Android TV version 0.17

[niels]

The latest Android TV app release features enhanced stability, improved navigation with a new home button, and an updated screensaver with age rating filters. Read the blog post to learn about the changes in this release, or read the full changelog on GitHub.

[hov]

This is fantastic.

This one was my favorite update. I've had issues with this where the default auto value would force a transcode even though I'm streaming from a gigabit connection

Code:

Remove "auto" max bit rate and add additional values [url=https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/pull/3372]#3372[/url], by [url=https://github.com/nielsvanvelzen]@nielsvanvelzen[/url]

Suggestion for the Jellyfin team, also include a link to a this forum thread within the blog post and future blog posts? I feel like it would bring more users to the forum

[xaque]

Server 10.9.8 / TV client .0.17 - This post is going to be a bit of a ramble, and I will make a more well thought out report to github when its not so late. Just throwing this information here in case any one has a similar setup and is thinking about updating. When I saw the release needed server 10.9 or higher I updated my server from 10.8.13, as I use the android tv almost exclusively.

This update seems to have broken the ability to play movies or tv shows that are .strm files. I've only had successful playback using VLC as an external player. That would not be much of an issue, however, live tv streams will not play using the external player now, where previously on 10.8.13 they would direct play using vlc as the external player; and now in the TV client 0.17, you can not specify different players for live tv/library items in order to  to alleviate this issue. The current work around now is to create a separate account for live tv viewing, with the internal player set, enable transcoding playback for live tv under playback in the TV app, and enable transcoding playback for audio/video for the user server side, which will now play the stream by remuxing it. And then have another account set up to use the external player to watch movies or tv shows that are .strm files, which has essentially eliminated the ability to use subtitles from the server, and now have to be acquired from the VLC app itself.

I would be more than happy to upload any relevant logs, be it debug server logs, or ffmpeg logs here, but I thought I'd save that for the github issue. I've looked over them myself but don't understand why the streams will not play. Direct playback is reported as the play method. It will not even attempt/fallback to transcoding. The player just errors out. No actual errors are reported in the logs. For a breif moment before the player receives to many "errors", the playback report from the admin dashboard says direct playing.

Before the update 0.17, while using server version 10.9.8, .strm files would play without issue using liblvc as the player, which now seems to have been removed. I appreciate the hard work done on the android tv, and Jellyfin as well, but is there a reason why these features like choosing different players for different library/media types have been removed? 10.9.x seems to have done this in a couple of areas, where fixing issues often seems to come at the cost of removing options that the end user could use.

In the meantime I don't mind using separate accounts for movie/tv shows and live tv. But my hopes are that .strm files will be supported moving forward at some point in a future update. I know plex removed support for them some time ago and was one of a myriad of reasons I switched to Jellyfin.

Again, sorry to ramble, and thank you again for the work you put in to this app. Much is appreciated.

**edit Welly shooty darnit, it looks like the player setting is global to all users, so now I will be switching players every time I want to go from live tv to movie/shows. It also appears this setting is applied even between servers. So running a separate server for movies/tv shows is also not the answer...

[Efficient_Good_5784]

Before the update 0.17, while using server version 10.9.8, .strm files would play without issue using liblvc as the player, which now seems to have been removed. I appreciate the hard work done on the android tv, and Jellyfin as well, but is there a reason why these features like choosing different players for different library/media types have been removed? 10.9.x seems to have done this in a couple of areas, where fixing issues often seems to come at the cost of removing options that the end user could use.

libvlc was removed from ATV because it presented too many bugs (audio/subs out-of-sync, etc.).

I'm not sure of if and when it will be brought back.

[Rubén Navarro López]

I can't find the update on google play, it's not release yet?

Anyway, thank you for your work guys!

[TheDreadPirate]

I can't find the update on google play, it's not release yet?

Anyway, thank you for your work guys!

Google still has to approve the release.  It would take a few days for 0.17 to show up in the non-beta channel.

[xaque]

Before the update 0.17, while using server version 10.9.8, .strm files would play without issue using liblvc as the player, which now seems to have been removed. I appreciate the hard work done on the android tv, and Jellyfin as well, but is there a reason why these features like choosing different players for different library/media types have been removed? 10.9.x seems to have done this in a couple of areas, where fixing issues often seems to come at the cost of removing options that the end user could use.

libvlc was removed from ATV because it presented too many bugs (audio/subs out-of-sync, etc.).

I'm not sure of if and when it will be brought back.

Just curious as to why removing the option to use it was made, even if it was buggy in some cases, its not as if it was the only option? Or why the option to define different players for libraries and live tv was changed?

With how many variables are at play with media formats and types that users can have, why does it seem like there is trying to be a "one-size fits all" approach to things?

In scenarios like what I am in, it's now either things work with the current implementation, or not at all. Whereas previously I at least had some options to use, and a bit more granular control for some flexibility.

It is what it is, and getting an answer to these questions isn't necessarily going to fix them, so it may be moot. The best I can do is simply to express that the functions that were removed were useful and hope that the dev considers giving users more options like those in future updates.

[Rubén Navarro López]

I can't find the update on google play, it's not release yet?

Anyway, thank you for your work guys!

Google still has to approve the release.  It would take a few days for 0.17 to show up in the non-beta channel.

Thank you for answering!

[Fate]

How is SSA/ASS Support in 0.17?
I have quite a few clients that use libvlc...
Since sadly libvlc is not there anymore, so switching to exoplayer will force transcoding now?

[Efficient_Good_5784]

How is SSA/ASS Support in 0.17?
I have quite a few clients that use libvlc...
Since sadly libvlc is not there anymore, so switching to exoplayer will force transcoding now?

I've been using exoplayer to play anime with ASS subs specifically because libvlc would play the subs out of sync.

Yeah it forces a transcode, but other than that, it's been working great for me.