AppleTV 4k, a few questions, a few bugs?

[Mr Whippy]

I downloaded this last night, seems to work ok.

But I want to know if these behaviours are normal.


1. I load it up, it 'searches' for the server. It finds the IP address of my server. I click it and it loads ok.
Next time I load it up, it searches again, does it not remember?
I tried to manually input the server thinking that might hard-set the address, but that doesn't seem to work at all, it just bounces back to the search screen and lets me choose the auto-detected server or manually enter again (which again fails to work)

I don't understand why once I set the server address, or confirm it, it needs to ask every time.

Is something not working right at my end wrt the app saving the address, hence it asking each time?


2. There doesn't appear to be a search dialog, so finding programs to record/schedule is difficult. I tried holding buttons and all kinds of things but I didn't seem to be able to provoke a search menu to appear.
I notice people talking about search on iOS, and the web client has it, but not the AppleTV client?


3. I can provoke the inertial navigation (where you swipe and swipe again and it gets faster and faster and keeps going even after you life off) in the LiveTV channels screen, and if while watching live TV I swipe up/down to scan through the channels I can get the inertial navigation too.
But in the TV guide screen, the navigation has no inertia, it takes tens of seconds even using the downward movement and hold, to go from top to bottom of the channel list. Is inertial navigation missing from the TV guide screen, or am I just not getting how to access it?


4. Is there any way to invoke recording while watching Live TV?
Ie: I've been watching this program from the start, it looks good but I can't finish watching it for whatever reason. I would like to record it including the current time-buffer, and save it to recordings to watch again later.
Is that possible? This seems like a standard 'box' feature for freesat and freeview. Have I just not figured out how to do this either?



Bugs?

4. I was watching Channel 4 (UK) last night, just a bit of Forrest Gump while faffing with the controls and recording. The default audio was the audio description. I figured out you press and hold to get the menu to change the audio/subtitles.
- There is no indication which is the current setting.
- There is no way to go 'back' using the menu button once you get to the audio choices screen. You have to choose one.

Once you choose the correct audio stream everything is great. However I noticed if I paused and then skipped back in time to watch from earlier, it'd reset the audio to the description stream. If I then reset to normal great. But then if I skipped back fowards, it'd reset to the audio description stream.
I'm not sure if this was just that particular channel or film. I've tried it again today on another channel and film and it didn't seem to be happening but the audio description isn't always present to know for certain.
Going back to the "no indication" point above, you can't check which audio stream is being used to check if this is a widespread bug, or was just confined to what I was watching last night.

5. If you're watching a recording that hasn't finished/ended, it seems to break playback and jump out to the menu if you scan forward in time to ahead of the actual time the recording is at.
Surely the scan forward should be blocked to not let you skip ahead to ahead of real time?





Thanks

[Mr Whippy]

I had some time to check the 4 'bug'

Currently the default Audio Stream is automatically set to Track 1.

On many UK channels Track 1 is:

Track 1 - [NAR] ... aka a Narration, or Audio Description track.

Track 2 is:

Track 2 - [English]


Of course you can just select Track 2 - [English] and enjoy the audio as you want it.

However, at any point you time scrub, exit that channel and re-start it, or any change that isn't just continuing to watch that channel, the Audio Stream is changed back to Track 1.



I assume mainstream consumer viewers must use some kind of filter on the name of the audio streams to choose the default audio track.

I assume NextPVR clients are just choosing Track 1 as the default audio stream, and they are also not being persistent with that setting, even after something trivial like time scrubbing a playback.

Any chance of a fix for this?



Thanks

[sub]

I had some time to check the 4 'bug'

Currently the default Audio Stream is automatically set to Track 1.

On many UK channels Track 1 is:

Track 1 - [NAR] ... aka a Narration, or Audio Description track.

Track 2 is:

Track 2 - [English]


Of course you can just select Track 2 - [English] and enjoy the audio as you want it.

However, at any point you time scrub, exit that channel and re-start it, or any change that isn't just continuing to watch that channel, the Audio Stream is changed back to Track 1.



I assume mainstream consumer viewers must use some kind of filter on the name of the audio streams to choose the default audio track.

I assume NextPVR clients are just choosing Track 1 as the default audio stream, and they are also not being persistent with that setting, even after something trivial like time scrubbing a playback.

Any chance of a fix for this?

Yes, I'll take a look in the next few days.

It's unfortunately that they made this weird audio stream ordering. Usually they'd put their preferred default audio stream first, but for whatever reason they didn't do that with a couple of UK channels. It's caused issues for all sorts of software over the years.

[Mr Whippy]

I've got a feeling that it's for inclusion, so blind/partially sighted are provided with the option first so to speak... then sighted people can select not to have it fairly trivially.

The BBC and other mainstream channels that can afford to offer this have put it first. And likely set a standards trend.

That makes a great deal of sense. But as a technical exercise it's broken a lot of things.

[sub]

1. I load it up, it 'searches' for the server. It finds the IP address of my server. I click it and it loads ok.
Next time I load it up, it searches again, does it not remember?
I tried to manually input the server thinking that might hard-set the address, but that doesn't seem to work at all, it just bounces back to the search screen and lets me choose the auto-detected server or manually enter again (which again fails to work)

I don't understand why once I set the server address, or confirm it, it needs to ask every time.

Is something not working right at my end wrt the app saving the address, hence it asking each time?

This was intentional. I use multiple servers, and I'm always selecting between them. I might be able to streamline this in future, since I'm aware the average user doesn't really need to go through this.

2. There doesn't appear to be a search dialog, so finding programs to record/schedule is difficult. I tried holding buttons and all kinds of things but I didn't seem to be able to provoke a search menu to appear.
I notice people talking about search on iOS, and the web client has it, but not the AppleTV client?

There is a mostly complete search screen for the apple tv, but it's not currently enabled because I has having an issue with the on-screen keyboard which needed more time to get to the bottom of.

3. I can provoke the inertial navigation (where you swipe and swipe again and it gets faster and faster and keeps going even after you life off) in the LiveTV channels screen, and if while watching live TV I swipe up/down to scan through the channels I can get the inertial navigation too.
But in the TV guide screen, the navigation has no inertia, it takes tens of seconds even using the downward movement and hold, to go from top to bottom of the channel list. Is inertial navigation missing from the TV guide screen, or am I just not getting how to access it?

Yes, the navigation on the TV Guide screen is a bit quirky. I wasn't able to use any of Apple's normal controls to implement the guide table, so I had to implement it manually as a custom control, which means I don't get any of the normal control behaviour like inertia etc (which f*cking hard to replicate manually). I do intend to revisit this at some stage to improve it.

4. Is there any way to invoke recording while watching Live TV?

Not currently.

[sub]

- There is no way to go 'back' using the menu button once you get to the audio choices screen. You have to choose one.

I have fixed this for the next build of the app.