockbottom part of my life. Something I loved and had major passion for had rejected me.

If you treated other people like team members then I don't think this would have happened. Instead, you treat people who disagree with you as pests to be eliminated. It's like you don't see people as people. You don't see Koying as a person, either. You actually go and insult people and their work. You go out of your way to make them feel bad about their code.

Your talents are not worth that. Your mentality will lead to the death of the Kodi project. A soulless program that only works on the platforms you, and you alone, deem are worthy. Anyone who bothers you isn't worth compromising with or trying to adjust to, no, they're just in your way. Your vision is all that matters to you. You've made it clear that you will never put effort into changing this.

EDIT: Then the same people who rejected me have the nerve to ask that I continue to administrate the wiki, because no one else is willing to do it.

I reacted badly to you, and behaved in a way that wasn't acceptable. I objected too much internally to things, and made a big deal out of things that were not a big deal. It might be that I shouldn't be formerly included on Team Kodi for both my sake and the project. I can accept that. So why are you now trying to slander me, trying to make me feel bad? Who's next to be treated this way?

[fritsch]

And here we go ... why did I even try to argument in this forum thread ... something I really feel like in a kindergarden.

The world is not only black and white ... it is at least gray scale on 3 channels.