[sadboy]

I have been playing with a Fire TV for about a week, but I'm not satisfied with the software decoding of MPEG-2. The device is most likely getting returned unless I can figure something out. I've tried Gotham 13.0, 13.1 RC1, and SPMC 12.4.2. They all have provided a similar experience for me in terms of video decoding.

I have tried MPEG-2 with 1080i and 720p with all combinations of libstagefright, MediaCodec, software decoding, and multithreading. The best one is libstagefright only, but I'm still not satisfied with it. It seems that the CPU cannot keep up with high bitrate (>12Mbps) streams and I get dropped frames. Lower bitrate streams are also unacceptable as they appear slightly jerky and they are not de-interlaced (where applicable). 480p MPEG-2 videos look perfect, but I don't care about those. H.264 videos also look perfect, but most of my content is MPEG-2.

I have enabled buffermode=1 and 100MB buffer in my advancedsettings.xml and have confirmed that the dropped frames are not occurring due to network congestion.

I'm comparing the video quality to my Nexus 4 or a PC with hardware acceleration for MPEG-2. On those devices, the MPEG-2 decoding is excellent.

I'm disappointed because Fire TV seems like a perfect device for me with the exception of lack of hardware acceleration for MPEG-2. Now, I'm planning to watch closely what happens with the Android TV announcement at the end of this month.

Anybody else have issues with high bitrate, HD MPEG2 video? Earlier in the thread I saw some users state that HD MPEG2 worked fine with software decoding. I would potentially be using the AFT to play 1080i ATSC video from a mythtv PVR backend, so this is critical for me before I decide to buy this device.

Well the cmyth pvr on FireTV worked out of the box for me since at least 13.0rc1 (on libstagefright). Playing 1080i Fios TV, no dropped frames or de-interlacing problems (don't really know how to look for that), actually no discernable visual differences between FireTV and my core-i7 desktop or xeon server. Or maybe it's just all the channels I watched are all super-low bitrate.

[z31fanatic]

The FTV app.

[Apothis]

...thanks this is very enlightening...and yet I think mediacodec is advised to be disabled on XBMC+AFTV. Is that incorrect advice?

The advice to disable mediacodec was removed from the wiki some time ago I believe, it should be fine with it enabled now.

---

Anybody else have issues with high bitrate, HD MPEG2 video? Earlier in the thread I saw some users state that HD MPEG2 worked fine with software decoding. I would potentially be using the AFT to play 1080i ATSC video from a mythtv PVR backend, so this is critical for me before I decide to buy this device.

I've only tested it with a high bitrate non interlaced source, ie 1080p mpeg2 source at 20+mbs, and it played fine. Couldnt get it to deinterlace an SD file I tried, and havent tried any HD interlaced sources.

[Packetcrypt]

I am a FireTV fan now !! I find the unit is extremely responsive and XBMC performs very well on it. It definitely performs better then the new M8 AmLogic box I have. I was also very impressed with some of the games and the fact that the standard remote actually works well to play many of them. Problem with Android boxes is that stock remotes are pretty much useless for anything other then XBMC. Would be so cool to have the voice commands working with XBMC !!

[navigates]

Thanks for the reply and sorry for writing back late.
With a sftp server do the trick with rewind forward etc? I'm thinking of
www.coreftp.com/server/

Are there any other free recommended?

Hi. I guess you are running Windows, eh? I guess I just assumed
you were running some *nix variant (like Linux) since you mentioned
Samba and not SMB/CIFS/Windows Share (Samba is actually the
open-source implementation of the Microsoft SMB/CIFS protocol
for *nix type systems).

Anyway, I'm using a Linux server so basically OpenSSH is the "default".
I really don't have one I can recommend for Windows. Maybe someone
else can help you with that. I have used OpenSSH via Cygwin on Windows
in the past, but I would not recommend it if you are not familiar with *nix
(as it is a bit of an ordeal to setup since it's basically an *nix environment for
Windows).

I can say that CoreFTP is not the solution you are looking for. What you
linked is an FTP/SFTP client. What you want is a server implementation.
Your XBMC will be the client (which has SFTP support built-in).

thanks for the reply. I will test out an sftp server over the weekend and see how that works. But I believe sftp is the way to go.

[WDB1234]

I am a FireTV fan now !! I find the unit is extremely responsive and XBMC performs very well on it. It definitely performs better then the new M8 AmLogic box I have. I was also very impressed with some of the games and the fact that the standard remote actually works well to play many of them. Problem with Android boxes is that stock remotes are pretty much useless for anything other then XBMC. Would be so cool to have the voice commands working with XBMC !!

Do you get smooth playback when fast forwarding or rewinding? I have not played with any advanced settings but out of the Box my S802 box works great when skipping ahead and my Fire TV does not.

[indigest]

Well the cmyth pvr on FireTV worked out of the box for me since at least 13.0rc1 (on libstagefright). Playing 1080i Fios TV, no dropped frames or de-interlacing problems (don't really know how to look for that), actually no discernable visual differences between FireTV and my core-i7 desktop or xeon server. Or maybe it's just all the channels I watched are all super-low bitrate.

I'm on Comcast and using HD Homerun Prime with MythTV backend. My highest datarate stream is probably ESPN, coming in at around 15Mbps. Jerky playback is especially evident on this channel due to the presence of the scrolling ticker at the bottom. The lack of de-interlacing shows up as subtle horizontal lines.

You can view the video bitrate by plugging in a keyboard and typing 'o'. This will also show you any dropped or skipped frames as well as the buffering status. In my case, the drop number continually ramps up on high bitrate MPEG2 videos. I see the CPU usage on CPU0, CPU1, CPU2 vary between 50%-75%. Strangely, it seems to stay high even when paused.

Does my CPU usage seem normal to someone who has AFTV working with MPEG2? Maybe I got a bad device or some other setting/program is consuming my CPU.

[jocala]

New program: adbFire for Windows

adbFire is a companion program for Android XBMC, (gotham only). It allows you to sideload apps and push various files to your Android XBMC device. No need for the Android SDK, adb is built-in.



This is a first beta. I've tested it on my firetv and my phone w/o problems, but YMMV. The OS X version will be available starting with beta 2. Brief instructions are available at the download link.


Download here: http://www.jocala.com/adbfire.html

[wunderdrug]

I have been playing with a Fire TV for about a week, but I'm not satisfied with the software decoding of MPEG-2. The device is most likely getting returned unless I can figure something out. I've tried Gotham 13.0, 13.1 RC1, and SPMC 12.4.2. They all have provided a similar experience for me in terms of video decoding.

I have tried MPEG-2 with 1080i and 720p with all combinations of libstagefright, MediaCodec, software decoding, and multithreading. The best one is libstagefright only, but I'm still not satisfied with it. It seems that the CPU cannot keep up with high bitrate (>12Mbps) streams and I get dropped frames. Lower bitrate streams are also unacceptable as they appear slightly jerky and they are not de-interlaced (where applicable). 480p MPEG-2 videos look perfect, but I don't care about those. H.264 videos also look perfect, but most of my content is MPEG-2.

I have enabled buffermode=1 and 100MB buffer in my advancedsettings.xml and have confirmed that the dropped frames are not occurring due to network congestion.

I'm comparing the video quality to my Nexus 4 or a PC with hardware acceleration for MPEG-2. On those devices, the MPEG-2 decoding is excellent.

I'm disappointed because Fire TV seems like a perfect device for me with the exception of lack of hardware acceleration for MPEG-2. Now, I'm planning to watch closely what happens with the Android TV announcement at the end of this month.

Anybody else have issues with high bitrate, HD MPEG2 video? Earlier in the thread I saw some users state that HD MPEG2 worked fine with software decoding. I would potentially be using the AFT to play 1080i ATSC video from a mythtv PVR backend, so this is critical for me before I decide to buy this device.

Well the cmyth pvr on FireTV worked out of the box for me since at least 13.0rc1 (on libstagefright). Playing 1080i Fios TV, no dropped frames or de-interlacing problems (don't really know how to look for that), actually no discernable visual differences between FireTV and my core-i7 desktop or xeon server. Or maybe it's just all the channels I watched are all super-low bitrate.

I tried a 1080i 29.97fps MPEG2 TS @ 17Mbps and had no issues. No frame drops
and quality was excellent. Connected via 100Mbps Ethernet (not wireless). Although,
CPU usage was pretty high -- peaking at around 90% on all four cores.

--------------------------------
ffmpeg version 1.2.6-7:1.2.6-1~trusty1 Copyright © 2000-2014 the FFmpeg developers
built on Apr 26 2014 18:52:58 with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)
configuration: --arch=amd64 --disable-stripping --enable-avresample --enable-pthreads --enable-runtime-cpudetect --extra-version='7:1.2.6-1~trusty1' --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --enable-bzlib --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-librtmp --enable-libopencv --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-libpulse --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-vaapi --enable-vdpau --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-zlib --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-libcdio --enable-x11grab --enable-libx264 --shlibdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --enable-shared --disable-static
libavutil 52. 18.100 / 52. 18.100
libavcodec 54. 92.100 / 54. 92.100
libavformat 54. 63.104 / 54. 63.104
libavdevice 53. 5.103 / 53. 5.103
libavfilter 3. 42.103 / 3. 42.103
libswscale 2. 2.100 / 2. 2.100
libswresample 0. 17.102 / 0. 17.102
libpostproc 52. 2.100 / 52. 2.100
Input #0, mpegts, from 'Test_1080i_HD.ts':
Duration: 00:43:16.96, start: 0.378633, bitrate: 17182 kb/s
Program 1
Stream #0:0[0x800]: Video: mpeg2video (Main) ([2][0][0][0] / 0x0002), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc
Stream #0:1[0x801]: Audio: ac3 ([129][0][0][0] / 0x0081), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 384 kb/s

[indigest]

I tried a 1080i 29.97fps MPEG2 TS @ 17Mbps and had no issues. No frame drops
and quality was excellent. Connected via 100Mbps Ethernet (not wireless). Although,
CPU usage was pretty high -- peaking at around 90% on all four cores.

Hmm, it seems everyone else has AFTV working well with HD MPEG2 streams. I will try a factory reset and load Gotham 13.1 RC1 and give it another try. I'll also try transferring a test video to the device to rule out any connectivity issues.

[elmerohueso]

Do you get smooth playback when fast forwarding or rewinding? I have not played with any advanced settings but out of the Box my S802 box works great when skipping ahead and my Fire TV does not.

Which S802 box do you have?

[sadboy]

Well the cmyth pvr on FireTV worked out of the box for me since at least 13.0rc1 (on libstagefright). Playing 1080i Fios TV, no dropped frames or de-interlacing problems (don't really know how to look for that), actually no discernable visual differences between FireTV and my core-i7 desktop or xeon server. Or maybe it's just all the channels I watched are all super-low bitrate.

I'm on Comcast and using HD Homerun Prime with MythTV backend. My highest datarate stream is probably ESPN, coming in at around 15Mbps. Jerky playback is especially evident on this channel due to the presence of the scrolling ticker at the bottom. The lack of de-interlacing shows up as subtle horizontal lines.

You can view the video bitrate by plugging in a keyboard and typing 'o'. This will also show you any dropped or skipped frames as well as the buffering status. In my case, the drop number continually ramps up on high bitrate MPEG2 videos. I see the CPU usage on CPU0, CPU1, CPU2 vary between 50%-75%. Strangely, it seems to stay high even when paused.

Does my CPU usage seem normal to someone who has AFTV working with MPEG2? Maybe I got a bad device or some other setting/program is consuming my CPU.

OK, just tried again with CNN HD, which averages about 13~14Mbps and peaks to 15Mbps. No jerkiness, 0 dropped frames, cpu usage stays in the range 40~50% on cores 0 and 1, and 0% on 2 and 3.

But yeah, the interlacing problem is there, had to stand quite close to the screen to see. Apparently I just never noticed those lines before, and thanks to you it will now forever plague me from this day onwards

[wunderdrug]

I tried a 1080i 29.97fps MPEG2 TS @ 17Mbps and had no issues. No frame drops
and quality was excellent. Connected via 100Mbps Ethernet (not wireless). Although,
CPU usage was pretty high -- peaking at around 90% on all four cores.

Hmm, it seems everyone else has AFTV working well with HD MPEG2 streams. I will try a factory reset and load Gotham 13.1 RC1 and give it another try. I'll also try transferring a test video to the device to rule out any connectivity issues.

Oh... you're not running RC1? That may explain some things. I think I saw somewhere that there were MPEG2 fixes that got merged late into RC1.

[WDB1234]

Which S802 box do you have?

The box it came in says "TT TV Box"

[elmerohueso]

Which S802 box do you have?

The box it came in says "TT TV Box"

I'm not finding anything by that name. Where'd you get it? Got a link?
I ask because S802 is a chip, AFAIK, and I've seen several boxes using it.