2015-10-19, 10:50
I have a Sprint Samsung Galaxy S4 SPHL720 and a SPHL720T. The 720T has a damaged display so I'm looking at converting it to a media center connected to a HDMI port on my TV and controlling it with a Bluetooth keyboard with built in trackpad. (Hopefully there's a way to simultaneously use USB OTG and MHL on the USB port.)
First step was finding a 1080p H.265 test video with a lot of fine detail. The 5 megabyte timelapse from here fit the bill. http://www.h265files.com/ First I tried VLC, which played it but was horrible at it. Next I tried the default player that came with the phone. Excellent! Except for the stupid thing will not auto-rotate and only makes the manual rotate available if auto rotate is *disabled for everything*. WTH?
So I know these phones can play HD H.265 and I go looking for some nice media center app and find Kodi. Download, install, try the test video and...
Nope, not good. Severe frame dropping but at least the colors are right and it's not all blocky like VLC.
Next test, a 1280x720 H.265 TV series episode. Now this is looking good! Nicely scaled up to the phone's 1920x1080 and no lag or dropping frames in high detail and fast motion scenes.
First step was finding a 1080p H.265 test video with a lot of fine detail. The 5 megabyte timelapse from here fit the bill. http://www.h265files.com/ First I tried VLC, which played it but was horrible at it. Next I tried the default player that came with the phone. Excellent! Except for the stupid thing will not auto-rotate and only makes the manual rotate available if auto rotate is *disabled for everything*. WTH?
So I know these phones can play HD H.265 and I go looking for some nice media center app and find Kodi. Download, install, try the test video and...
Nope, not good. Severe frame dropping but at least the colors are right and it's not all blocky like VLC.
Next test, a 1280x720 H.265 TV series episode. Now this is looking good! Nicely scaled up to the phone's 1920x1080 and no lag or dropping frames in high detail and fast motion scenes.
