Support for direct play

[Pbathuk]

Hi,

Would be great if the app had the ability to allow the user to select direct play, therefore turning off the transcoding and letting the device do all the heavily lifting (if required). Most modern android devices should allow h.264 & mpeg decoding without taxing it too much.

Cheers

Phil

[sub]

Most modern android devices should allow h.264 & mpeg decoding without taxing it too much.

Most phone/tablet devices only really support H.264 decoding, not MPEG2.

[Pbathuk]

Ok, thanks for the correction.
I am looking to install the app on my Nvidia Sheild (when it arrives), I know that it can decode pretty much anything, obviously not ideal for everyones use case, but for mine it would be perfect to have direct play

Keep up the good work btw

[sub]

It's only a phone/tablet app at this stage. Lots more to be done before it could be used on a Android TV box.

[sub]

Ok, thanks for the correction.
I am looking to install the app on my Nvidia Sheild (when it arrives), I know that it can decode pretty much anything, obviously not ideal for everyones use case, but for mine it would be perfect to have direct play

FYI, I have just been experimenting with direct playback this morning, and specifically using an Nvidia Shield. Some good bits, and some not so good bits - it was nice to see it directly playing MPEG2 video files (from US ATSC recordings), but no audio since there is no AC3 decoder on the device. This might be able to be done in software. I was more disappointed to see it couldn't play our local DVB-T H.264 streams, because it didn't like the H.264 profile our broadcasters used (not sure if this will be different in the UK or not). I came away thinking the prospect for directplay is probably not that promising on Android boxes.

[Pbathuk]

Ok, I wonder if US HD channels are encoded differently, I have chucked h.264 (TS recordings) with ac3 at it and it played with zero issues. To be fair that is through Kodi, so I don't know if Kodi does some decoding / modification as part of the stream.
Currently I have : Plex for all recorded & series
Kodi for live TV
Both have no issues with the TS stream and Plex reports as direct play on the server.

Cheers

[sub]

Ok, I wonder if US HD channels are encoded differently

Yep, they are. HD in the US is MPEG-2 video. HD in most other places in H.264.

I have chucked h.264 (TS recordings) with ac3 at it and it played with zero issues. To be fair that is through Kodi, so I don't know if Kodi does some decoding / modification as part of the stream.

Likely kodi was software decoding the AC3 (or you were using AC3 pass through, and your TV or receiver was decoding the audio, which does work fine). Your UK broadcasts may have used a H.264 encoder profile that the shield could play - unfortunately that wasn't the case with the main channels here in NZ.

[mvallevand]

Yep, they are. HD in the US is MPEG-2 video. HD in most other places in H.264..

Cable card HD in the US can be h264 too.

Martin

[sub]

True.