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Amazon Fire TV for XBMC
(2014-07-24, 05:14)bradwatson Wrote: It's arm. Should be as simple as side loading new apk. I would backup your xbmc directory first as always.

thanks
(2014-07-24, 19:36)Tight_wad Wrote: Just received my FTV. Will set things up tonight.

Simple question that I have. Should I use XBMC android ARM 13.1 or elmerohueso's modified package of XBMC 13.1?

I'm using elmerohueso's package along with the Xposed app and plugin so the FTV boots to XBMC and it adds the Android Power Options screensaver to put the FTV to sleep when not in use. You can still add quick access to the FTV Launcher to XBMC, if you want to use Amazon services and other apps.

If your going to use the various Amazon and other apps on the FTV a lot, then it might be better to use the official XMBC and add it as an icon on the FTV Launcher menu and launch XBMC when needed.
Crikey. Just noticed how many views this thread has!
(2014-07-24, 22:22)mach170 Wrote:
(2014-07-24, 19:36)Tight_wad Wrote: Just received my FTV. Will set things up tonight.

Simple question that I have. Should I use XBMC android ARM 13.1 or elmerohueso's modified package of XBMC 13.1?

I'm using elmerohueso's package along with the Xposed app and plugin so the FTV boots to XBMC and it adds the Android Power Options screensaver to put the FTV to sleep when not in use. You can still add quick access to the FTV Launcher to XBMC, if you want to use Amazon services and other apps.

If your going to use the various Amazon and other apps on the FTV a lot, then it might be better to use the official XMBC and add it as an icon on the FTV Launcher menu and launch XBMC when needed.

How do I add it as an icon?
(2014-07-25, 00:48)schwang Wrote:
(2014-07-24, 22:22)mach170 Wrote:
(2014-07-24, 19:36)Tight_wad Wrote: Just received my FTV. Will set things up tonight.

Simple question that I have. Should I use XBMC android ARM 13.1 or elmerohueso's modified package of XBMC 13.1?

I'm using elmerohueso's package along with the Xposed app and plugin so the FTV boots to XBMC and it adds the Android Power Options screensaver to put the FTV to sleep when not in use. You can still add quick access to the FTV Launcher to XBMC, if you want to use Amazon services and other apps.

If your going to use the various Amazon and other apps on the FTV a lot, then it might be better to use the official XMBC and add it as an icon on the FTV Launcher menu and launch XBMC when needed.

How do I add it as an icon?

From the Wiki "4 Launch XBMC from an Existing App on the FTV Home Screen" (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Amazon_Fire_TV). In all honesty this will not give you the best XBMC experience. Using elmerohueso's XBMC Launcher, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthre...?t=2790392, is the best thing to happen to the Fire TV while still having access to Amazon content.
(2014-07-25, 00:48)schwang Wrote: How do I add it as an icon?

I use elmerohueso's launcher and it has a built in shortcut for KFTV (Kindle FireTV), which brings you back to the menu. I use Aeon Nox skin, and all I did was add a submenu item under System called FTV, so if I ever need to get back to the FireTV menu, I can, but it's not sitting in the main menu. Took me about 30 seconds to do, I'm sure you can do it in confluence too, nay, I think elmerohueso's confluence skin has a default menu item for it.
NAS?

Can I use the Fire TV as a Network Area Storage device?

I've used a 1st Gen Apple TV for some time now: http://forum.stmlabs.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=4
And it allows me to simply plug in my external hard drive directly into the ATV's USB port and BAM! I have access to everything on that hard drive. Does the Fire TV have the same functionality?

Thanks!
Thanks for the replys. I went with elmerohueso's modified package. Took some time, most of the evening, but I'm not a poweruser by any means. I have everything working just as said it would.

Added my own advancedsettings.xml to limit my image/fanart size to keep cache size down and to connect to mySQL database. Installed the Aeon MQ5 skin. I have Xbmc set as home and added a launch link kftv to the home screen main menu line. No issue using home button on remote to return to Xbmc

First impression, very impressed with speed and image quality of my movies that I tested so far.
I dont feel like reading through this whole thread, just wanted to know how FTV peforms with the PVR component. Does it handle the 1080p mpeg streams from PVR backend fairly well?
(2014-07-25, 17:47)ozkhan1 Wrote: I dont feel like reading through this whole thread, just wanted to know how FTV peforms with the PVR component. Does it handle the 1080p mpeg streams from PVR backend fairly well?

I'm pretty sure nearly all OTA broadcasts in the USA are 1080i and not 1080p. Given that, I have 2 AFTVs (in 2 different rooms) running XBMC 13.1, talking to a MythTV backend, fed by an HDHR Plus (with transcoding turned off -- so it's outputting MPEG2) -- and it works like a champ. Live TV, channel changes, PVR recordings, the whole 9 yards -- all work very well.

Just make sure that you turn off MediaCodec and turn on libstagefright -- this will give you hardware decoding of the MPEG2 stream (yes, XBMC on AFTV appears to properly hardware decode MPEG2 -- contrary to what the Wiki says). And make sure your network can handle the ~2 MB/s you need to stream 1080i MPEG2.

Unfortunately, libstagefright doesn't offer deinterlacing -- so you may see some of that. I still haven't been able to get my setup to work properly with H.264 output from the HDHR, but that's another story.
(2014-07-25, 18:17)angeloaz Wrote:
(2014-07-25, 17:47)ozkhan1 Wrote: I dont feel like reading through this whole thread, just wanted to know how FTV peforms with the PVR component. Does it handle the 1080p mpeg streams from PVR backend fairly well?

I'm pretty sure nearly all OTA broadcasts in the USA are 1080i and not 1080p. Given that, I have 2 AFTVs (in 2 different rooms) running XBMC 13.1, talking to a MythTV backend, fed by an HDHR Plus (with transcoding turned off -- so it's outputting MPEG2) -- and it works like a champ. Live TV, channel changes, PVR recordings, the whole 9 yards -- all work very well.

Just make sure that you turn off MediaCodec and turn on libstagefright -- this will give you hardware decoding of the MPEG2 stream (yes, XBMC on AFTV appears to properly hardware decode MPEG2 -- contrary to what the Wiki says). And make sure your network can handle the ~2 MB/s you need to stream 1080i MPEG2.

Unfortunately, libstagefright doesn't offer deinterlacing -- so you may see some of that. I still haven't been able to get my setup to work properly with H.264 output from the HDHR, but that's another story.

I have an identical setup as angeloaz, except I only own 1 FireTV. My experience has been pretty much the same as him. I don't really notice the interlacing despite the lack of deinterlacing, thankfully. The only addition I would make to his comments is that it takes a long time for the FireTV to bring up the EPG. If you decrease the number of days in the EPG it helps performance a bit, but it is still slow at 3 days of data. Better than when I had 7 or 14 days though.
(2014-07-25, 18:17)angeloaz Wrote: Just make sure that you turn off MediaCodec and turn on libstagefright -- this will give you hardware decoding of the MPEG2 stream (yes, XBMC on AFTV appears to properly hardware decode MPEG2 -- contrary to what the Wiki says).

If you're sure about that, why don't you edit the wiki? I'm not being sarcastic, it's a community document.
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(2014-07-25, 18:51)kenelbow Wrote:
(2014-07-25, 18:17)angeloaz Wrote:
(2014-07-25, 17:47)ozkhan1 Wrote: I dont feel like reading through this whole thread, just wanted to know how FTV peforms with the PVR component. Does it handle the 1080p mpeg streams from PVR backend fairly well?

I'm pretty sure nearly all OTA broadcasts in the USA are 1080i and not 1080p. Given that, I have 2 AFTVs (in 2 different rooms) running XBMC 13.1, talking to a MythTV backend, fed by an HDHR Plus (with transcoding turned off -- so it's outputting MPEG2) -- and it works like a champ. Live TV, channel changes, PVR recordings, the whole 9 yards -- all work very well.

Just make sure that you turn off MediaCodec and turn on libstagefright -- this will give you hardware decoding of the MPEG2 stream (yes, XBMC on AFTV appears to properly hardware decode MPEG2 -- contrary to what the Wiki says). And make sure your network can handle the ~2 MB/s you need to stream 1080i MPEG2.

Unfortunately, libstagefright doesn't offer deinterlacing -- so you may see some of that. I still haven't been able to get my setup to work properly with H.264 output from the HDHR, but that's another story.

I have an identical setup as angeloaz, except I only own 1 FireTV. My experience has been pretty much the same as him. I don't really notice the interlacing despite the lack of deinterlacing, thankfully. The only addition I would make to his comments is that it takes a long time for the FireTV to bring up the EPG. If you decrease the number of days in the EPG it helps performance a bit, but it is still slow at 3 days of data. Better than when I had 7 or 14 days though.

I have pretty much the same setup except I have a happauge feeding in OTA. As they both have said, it handles the heavy HD MPEG2 streams very well (and everything else). So happy with this box, now if they can release that HBO GO app I will be even happier. I use Amber, and add the android apps to my favorites, it's such a clean setup. It's really accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish when I bought my raspberry Pi's two years ago:

- Low Power
- Handle most/all formats
- PVR
- Video Apps( Netflix, Hulu, Prime, MLB, NHL, more)
- Emulation (soon to be integrated into XBMC Big Grin)

Angeloaz, I did not realize that the AFTV separate hardware to handle MPEG2, but that it just has a really good CPU to handle it. Not that I think you're wrong, by any means, I am not knowledgeable on the details of such topics. Regardless of whether my AFTV is hardware decoding or software decoding MPEG2, it's doing it well.
(2014-07-25, 19:28)rushingjs Wrote: Angeloaz, I did not realize that the AFTV separate hardware to handle MPEG2, but that it just has a really good CPU to handle it. Not that I think you're wrong, by any means, I am not knowledgeable on the details of such topics. Regardless of whether my AFTV is hardware decoding or software decoding MPEG2, it's doing it well.

You can verify this empirically by doing the following:
  1. Play an MPEG2 stream (with ligstagefright on, mediacodec off) and pull up XBMC's CodecInfo screen (keyboard 'O' key)
  2. On that screen, you should see "stf-mpeg2" as your decoder and you should see about 30%-40% of two CPU cores being consumed. This is about the same you'll see for an H.264 stream (which everyone agrees is hardware decoded on AFTV).

  3. Now in XBMC's acceleration settings, turn on "software acceleration" instead of "hardware acceleration". There appears to be a bug here, as you have to unselect both libstagefright and mediacodec (or something like that) before switching to "software acceleration", otherwise the setting won't stick.
  4. Play an MPEG2 stream and you'll see your decoder is now "ff-mpeg2" and your CPU usage will be about 70%-100% of all 4 cores. You'll probably stutter and drop frames too (as I did).
(2014-07-25, 18:51)kenelbow Wrote: I have an identical setup as angeloaz, except I only own 1 FireTV. My experience has been pretty much the same as him. I don't really notice the interlacing despite the lack of deinterlacing, thankfully. The only addition I would make to his comments is that it takes a long time for the FireTV to bring up the EPG. If you decrease the number of days in the EPG it helps performance a bit, but it is still slow at 3 days of data. Better than when I had 7 or 14 days though.

I've noticed the same behavior with the EPG. It's really slow at coming up. Reducing the number of days certainly helps, but it's still slow.
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