SOLVED: AndroidTV suddenly stopped working

[meistereder]

Hi everyone,

I've been using Jellyfin for a couple of months now and would like to thank everyone for their contribution. Today, suddenly the AndroidTV version on my FireTV 4k Max Stick stopped working properly. I can open the Jellyfin app and can connect to the server, but no playback will start, it's just a black screen as if the app is loading the media. Other versions including Swift/iOS and web are working perfectly fine. Not sure what causes the AndroidTV version to fail.

Please find the logs here: https://pastebin.com/5cVQUj22

The *.81 IP is from Chrome, checking the AndroidTV access. The AndroidTV app has the *.251 IP. In the admin panel it doesn't even show that the AndroidTV app started a playback (same as in the logs). I access the server directly from my home network without any proxy or VPN.

Do you have any idea what could cause this sudden issue? Thanks a lot already for your support.

[TheDreadPirate]

libVLC was deprecated in the just released 0.17 version of Jellyfin for Android TV. It looks like you don't allow transcoding and the client is probably requesting a transcode.

[xaque]

The issue may be a little deeper than just allowing tanscoding. I can't get .strm files to play with transcoding enabled. Only method to get files to be able to play has been using an external player, which is not an ideal solution. Before the player errors out with "too many errors" the admin dashboard says file is direct playing, and no errors are logged to either jellyfin or ffmpeg, even with debug logging enabled. Really hoping for a solution to pop up soon, as there has already been a handful of people here who have mentioned the lack of libvlc a deal breaker, and are staying on 0.16.x

I myself have taken this as an opportunity to try out forking the android tv repo and building a version of 0.16.x with some default setting changed, and a touch of rebranding with some custom logos. I consider this a temporary solution for myself, and an excuse to get some knowledge using android studio.

I'm a complete amateur in this department, but now that I'm getting a bit more comfortable with the process, I may try poking around in 0.17 to see if there is a potential solution and I'd happily submit is pr if I find anything that works and falls withing the guideline and scope of the current project. Huge shout out to the dev of the android tv app, getting a glimpse under the hood really gives some perspective on how much work has gone into it. Hoping that future updates bring back some of the options that were removed, or better yet, flesh out some of the issues exoplayer seems to have. Either way, the work is immensely appreciated and will be awesome to see it how it develops moving forward.

[meistereder]

libVLC was deprecated in the just released 0.17 version of Jellyfin for Android TV.  It looks like you don't allow transcoding and the client is probably requesting a transcode.

That's a good hint, thank you. I'll check it later when I'm at home but can confirm, that transcoding is disabled. Reason for that is that I'm using a Raspberry Pi 4 which is absolutely fine for direct play but not for hardware transcoding. 

Does it make sense to enable transcoding in light of the low hardware specifications or is there another way to still use direct play without transcoding on Android TV?

[TheDreadPirate]

Depends on why it is transcoding. If it is transcoding due to the audio or remuxing, the RPi should be able to handle that. If it needs to transcode the video or burn in the subtitles, that isn't happening on a RPi.

[meistereder]

I can confirm the enabling transcoding made the Android TV working again. Thanks a lot for your support!