(2020-12-14, 08:12)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]just ask kindly if they sell too many devices that are only used with kodi
Lol they will just laugh. Breaking Kodi by deprecating things in their firmware is just a bonus for them. The only thing they care about is running their own video apps, which use the Amazon fork of Exoplayer for playback, and the 3rd party apps they get a cut from their app store, which also run some proprietary fork of Exoplayer for playback.
(2020-12-14, 13:46)wizziwig Wrote: [ -> ]Even devices used only for Kodi still generate revenue for Amazon via the many advertisements on the home screen.
If they saw that as a revenue generator they can't pass up, they'd let Kodi into the Amazon app store...but they don't.
(2020-12-14, 17:53)Kodroid Wrote: [ -> ] (2020-12-14, 08:12)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]just ask kindly if they sell too many devices that are only used with kodi
Lol they will just laugh. Breaking Kodi by deprecating things in their firmware is just a bonus for them. The only thing they care about is running their own video apps, which use the Amazon fork of Exoplayer for playback, and the 3rd party apps they get a cut from their app store, which also run some proprietary fork of Exoplayer for playback.
(2020-12-14, 13:46)wizziwig Wrote: [ -> ]Even devices used only for Kodi still generate revenue for Amazon via the many advertisements on the home screen.
If they saw that as a revenue generator they can't pass up, they'd let Kodi into the Amazon app store...but they don't.
Good enough. Then I will just stop to support them and use something else.
(2020-12-14, 20:08)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]Good enough. Then I will just stop to support them and use something else.
I hope that's just frustration talking. The Fire Stick 4K is the ideal Kodi device:
- It's cheap. I got mine on sale for $25.
- It doesn't have a nasty noisy fan like the far more expensive Nvidia devices all do.
- It's possible to make it stay on Kodi 24/7 by disabling sleep.
Its a shame really, the Fire TV Stick 4K was a great budget Kodi device upon its release thanks to its proper colour space switching and up to 7.1 PCM decoding/output support but over the last 2 years Amazon has steadily made it worse. First removing the ability to output multichannel PCM and now removing support for IEC encoding (and as a result DTS) as well. The FTV4K is still a great streaming device but for local playback its just too handicapped. This latest change was the last straw, I returned my recently purchased FTV Cube (didn't work right anyway) on the weekend and finally broke down and bought a Shield TV Pro 2019. I'll keep the FTV4K hooked up since I prefer its Prime Video interface to the Android TV one but the Shield will now be my primary device.
(2020-12-14, 20:39)88keyz Wrote: [ -> ]First removing the ability to output multichannel PCM
Kodi can still output multichannel PCM even in the current bugged 6.2.7.7 Fire OS release. It's my preferred output choice, and yes, I'm getting all 7.1 channels. The problem is that the stick is no longer stable over time and tends to reboot spontaneously, even though it's left on Kodi 24/7 and never sleeps.
I have another stick that's still on 6.2.7.6 that I've switched to. I'll report back with a comparison to 6.2.7.7. I stupidly manually updated the 6.2.7.7 stick, which hadn't auto-updated since March. I think the lack of auto-updating may be because I disabled sleep on it to keep it on Kodi 24/7. I've since disabled sleep on the 6.2.7.6 stick, which did auto-update in that time. Hopefully it will stay on 6.2.7.6.
(2020-12-14, 20:49)crawfish Wrote: [ -> ] (2020-12-14, 20:39)88keyz Wrote: [ -> ]First removing the ability to output multichannel PCM
Kodi can still output multichannel PCM even in the current bugged 6.2.7.7 Fire OS release. It's my preferred output choice, and yes, I'm getting all 7.1 channels. The problem is that the stick is no longer stable over time and tends to reboot spontaneously, even though it's left on Kodi 24/7 and never sleeps.
I have another stick that's still on 6.2.7.6 that I've switched to. I'll report back with a comparison to 6.2.7.7. I stupidly manually updated the 6.2.7.7 stick, which hadn't auto-updated since March. I think the lack of auto-updating may be because I disabled sleep on it to keep it on Kodi 24/7. I've since disabled sleep on the 6.2.7.6 stick, which did auto-update in that time. Hopefully it will stay on 6.2.7.6.
would you please explain your kodi and also firetv settings you have and with which you get surround working?
(2020-12-14, 20:37)crawfish Wrote: [ -> ] (2020-12-14, 20:08)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]Good enough. Then I will just stop to support them and use something else.
I hope that's just frustration talking. The Fire Stick 4K is the ideal Kodi device:
- It's cheap. I got mine on sale for $25.
- It doesn't have a nasty noisy fan like the far more expensive Nvidia devices all do.
- It's possible to make it stay on Kodi 24/7 by disabling sleep.
I have all the right in this world to be frustrated as I invested plenty of time to get all the stuff working, including dts-hd-hr ... highly emphasizing to only use Android standards ... the last firmware update of them not only breaks standard functionality but also in a way, that they don't plain remove IEC support, but announce it and fail for opening it ... Yeah, good that we have a setting in v19 so that users can choose their poison.
(2020-12-14, 20:51)d0zer Wrote: [ -> ]would you please explain your kodi and also firetv settings you have and with which you get surround working?
Stick's "Surround Sound" is on "Best Available."
Kodi is on "AudioTrack (IEC), Kodi IEC packer (recommended)", 7.1 channels, Fixed.
AVR is Pioneer VSX-1124.
This had been completely stable until I stupidly manually updated the stick as previously explained. I've described some of the problems 6.2.7.7 is causing in these messages, which also document 7.1 PCM is still working, mostly.
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2993429
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2995188
(2020-12-14, 21:02)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]I have all the right in this world to be frustrated as I invested plenty of time to get all the stuff working, including dts-hd-hr ... highly emphasizing to only use Android standards ... the last firmware update of them not only breaks standard functionality but also in a way, that they don't plain remove IEC support, but announce it and fail for opening it ... Yeah, good that we have a setting in v19 so that users can choose their poison.
Oh, I get the frustration. Been there many times. Since I've been using the stick, the main problem before now was the audio delay issue, and nobody else was fixing it but you, which I and everyone else here appreciates very much. I was just expressing my hope that it's worth your while to continuing supporting the stick. I dread the thought of moving to another device for the reasons I gave in my last message, or other software, as I have put considerable time into tweaking Estuary for own purposes and getting JSON working with Autohotkey for use with my universal remote and MCE receiver.
(2020-12-14, 20:37)crawfish Wrote: [ -> ][*]It's cheap. I got mine on sale for $25.
It's cheap as the expectation is they'll make money from media purchases and their slice of app store fees. An app such as Kodi will hinder that so they have zero interest providing anything that will help us, wouldn't put it past them to have deliberately broken the IEC packer.
We pack, it's our packer. They just need to consume. Perhaps it was an off by one and they forgot to "not forward" IEC to their DD+ encoder
- we will find out the next months / years.
(2020-12-14, 21:02)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]I have all the right in this world to be frustrated as I invested plenty of time to get all the stuff working, including dts-hd-hr ... highly emphasizing to only use Android standards ...
I understand your frustration but we all should have seen this coming. Amazon is going with everybody else in the industry and that means dropping Mediacodec and adopting Exoplayer.
And it's not just the Fire TV stick that is going that way. Eventually Nvidia, Google, and every other major Android-based box is going that way. It's time for Kodi to follow suit before it gets left behind by the rest of the development community.
https://exoplayer.dev/supported-devices.html
I'll end up keeping the firestick because it is just too easy to use for the rest of the family. I use their recast DVR so I have live TV and DVR on 3 sets through my firesticks. Mine is set up on Ethernet with a hub to use a keyboard when needed and with a FLIRC receiver to use my Harmony 700 the rest of the time. Very easy for my wife to use. Same buttons to do everything on any of the systems. Right now my only issue is KODI and that is really only used to play local ripped discs. I can get by with the workarounds for the secondary TVs, but definitely miss DTS and better sound on the living room set.
So I have some options... I can grab a Shield for that system and run KODI on that, but that device seems overkill for just KODI. I could run a Plex server on the NAS that I'm getting for Christmas and hopefully the fire Plex app passes through DTS with their Exoplayer version? I have a RPI4 and case sitting here, but looks like that isn't quite KODI ready.
I have really just gotten into using KODI, so I don't have it doing much yet. It seemed like it was going to be perfect for the firestick and videos and was for about 6 weeks of use. Wanted to make it my main music player if it does FLAC well. Right now I have an RPI3 with a DAC running RuneAudio and that does a great job for that, but planned on moving that function to KODI on the firestick. Now I'm glad I didn't decommission that yet.
Exoplayer uses mediacodec and audiotrack. Not sure what you want to change.
Kodi plays the format specs that Amazon sells nicely. And more their exoplayer fork also cannot achieve. You won't have new audio formats at all by switching to another player which uses the same api kodi uses under the hood.
The new Chromecast w/ Google TV. I got one, seems to work fine for what I need. And it doesn't freeze on HDMI-CEC like the AFTV 4K does on my setup.