[looun]

I don't actually know what this means. What areas of movie playback are lacking in the Fire TV?

VC1, MVC, hardware deinterlacing mpeg2, 23.976

Nope, nope, Yes (iirc), nope

You probably don't want an android device, actually

no 23.976.... no Party! ...so why use NVIDIA Shield like a player ?

[hdmkv]

Surprised this can't do VC-1 even with that much horsepower. Heck, this S812 player I recently tested out could, with only issue being slight judder in playback. Not stuttering, rather lack of smooth video rendering.

[Koying]

Yeah, should have made myself clearer. There is no h/w accelerated VC1, but it can decode 1080p VC1 in s/w with ease.
Same with MVC if/when an open-source implementation appears.

[drhill]

Yeah, should have made myself clearer. There is no h/w accelerated VC1, but it can decode 1080p VC1 in s/w with ease.
Same with MVC if/when an open-source implementation appears.

That is acceptable. Same goes for MPEG2. It was a good deinterlacer that most devices are missing. Useful for 1080i live tv mostly but I do have a handful of h264 blu ray documentaries that are 1080i so it would apply there as well.

The 23.976 is a sad thing though. Everything that isn't live tv or those documentaries is 23.976. That's around 300 blu rays. :\

You mentioned 24p was working though. I tend to be very noticeable of issues in video, but I haven't experienced 23.976 -> 24p yet so I can't say how much that would bother me. I have all motion processing turned off on my projector.

[ozkhan1]

That is good enough for me.. I am getting one.


Still no word on its release though.

[hdmkv]

You mentioned 24p was working though. I tend to be very noticeable of issues in video, but I haven't experienced 23.976 -> 24p yet so I can't say how much that would bother me. I have all motion processing turned off on my projector.

Just my personal opinion, but I think people tend to blow this out of proportion. I've found the frame skip every 42 seconds is really only noticeable if you're looking for them. Also, some devices (both playback and display) are better at smoothing out 23.976 display at 24 where you don't really notice it at all.

[drhill]

You mentioned 24p was working though. I tend to be very noticeable of issues in video, but I haven't experienced 23.976 -> 24p yet so I can't say how much that would bother me. I have all motion processing turned off on my projector.

Just my personal opinion, but I think people tend to blow this out of proportion. I've found the frame skip every 42 seconds is really only noticeable if you're looking for them. Also, some devices (both playback and display) are better at smoothing out 23.976 display at 24 where you don't really notice it at all.

I'll probably give the Shield a try. Ultimately I may get three since the Razer Forge was a failure for live tv (via Google and HDHomerun app) and Netflix and I wanted two of those for casual viewing on other tvs. But the one I need for my theater should properly handle 23/24p. If I don't notice the conversion then I'm fine with it. I'm hopeful I won't, but on a 126" screen things are easier to see.

[ozkhan1]

@Koying.. What sort of performance difference can be expected on this device between stock Android Kodi install and your SPMC build?

[wrxtasy]

You mentioned 24p was working though. I tend to be very noticeable of issues in video, but I haven't experienced 23.976 -> 24p yet so I can't say how much that would bother me. I have all motion processing turned off on my projector.

Just my personal opinion, but I think people tend to blow this out of proportion. I've found the frame skip every 42 seconds is really only noticeable if you're looking for them. Also, some devices (both playback and display) are better at smoothing out 23.976 display at 24 where you don't really notice it at all.

I'm no perfectionist, but personally I cannot stand watching video where there is a frame Skip every 41 ish seconds.
Maybe all this 3:2 pulldown video judder you Septics have put up with over the years has scrambled your vision and rewired your brain

This is the year 2015 and a proper quality Kodi video playback device Needs to playback 24p video perfectly synced. Anything less and it should be labeled a Toy and tossed into the Android playpen !

[ozkhan1]

Some other android players have built a work around for 24 p from what I understand. So I guess it can be done but probably takes an ugly hack or two here and there.

If this device turns out to be in high demand maybe the good guys at Team Kodi can come up with a custom build for it that will address these concerns

[Dark_Slayer]

I'm happy with hd audio decoding and 24.000, but vc1/mvc/23.976/hd-audio-bitstreaming would be icing

[hifiaudio2]

Yeah, should have made myself clearer. There is no h/w accelerated VC1, but it can decode 1080p VC1 in s/w with ease.
Same with MVC if/when an open-source implementation appears.

1. So if it can decode it in SW just fine, does that mean it reports that capability to the player, whether its Kodi, Emby, etc so that the player does not try to transcode VC1?


2. That is disappointing about 23.946. Is that likely a Tegra hardware issue or Android TV? I know with other boxes (not necessarily Android), it will often be claimed that the issue like with the processor, like "the Zappiti android player doesnt support 23.946 yet because Realtek has not made that work with the 1195 chip yet". Is that the case here, its up to Nvidia to put some resources into making it work?

3. Was the passthrough / bitstreaming of DTS master audio and Dolby TrueHD / Atmos ever confirmed?

[Tinwarble]

I'm no perfectionist, but personally I cannot stand watching video where there is a frame Skip every 41 ish seconds.
Maybe all this 3:2 pulldown video judder you Septics have put up with over the years has scrambled your vision and rewired your brain

This is the year 2015 and a proper quality Kodi video playback device Needs to playback 24p video perfectly synced. Anything less and it should be labeled a Toy and tossed into the Android playpen !

If you can tell the difference between 23.976 and 24, then you probably need to save some money and buy a new TV. Even the so called 3:2 pulldown judder can be fixed with TV settings (although with my main TV, it introduces a whole new set of issues).

You should also probably get out of your "rewired" brain, move into 2015 and superglue your eyelids open. Because every time you blink you miss seeing a frame.

Seriously though, unless you are just concentrating on trying to find a frame skip you should see no perceivable difference in 23.976 & 24. If you concentrating that much, then you should really try to relax a little more and just enjoy your video.

[blank]

If you can tell the difference between 23.976 and 24, then you probably need to save some money and buy a new TV. Even the so called 3:2 pulldown judder can be fixed with TV settings (although with my main TV, it introduces a whole new set of issues).

You should also probably get out of your "rewired" brain, move into 2015 and superglue your eyelids open. Because every time you blink you miss seeing a frame.

Seriously though, unless you are just concentrating on trying to find a frame skip you should see no perceivable difference in 23.976 & 24. If you concentrating that much, then you should really try to relax a little more and just enjoy your video.

My TV is 6 month old (2014 model) but I disable all sorts of smoothing/enhancements.
Even though that TV's are becoming better at adding extra frames to smooth the video, I have yet to watch a TV that does this without introducing weird artifacts once in a while..

To be honest, I am a bit nit-picky, but it really annoys me when I see that frame skip,
and I can't see how moving into 2015, or rewire my brain changes anything.
If I really didn't care about the quality of the output, I would buy a cheap-ass TV, use the TV's speakers, and buy an Android stick for 35$ on ebay.
And I would probably not rip my blu-rays, because why would I.

For me, 2015 is not about accepting frame-skipping, down-sampling of DTS-HD to DTS or Stereo, tech that only works sometimes.
it's about not accepting it. I don't want to accept any of that stuff. I want to justify why I have a 10-Bay NAS server, for my 30Gb+ Bluray rips (for each movie of-course), why I spend month ripping those same movies, why I bought a $1000 Media Center, and why I choose XBMC/Kodi to present it all, and the time I spend perfecting the universal remote, so that my system can be turned on and used by a 7 year old, without being introduced to any of it.

But while we are at it, if 2015 (or the last couple of years) have thought us anything, is that we ARE becoming more and more nit-picky, and we pay more for quality products. (Apple? HTC? Samsung (S6)?)

[Dark_Slayer]

Intel integrated graphics started handling full BD quality video five generations ago. They didn't get 23.976 until the fourth generation. When that started Kodi was called XBMC and it couldn't do HD audio. AMD and Nvidia couldn't do perfect 23.976 at the time either

If the response was always, "You probably don't want to play back BDs on a PC" we really wouldn't have gotten anywhere

Android as a whole is still maturing a lot into something greater than just a simple phone/tablet OS. It's young into it's quest for living room adoption and perfecting video playback, and there are obviously going to be remnants of the phone/tablet needs that are opposed to the video playback needs (like fps) but I don't think anyone's ready to roll over and accept that it's as good as it'll get.


Off my soapbox now, thanks to both of you for testing and some early info. I'm ecstatic that nvidia recognized the foundation and sent testing units your way. I'm eager to get one myself once they are available to the public, it still checks a lot of boxes off my wish list for a fanless android kodi setup