After so many people including myself requested @elan to create an Android TV version for the existing Caldera tvOS app. He actually did it! In remarkable time too, that it almost makes me think he was planning to create it from the start.
I was very excited to get my hands on the Android TV version of Caldera and set aside my my work and spent the whole day to go through the new app and give my thoughts and feedback. Since I don’t have an Apple TV this is my first time discovering the app that already released on tvOS weeks ago so maybe some of this is old news but for those who are on android the app is awesome but it still has some things that need improving.
I’m running the app on a Nvidia Shield Pro (Android TV - Android 11) and Sony X90L (Google TV - Android 12). Both of them connected to an Anthem MRX 300 AVR with a 7.1 setup. The Shield is connected by HDMI but the Sony X90L is connected by Optical.
Update - 1.0.0.0 Build 8 (20-07-26):
Things that have been added from Plexamp that I like:
-
Gapless Playback, Loudness Leveling & Sweet Fades.
-
Sample Rate Matching
-
Resampler Quality (Sample Rate Converter)
-
Similar Seekbar Style
-
Quality Badges (Album Codec Badges)
-
Charts (Aural Fixations)
-
Home Page: Mixes for You, On this Day, Haven’t played in.
-
Remote Control
Things that haven’t been added from Plexamp that I want to see added:
- Sonic Adventure:
I’m aware that’s why Plexamp exists and we can remote to Caldera TV if we want but since the player is already half way there to being a full fledged Plexamp client you might as well.
-
Guest DJ
-
Similar Tracks & Related
-
Add to playlist
-
Artist & Album Mixer
-
Home Screen: Genre, Style, Mood & Decade Radio Stations:
These 3 types are also absent from the Library and are not displayed on the Artist page.
-
Home Screen: History
-
Ultra Blur for background:
Currently only album pages and partially artist pages that don’t have background art uses some version of Ultra Blur. It should be used when something is being played and the colors from that album cover should be displayed in the Home, Library, Charts and Search. Also when hiding the visualizer seeing a plain Black or White background is boring unless it’s OLED Black or Pure White. Similar to Plexamp, when the visualizer is off seeing Ultra Blur colors with the album art is really clean depending if your on dark or light mode. Even though the milkdrop visualizer is the new big feature for Caldera, it shouldn’t sideline the features we had like Ultra Blur colors.
- Grid Size or Scaling:
Personally I find the scaling of the UI to be slightly cramped. It feels like I’m looking at the UI of Carplay or Android Auto. Especially the Artist and Album pages were everything feels too large while showing too little. This is very subjective and can vary on how big your TV is so It’s best to give multiple scaling options like we have on Plexamp.
- Lyrics:
Surprising how Plexamp, Desktop, Mobile Old Experience, HTPC all have lyric support but this did not.
- Lacking Track support:
Tracks have only been see in the Search, Album and Playlist pages but are missing from Charts & Library view. While yes the list of tracks would be long in a library, we have always had it on every other client.
- Lacking Queue Support:
While there is the option to press & hold to add to queue it is pointless if I can’t actually see the queue list.
-
Missing Shuffle and Loop buttons on the player
-
Lacking Seekbar functionality:
Not being able to skip forward and back is a major miss as I’m someone who tends to use this alot. Adding the option to choose different seekbar styles like Smooth, Bars and Line would be nice cause my preference is Smooth but the Caldera defaults to Bars.
Things that are exclusive to Caldera that I like:
- Milkdrop Visualizer:
The main headliner feature is breathtaking while I do kinda miss the Plexamp visualizers that adapted to cover art colors. There is so many variations to choose from and it doesn’t seem to get old when there is so many to shuffle through.
- Cover Flow layout:
Something we haven’t gotten from Plexamp and gives Itunes library vibes. Not the most practical thing but I like the look of it so I’m definitely using it.
- Signal Chain:
For someone that likes to see what’s the exact codec and bitrate and how my audio is being processed, I really find this addition useful and not just for troubleshooting but also cause I like looking at it.
- Multi-Channel Support:
It only makes sense that a music client dedicated for a TV would also be connected to a surround sound setup. Now while the inclusion is a good step in the right direction unfortunately I haven’t managed to get it to work. While yes Android audio playback is a bit troublesome, it might be possible. It might have to do with the fact that all my music that is multi-channel are Dolby Atmos EAC3 files in .m4a format. Caldera can’t seem to read the codec but it can identify the bitrate, sample rate, bit depth, and 6 channels and while it says it’s outputting 5,1 my AVR can’t see that. It probably has to do with EAC3 not passthrough properly cause if you try to sideload the plex experience app on the TV and play a Dolby Atmos track it actually plays correctly cause the AVR detects EAC3. If only this was possible to integrate in Caldera.
- Granular Control for Sweet Fades, Pause, Resume and Seek.
Things that I want to see added to Caldera:
I have a lot to say about this but I will save it for another day since It would take too long to type all it down and create the concepts I had in mind.
Bugs I have noticed:
- [UI] Music library button breaks when Library name is too long.
- [UI] “Go to Artist” button is redundant when you can use the existing name for the artist above instead. This is something the new plex tv experience does on it’s album pages and works better.
-
[UI] On the Artist page when scrolling horizontally to see albums, It is cut off at 10 albums and the rest won’t show. The only workaround to get the album is to search it or find it in the library. This is another solution the new experience does well. On the old experience you would need to keep scrolling and this is really rough if your going through a lot of singles so adding a “See all” button solves this.
-
[UI] Press & hold doesn’t work correctly as when you press & hold it doesn’t let you click the option. For example i want to click add to queue but it will click go to artist instead.
- [Audio] Player will randomly get stuck on specific sample range or even trigger the resampler for no reason. The fix was to move to the next track and then back to the previous 2 tracks and then it would fix to the correct sample rate and wouldn’t need to resample either.
-
[Audio] While it is accurately outputting the right sample rate most of the time. It will always convert 24 or 16bit to 32bit. At the same time it has format conversion set to 64bit?
-
[Audio] Playing a new track will sometimes crash the player and stop playback.The fix was to just try the same track again which would get itself resolved after 2 retries.
-
[Visualizer] This new update did stabilize the framerate and resolution for lower end hardware like my Sony X90L to something like 720p 30fps. But the Nvidia Shield might have gotten worse. Before the update it was able to frequently reach 60fps although the resolution was 680p. But in the current update it looks like it’s locked to 30fps and very rarely spikes to 60fps. Also OpenGL might be performing better than Vulkun on the Shield even though it’s set to default. It doesn’t ever manage to go past 30fps and it usually is below 720p as well.
