v17 Fire TV - How do you get decent interlaced playback?
#1
I'm asking the question here because I've already searched extensively and tried every setting I can find.

I'm using Kodi 17.3 installed on a new Fire TV and feeding that into a 1080p display.

Everything that comes out of the fire TV is 1080p.

PROBLEM: Interlaced based videos (specifically 1080i blu-rays or recorded LIVE TV) look pretty crappy. The combing artifacts are significant and I'm at a loss how to get rid of them. There are really no settings in the built-in Kodi player. I tried turning off the hardware acceleration, but that just makes things super choppy and unwatchable.

I tried a couple of other players (VLC and some other player) and they look about the same.

On my HTPC (with Kodi and MPC-HC) I get great playback because I can adjust the output to interlaced, but I can't do this with the Fire TV.

Am I stuck with this? Is there an external player that I can use that handles interlaced video scaled to 1080p so that it looks decent?

Thanks in advance.
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#2
What are your interlace settings?
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#3
In Settings > Player Settings > Videos > Processing

Render Method -- Auto detect (can't change)
- enable HQ scaling 20 %
Allow Hardware Acceleration (surface) ON
Allow Hardware Acceleration ON

In the player under Deinterlace method it is "OFF" but I can't change it unless I turn hardware acceleration to off

I have also tried both Video Scaling options.
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#4
Try SPMC from the Playstore, as that has more flexible hardware/software decode options.

Ahhh damn, you will have to Sidelod it as you are using a FireTV.

The only bulletproof solution is ditch Android all together for anything to do with deinterlacing. Use it for non Kodi Android Apps only.

Use LibreELEC Kodi Krypton on an AMLogic S905(x) is you want high quality, reliable, Advanced Motion Adaptive hardware deinterlacing.
Your one device to do it all solution is not going to work.

All ARM devices, except maybe the Shield do not have the CPU ponies to do high quality Software upscaling. Let your TV do the upscaling.

The FireTV's do not make good Kodi boxes for demanding users.

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#5
(2017-07-16, 05:37)wrxtasy Wrote: Try SPMC from the Playstore, as that has more flexible hardware/software decode options.

Ahhh damn, you will have to Sidelod it as you are using a FireTV.

The only bulletproof solution is ditch Android all together for anything to do with deinterlacing. Use it for non Kodi Android Apps only.

Use LibreELEC Kodi Krypton on an AMLogic S905(x) is you want high quality, reliable, Advanced Motion Adaptive hardware deinterlacing.
Your one device to do it all solution is not going to work.

All ARM devices, except maybe the Shield do not have the CPU ponies to do high quality Software upscaling. Let your TV do the upscaling.

The FireTV's do not make good Kodi boxes for demanding users.

Thanks for the advice. I'll give SPMC a try. But I think the main problem is, as you say, the Fire TV itself.
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#6
(2017-07-16, 05:37)wrxtasy Wrote: Try SPMC from the Playstore, as that has more flexible hardware/software decode options.

Ahhh damn, you will have to Sidelod it as you are using a FireTV.

The only bulletproof solution is ditch Android all together for anything to do with deinterlacing. Use it for non Kodi Android Apps only.

Use LibreELEC Kodi Krypton on an AMLogic S905(x) is you want high quality, reliable, Advanced Motion Adaptive hardware deinterlacing.
Your one device to do it all solution is not going to work.

All ARM devices, except maybe the Shield do not have the CPU ponies to do high quality Software upscaling. Let your TV do the upscaling.

The FireTV's do not make good Kodi boxes for demanding users.

So I tried SPMC and, while it is better than KODI for interlaced video, the improvement is only marginal.

I will go to a two box solution, and use the second box for live TV and TV recordings. The thing is I only need this box to send interlaced video to the TV as the scaling/de-interlacing on the TV works fine.

Could I do this with a PI running KODI?
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#7
Why not get a s905/s905x machine and dual boot android/libreelec?
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#8
(2017-08-08, 11:04)nickr Wrote: Why not get a s905/s905x machine and dual boot android/libreelec?

What is a s905 machine?
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#9
s905 and s905X are chipsets used in quite a few cheap android boxes. With android Kodi is a bit "meh", but most will also load LibreELEC (a linux distro designed to run Kodi) and be a very good Kodi machine.

See https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=255686 and https://forum.libreelec.tv/board/38-amlogic/
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#10
(2017-07-16, 01:55)johnmhtr Wrote: In the player under Deinterlace method it is "OFF" but I can't change it unless I turn hardware acceleration to off
 Interesting. So, deinterlacing isn't supported on Fire TVs when using hardware acceleration? I tried doing software playback along with the deinterlacing options, but my Fire TV Stick doesn't seem powerful enough to handle that on 1080i Live TV content.
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#11
If Hardware acceleration is turned off, then it is up to the CPU's to do both the video decoding & the deinterlacing.

Now if you want 1080i mpeg2 / h264 CPU software video decoding and high quality YADIF2x full motion software deinterlacing (Deinterlace option in Kodi Krypton) then you need a pretty decent CPU package like you currently find in Intel machines or now also with the new Apple TV 4K hardware with it's A10X Fusion SoC (click)

The FireTV's do not have the CPU ponies to do both.

Unless of course you have high quality hardware deinterlacing already available and working with Kodi Krypton - and for that AMLogic S8xx / S9xx devices running LibreELEC Kodi Krypton or SPMC (Kodi Jarvis) in Android can do exactly that, both using Amcodec Hardware video decoding and deinterlacing.

It would be interesting to see if the 2017 FireTV Gen3 that has an AMLogic S905Z Chipset could run SPMC 16.7.2 (Kodi Jarvis) and possibly utilise Amcodec hardware video acceleration.

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#12
(2017-12-19, 02:37)wrxtasy Wrote: The FireTV's do not have the CPU ponies to do both.

Unless of course you have high quality hardware deinterlacing already available and working with Kodi Krypton - and for that AMLogic S8xx / S9xx devices running LibreELEC Kodi Krypton or SPMC (Kodi Jarvis) in Android can do exactly that, both using Amcodec Hardware video decoding and deinterlacing.

It would be interesting to see if the 2017 FireTV Gen3 that has an AMLogic S905Z Chipset could run SPMC 16.7.2 (Kodi Jarvis) and possibly utilise Amcodec hardware video acceleration.
 This is informative. Thanks! I just read that the not-yet-released 2017 Fire TV Stick is purported to powered by the Amlogic S905 processor, so maybe even the new stick will have enough to do it. The 2016 model is just not up to handling it, I guess. I wish there were something that could be done to get the 2016's Mediatek 8127d Quad-Core ARM and Mali-450 MP4 GPU to do some basic hardware deinterlacing on 1080i Live TV content to help with the combing artifacts.
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