[mythtv-users] Experimental Android TV "leanback" MythTV frontend

[Peter Bennett]

On 8/24/19 12:57 PM, David Engel wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 11:14:34AM -0400, Peter Bennett wrote:
>> On 8/21/19 3:17 PM, Peter Bennett wrote:
>>> I am developing a pure android application for Android TV devices called
>>> android-MythTV-Leanfront.
>>>
>>> It uses the android TV leanback user interface as used by other apps
>>> such as youtube, prime video, etc. to play MythTV recordings.
>>>
>>> It supports 4K resolution video at 50 fps and voice search, which are
>>> not working on mythfrontend for android. Also it supports surround
>>> sound.
>>>
>>> It does not yet support many of the important features of Mythfrontend,
>>> and some features it may never support.
>>>
>>> See https://github.com/bennettpeter/android-MythTV-Leanfront for more
>>> details
>>>
>>> Peter
>>
>> To answer David's question on IRC - Some reasons for attempting this:
>>
>> - I saw an opportunity to use the android exoplayer library and the sample
>> program to easily build a new frontend.
> Does that mean you don't intend to handle the mpeg2 corruption problem
> on the Shield that many users have on some channels?
Probably not - I should test it with my channel that has these problems 
and see what happens.
>
> Does the exoplayer framework allow for fask skips and real
> fast-forward/rewind?  Those are two features that set mythfrontend
> apart from every other player I've seen.
The forward skips seem to be very quick, the backward steps not so fast. 
I don't know how well it would come up to your requirements. I may be 
able to tweak that - currently I have two methods of downloading the 
video data - http or myth protocol. I am using http, since I am trying 
to get away from the myth protocol, but the myth protocol may turn out 
better for back skips.

There is a setting in the exoplayer framework for playback speed. It may 
work for time-stretch users. I don't know about FF or REW. I am doubtful.
>> - Support Voice search, 4K playback, use only service api and avoid version
>> dependence.
> Nice.  I've wondered how that and homepage channels feature could
> eventually be implemented in mythfrontend.  There have been and still
> are way too many other things to do before that.
In the android studio emulator, it displays a list or "recommended 
videos" chosen (at random it seems) from the recording list, but that 
does not seem to work in shield or fire tv. I will look into that and 
find out what settings are needed to support those. I would like it to 
show recently viewed but not completed shows on the home screen. Voice 
search from within the app is working on shield but not on fire tv. Also 
search from outside the app should be possible.
>> - Avoid Existing android frontend problems - it is compiled with
>> IGNORE_SCHEMA_VER_MISMATCH, IGNORE_PROTO_VER_MISMATCH", it will not support
>> 4K or ipv6, we have to build with out of date ndk.
> I've advocated converting mythfrontend to use only API calls from some
> time.  There isn't anything preventing anyone from doing that.
>
>> - frontend should not require a 4k device to play 1080 recordings.
> Does it?  If so, I wasn't aware of that.
On the fire tv non-4k mythfrontend playback is excessively jerky with 
about half of the frames being dropped.

Peter