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Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Printable Version

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RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - kenelbow - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-23, 20:09)angeloaz Wrote:
(2014-06-23, 20:02)kenelbow Wrote:
(2014-06-23, 19:57)angeloaz Wrote: Yes, MediaCodec off, libstagefright on. You should be able to verify the codec being used in playback with the 'o' key (http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Codecinfo). I think if you see "stf-mpeg2" as the video codec, you know it's stagefright. Changing channels improved drastically with no transcoding on the HDHR Plus. It changes just as fast and smooth as Dish Network does for me now. Perhaps H.264 is harder to decode at first or more sensitive to weaker OTA signals -- which may explain its poorer behavior in some cases?

I also have audio passthrough enabled for Dolby Digital -- not sure if that mitigates the audio/video lag in some way.

I would be curious to know if you see a jump in reliability by turning transcoding off on your HDHR Plus. Part of the complication with that is network bandwidth: I've got my AFTV using ethernet and not WiFi. Not sure how WiFi can handle ~2MB/s that MPEG2 can generate.

I'll give your settings a shot. To be honest channel changing hasn't been that bad for me. Though my signals are relatively strong thanks to my roof mounted antenna. One question though. When disabling transcoding, does that mean you can no longer enable deinterlacing for 1080i ATSC channels? That my get annoying for me, but I will at least try it out. It would be better to have interlaced video than to have video that gets horribly out of sync or having XBMC crash completely. I will try it out tonight after work and report back.

From what I can tell, turning off MediaCodec is what eliminates the deinterlace option. I don't think libstagefright allows that option.

Here in Tucson, I only notice interlacing on the SD (non-HD) channels -- which I don't watch much of. But you're right, it's terribly annoying.

So turning off transcoding on my HDHR Plus and switching to libstagefright for acceleration have significantly improved live TV performance. Interlacing on 1080i broadcasts is only slightly noticeable for me. I'm sure it will pass the wife test. I would prefer to have working h.264 transcoding and hardware acceleration, but this is an acceptable work around, at least for now. Thanks.

There must be something about the h.264 implementation by Silicon Dust that XBMC on android doesn't like. Other h.264 content works fine, but LiveTV and recordings from this capture device just don't work very well. They are fine on Linux and Windows though. Worthy of a bug report maybe?


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - jocala - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-23, 21:17)Canyaya Wrote: Jocala,
I tried your adb firetv app for Mac and although it shows connected, it won't install the apk. It shows the progress bar moving and it goes all the way to the end but no result is shown. It also doesn't show up on the fire tv. Where can I pull the logs for you to see?

Thanks for trying it out. Unfortunately, there is no logging yet. Is this occasional, or easily reproduceable? It was tested on a clean Mavericks Macbook Pro. Also, the progress bar timing is not sorted out. I've seen the result messagebox take longer to appear, depending on system load, so progressbar is full, but just sitting for a bit before messagebox appears.


Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Canyaya - 2014-06-24

Jocala,
Thanks for your prompt response. It's not occasional, it just wouldn't install the apk no matter how long I waited. I ended up installing it through terminal and it took very fast. I look forward to trying it again since the interface is very "mac" like.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - jocala - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-24, 06:07)Canyaya Wrote: Jocala,
Thanks for your prompt response. It's not occasional, it just wouldn't install the apk no matter how long I waited. I ended up installing it through terminal and it took very fast. I look forward to trying it again since the interface is very "mac" like.

It's c++ and uses native widgets. If you don't mind, does this occur with all apks and what version of OS X are you running??


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - ED-209 - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-23, 14:15)Apothis Wrote:
(2014-06-23, 13:52)ED-209 Wrote:
(2014-06-22, 19:22)jocala Wrote: I just installed it and it shows up in the app list with a "TZC" icon. Its package name is com.futurek.android.tzc. You can reinstall it via adbfire (which uses -r by default) or with adb and the install flag "-r".

Hi again jocala. I have tried install -r command and it reports success, however the TZC still does not appear in apps list. I have since installed other apps successfully but I cannot get Time Zone Changer to install at all. I have also tried uninstalling but I get error on that as well.

I'm tempted to do a factory reset on the Fire TV, but to do that I really need to take a backup of my XBMC userdata folder. Is there any way to take a backup of the whole folder rather than copying individual files? I have tried the 'Backup XBMC' button in adbfire but all I get is 'backup failed' message every time.

Please can someone help me either fully uninstall / re-install Time Zone Changer app or alternatively help me to take a backup of my XBMC userdata folder so that I can do a factory reset on the Fire TV?

Thanks.

This is all assuming not rooted, but timezone changer should show up in the settings menu just above xbmc, or does for me when I installed it (manually via adb commandline)

also, backing up your userdata folder, you can just do a commandline adb pull on the userdata directory.

Thanks for the advice. I was under the misapprehension that adb 'pull' command is only suitable for extracting individual file, not entire folders. I have now tried the command to extract my userdata folder and it worked.
Now I will do a factory reset and start from scratch. I'll definitely be installing Time Zone Changer thru command line this time, as opposed to using the adbfire tool and will post my results back.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - rupert - 2014-06-24

Anybody out there using Droidmote & either Yatse or XBMC remote to control their Fire? I'm curios how well that combination works.

I want to buy a Fire, but the lack of android app remote control for it is the only thing holding me back (all my AV gear live in the basement). I've tried this combination of apps on my atv1200, and it seems to cause XBMC to crash (using the XBMC remote while Droidmote server is running).


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Snowball - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-20, 18:30)jocala Wrote:
(2014-06-20, 08:19)Snowball Wrote:
(2014-06-19, 14:52)jocala Wrote: What was the error you got with adbFire?

"INSTALL FAILED"
And yes, I've "ADB RUNNING" and "DEVICE CONNECTED"

Thanks for the feedback. I discovered a Windows permission error on some systems. I think it's fixed, if you don't mind please download and try again.

http://jocala.com/adbfire.html

Hi there,

I've tried the new version and I get the same error Sad


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - angeloaz - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-24, 03:57)kenelbow Wrote:
(2014-06-23, 20:09)angeloaz Wrote:
(2014-06-23, 20:02)kenelbow Wrote: I'll give your settings a shot. To be honest channel changing hasn't been that bad for me. Though my signals are relatively strong thanks to my roof mounted antenna. One question though. When disabling transcoding, does that mean you can no longer enable deinterlacing for 1080i ATSC channels? That my get annoying for me, but I will at least try it out. It would be better to have interlaced video than to have video that gets horribly out of sync or having XBMC crash completely. I will try it out tonight after work and report back.

From what I can tell, turning off MediaCodec is what eliminates the deinterlace option. I don't think libstagefright allows that option.

Here in Tucson, I only notice interlacing on the SD (non-HD) channels -- which I don't watch much of. But you're right, it's terribly annoying.

So turning off transcoding on my HDHR Plus and switching to libstagefright for acceleration have significantly improved live TV performance. Interlacing on 1080i broadcasts is only slightly noticeable for me. I'm sure it will pass the wife test. I would prefer to have working h.264 transcoding and hardware acceleration, but this is an acceptable work around, at least for now. Thanks.

There must be something about the h.264 implementation by Silicon Dust that XBMC on android doesn't like. Other h.264 content works fine, but LiveTV and recordings from this capture device just don't work very well. They are fine on Linux and Windows though. Worthy of a bug report maybe?

Now that I have a second verification, I'm going to try to post something over on Silicon Dust's forums -- to encourage those guys to start looking into it on their end too.

From an XBMC perspective, I'm still confused about why I see no appreciable CPU-activity difference between MPEG2 playback and any H.264 playback (I believe this is true for even non-Silicon Dust H.264 videos). I would expect to see much lighter CPU activity on the hardware decoded playback (H.264) vs software decoded (MPEG2).

I guess I should just be happy that MPEG2 plays back as well as it does on the AFTV, but maybe one of the decoding-gurus can chime in what one would expect to observe on hardware vs software decoding.

Also, it may be worth mentioning on the Wiki that MPEG2 playback of OTA signals seems to work just fine on the AFTV. I ended up buying a transcoding HDHR Plus only because of the ominous warning under the "Known Issues" section on the Wiki that says: "VC-1 and MPEG2 are not hardware decoded in XBMC on the Fire TV." What's the issue? it appears to playback just as well as H.264 videos.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - kenelbow - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-24, 17:22)angeloaz Wrote:
(2014-06-24, 03:57)kenelbow Wrote:
(2014-06-23, 20:09)angeloaz Wrote: From what I can tell, turning off MediaCodec is what eliminates the deinterlace option. I don't think libstagefright allows that option.

Here in Tucson, I only notice interlacing on the SD (non-HD) channels -- which I don't watch much of. But you're right, it's terribly annoying.

So turning off transcoding on my HDHR Plus and switching to libstagefright for acceleration have significantly improved live TV performance. Interlacing on 1080i broadcasts is only slightly noticeable for me. I'm sure it will pass the wife test. I would prefer to have working h.264 transcoding and hardware acceleration, but this is an acceptable work around, at least for now. Thanks.

There must be something about the h.264 implementation by Silicon Dust that XBMC on android doesn't like. Other h.264 content works fine, but LiveTV and recordings from this capture device just don't work very well. They are fine on Linux and Windows though. Worthy of a bug report maybe?

Now that I have a second verification, I'm going to try to post something over on Silicon Dust's forums -- to encourage those guys to start looking into it on their end too.

From an XBMC perspective, I'm still confused about why I see no appreciable CPU-activity difference between MPEG2 playback and any H.264 playback (I believe this is true for even non-Silicon Dust H.264 videos). I would expect to see much lighter CPU activity on the hardware decoded playback (H.264) vs software decoded (MPEG2).

I guess I should just be happy that MPEG2 plays back as well as it does on the AFTV, but maybe one of the decoding-gurus can chime in what one would expect to observe on hardware vs software decoding.

Also, it may be worth mentioning on the Wiki that MPEG2 playback of OTA signals seems to work just fine on the AFTV. I ended up buying a transcoding HDHR Plus only because of the ominous warning under the "Known Issues" section on the Wiki that says: "VC-1 and MPEG2 are not hardware decoded in XBMC on the Fire TV." What's the issue? it appears to playback just as well as H.264 videos.

I agree, CPU usage should be much lower for h.264 decoding since it is supposedly being performed by hardware codecs. Its very confusing to me.

I also bought my HDHR Plus specifically for h.264 transcoding out of concern that MPEG2 playback would be poorer on AFTV than it actually is. I already had an HDHR Plus (MPEG2 only) that was working fine. I'm still using it as my 3rd and 4th tuners in MythTV in fact. I would be interested to hear what you find out from Silicon Dust.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - RustyTongueRing - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-24, 15:04)rupert Wrote: Anybody out there using Droidmote & either Yatse or XBMC remote to control their Fire? I'm curios how well that combination works.

I want to buy a Fire, but the lack of android app remote control for it is the only thing holding me back (all my AV gear live in the basement). I've tried this combination of apps on my atv1200, and it seems to cause XBMC to crash (using the XBMC remote while Droidmote server is running).

Yatse is one of my favorite apps, and works just fine with XBMC/Fire. I rarely use it anymore with Fire as the remote does enough. Never used Droidmote.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - rupert - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-24, 17:38)RustyTongueRing Wrote:
(2014-06-24, 15:04)rupert Wrote: Anybody out there using Droidmote & either Yatse or XBMC remote to control their Fire? I'm curios how well that combination works.

I want to buy a Fire, but the lack of android app remote control for it is the only thing holding me back (all my AV gear live in the basement). I've tried this combination of apps on my atv1200, and it seems to cause XBMC to crash (using the XBMC remote while Droidmote server is running).

Yatse is one of my favorite apps, and works just fine with XBMC/Fire. I rarely use it anymore with Fire as the remote does enough. Never used Droidmote.

Yeah, I use it too. But my real concern is with controlling the fire when XBMC isn't running (via my phone). Droidmote would cover this, but on the one android device I've tried Droidmote & XBMC's remote API seem to cause XBMC to crash.

So, the question is really about Droidmote & XBMC's remote API on the fire, not Yatse or the XBMC remote app.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - RustyTongueRing - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-24, 19:30)rupert Wrote:
(2014-06-24, 17:38)RustyTongueRing Wrote:
(2014-06-24, 15:04)rupert Wrote: Anybody out there using Droidmote & either Yatse or XBMC remote to control their Fire? I'm curios how well that combination works.

I want to buy a Fire, but the lack of android app remote control for it is the only thing holding me back (all my AV gear live in the basement). I've tried this combination of apps on my atv1200, and it seems to cause XBMC to crash (using the XBMC remote while Droidmote server is running).

Yatse is one of my favorite apps, and works just fine with XBMC/Fire. I rarely use it anymore with Fire as the remote does enough. Never used Droidmote.

Yeah, I use it too. But my real concern is with controlling the fire when XBMC isn't running (via my phone). Droidmote would cover this, but on the one android device I've tried Droidmote & XBMC's remote API seem to cause XBMC to crash.

So, the question is really about Droidmote & XBMC's remote API on the fire, not Yatse or the XBMC remote app.

Ahh, I see what you're saying. I've been trying to eliminate remotes lately, but always end with at least two.

If I find time I'll try Droidmote out.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - mjbxx - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-21, 21:19)Natedawg87 Wrote: I copied the .dl directory to my computer with ES. It looks like there is
one image of size 750x366 called http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F41CwohT2wJL._FMpng_SY752_FMPNG_SX750_SY480_.png (looks like this is the splash screen)

one image of size 366x366 called http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F51b7cD7hLCL._FMpng_SL366_FMPNG_SX750_SY480_.png (this looks like the one that shows up in My Apps)
I am not seeing this 750x366 Classic TV splashscreen in the .dl directory:
http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F41CwohT2wJL._FMpng_SY752_FMPNG_SX750_SY480_.png

I do see two images with one square and the other has rounded edges. They both have the same image size of 366x366. Below are the two images in the .dl directory. Where do I find the 750x366 image?

http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F41J0Xyg4-GL._FMpng_SL366_FMPNG_SX750_SY480_.png

http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F51b7cD7hLCL._FMpng_SL366_FMPNG_SX750_SY480_.png


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - highgear - 2014-06-24

Has there been any more investigation/work looking into the choppy playback on xvid avi files? For those unaware, it appears to happen during any scene with fast action or panning. I tried remuxing one with issues into an .mkv container as suggested with the same choppy playback results.

I have tried with libstagefright selected only, as well as only mediacodec with the same results.

Anyone have any thoughts as to what could be going on or how it could be fixed by the xbmc team? I'm not too familiar with the inner workings but it seems odd that we can't get smooth playback on these older super common file types.

Here is a thread on xda-developers where someone figured out a way to launch an external player to get smooth playback within xbmc, but it likely does not survive a reboot. Any thoughts?

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2790885


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - jocala - 2014-06-24

(2014-06-24, 15:43)Snowball Wrote:
(2014-06-20, 18:30)jocala Wrote:
(2014-06-20, 08:19)Snowball Wrote: "INSTALL FAILED"
And yes, I've "ADB RUNNING" and "DEVICE CONNECTED"

Thanks for the feedback. I discovered a Windows permission error on some systems. I think it's fixed, if you don't mind please download and try again.

http://jocala.com/adbfire.html

Hi there,

I've tried the new version and I get the same error Sad

Packaging error on my part. There is an extra copy of adbFire.exe in the adbtest\adb folder. Delete adbtest\adb\adbFire.exe and run adbtest\adbFire.exe. Or re-download.