[mythtv] firestick 4k lock up with interlaced playback

[John Pilkington]

On 18/12/2018 15:29, David Engel wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 09:56:40AM -0500, Peter Bennett wrote:
>> I have had a report of mediacodec playback locking up with interlaced h264
>> on a firestick 4k. I have been using the fire stick for a lot of playback of
>> progressive h264 without problems. It seems that interlaced content may be
>> what is causing the issue.
> 
> FWIW, I let mine run for ~35 minutes on h.264/1080i this weekend as a
> test.  No issues found.  I can try to let it run longer this evening
> if it would help.
> 
> David

Mine had an update on Friday, too.  With MediaCodec decoding it still 
reliably locks up at the end of the station ident on the recording (BBC 
FOUR HD, DVB-T2, Feb 2016) from which I took the clip posted earlier. 
After what seems a long time it quits  with 'Video frame buffering 
failed too many times.'

With standard decoding nothing seems wrong and the playback quality is 
excellent.  I have looked at adb log output in both cases but see 
nothing that seems unusual at the position where things lock up.

I bought two, mainly to give 'Smart' capability to my daughter's unSmart 
Sony family TV, which has the required HDMI port; 4K can wait and as yet 
there's no MythTV installed there.  I have reservations about some of 
the on-line aspects of the device, but there is already full exposure to 
tablets and phones. The picture and sound seem fine, and the remote 
works, at least as a viewer's control device.

John P