This is exciting! I'll be watching and looking forward to a release version. :D
Not that I know jack about any of the technical aspects of this but wouldn't transcoding fix any of the incompatibilities that Vizio tvs have?
I know my Vizio is 3 years old and will not play MKV (which is what my entire collection is) but I would think transcoding fixes this.
Perhaps I have the wrong idea of what transcoding is.
I have read that the PS3 Media Server will work with the TV under the Media app, can't verify if that works with MKV or not though.
I know I'm not any help here, but I am excited to see this working!!
Thank you and good luck making it work!!
No, you understand this just fine. But there are 2 parts to it. The transcoder has to understand the media for input, AND be able to output something the TV can understand. The Universal Transcoder can put out several formats, but I haven't yet found any way to get it to dump a simple streamable MP4 format, which is what our older TVs understand. The Generic Transcoder can do it, but after initial testing, I'm almost to the point of tossing it out and not supporting transcoding for the older devices if I can't get the Universal Transcoder to work because the Generic Transcoder is really bad for video, and terribly inefficient. I don't think it was ever developed for or expected to be used much for video, but I don't know for sure (it supports images and other things as well).
Not that I know jack about any of the technical aspects of this but wouldn't transcoding fix any of the incompatibilities that Vizio tvs have?
I know my Vizio is 3 years old and will not play MKV (which is what my entire collection is) but I would think transcoding fixes this.
Perhaps I have the wrong idea of what transcoding is.
I have read that the PS3 Media Server will work with the TV under the Media app, can't verify if that works with MKV or not though.
I know I'm not any help here, but I am excited to see this working!!
Thank you and good luck making it work!!
Sad I can’t help test this but watching. Thanks for your incredible effort to get this out so quickly. Would be interested in seeing/collaborating on the source via GitHub eventually.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk
Still testing. Been finding the same bugs already discovered on the bug report. Been having way better luck on direct play.
Thanks Mike. I got a lot of those bugs already fixed up, just not released yet. Yeah, Direct play works sweet. Transcoding is ugly. Still have to re-visit that battle this week.
I noticed this only once, the first time I exited directly out of crashplayer, that the icon in my hub said return to movie. I could not replicate it. Wanted to test it again because when I returned it started my film over.
I have seen a few weird things if I exit the app using the EXIT button as well. I have it on my list to look at, but I can't reproduce it on the simulator anymore, so I'm hoping I may have inadvertently fixed it.
The bookmark does change when the video is playing to "return to movie" or something similar. Eventually that will also say the name of the movie to return to. I think once I set it up to capture the exit and do some cleanup, this problem will go away as well. I'll see if I can duplicate that issue. You are welcome to open a bug on it if you feel it is worth it. I saw you signed up for the bug tracker.
Also, please feel free to communicate with me at support@crashplayer.com. I figure the entire world doesn't care to see the little details as we work out bugs.
This is AMAZING! On a whim I did a search for this (yahoo connected tv and plex app and came across this thread). I got an xbox one and was holding out hope for an official XB1 app from plex since they have the Win 8 version... but doesn't seem to be in the works from what I can see. I know you say the developer queue is full, but I'd certainly be willing to open up my TV for testing as well if it's ever needed I have the e420i-a0 model. As well, if you need help on the development side, I haven't done any yahoo tv app development, but have programmed a bit for roku and work primarily in PHP (as a web developer) but if I can help, I'd be thrilled to donate time to this cause. Beyond that, I will be happily watching this thread with little tingles of joy at each milestone. :-)
Quick question, will your interface read in the channels section as well? From the few screen shots it looks pretty full featured.
Thanks again for your work!
Hey jusplainmike,
I've spent the entire day digging into that whole exit button thing. Dead end after dead end and road block after road block. Ugh... The framework doesn't inform me in any way when the app is "shutdown". In fact, it isn't really ever shut down. There is an event I can listen for that fires at app shutdown, but all the apps startup when the dock loads and never actually exit until the TV is shutdown. Not helpful. I can listen for a view to be hidden, but that event doesn't fire until I relaunch the app from the dock. Also not very helpful.
I can stop the video playback when the app is restarted, which is something, but the screen that was last active when the Exit button was pressed seems to be present as-is in memory still and doesn't reload when I tell it to activate. None of the normal events fire when it is loaded. It just shows exactly what was on that screen the last time I viewed it. I can't find any way to re-init the view. This is annoying because if you, for example, select a show and a season, then hit exit, then come back in and select a different show, the first show shows up on the screen the first time. Grrrr.... Not a wide use case. But if you are playing a movie when you hit exit, then come back in, the player view is in the same kind of "previous" state where it isn't setup to play things. None of the events register, so the video won't actually play. You have to hit back once, then play again.
I'm gonna have to set this one aside for now. Spent way to much time on it today. Maybe some brilliant idea will come to me in my sleep.
I just released a bug fix version to testers. There is no noticeable new functionality, but there are several bug fixes. I did add a bunch of network and PMS server connectivity handling and tweaked the startup to properly initialize things better. I added connection timeouts. I also put in a change to abort any in-flight network requests if a screen is changed or a new request is sent. This is so that a slow or hanging response doesn't finish after a more recent request and stomp on the results or cause unnecessary delays in the app.
For those interested, the change log can be found here:
http://crashplayer.com/wiki/index.php?title=V0.1.4Changes
Testers, if I don't have your email address, please contact me at support@crashplayer.com so I can stay in communication with you properly. It is hard for me to dig through the forum PMs and figure out who I need to send updates to.
Thanks,
Crash...
Just stumbled upon this thread and have to say I'm excited for the release when it may come. Got a Vizio Smart TV as a Christmas present and would love to be able to use Plex directly through it. I have a Chromecast but my Vizio is hooked up via Ethernet and I'm curious to see how that might affect things.
Sooo, I have a question. I'm still doing some testing of the transcoding options, but I was wondering...
How important is transcoding to you?
Many of the newer vizio devices seem to support most any formats we have thrown at them. The older devices support a smaller set (as I have posted a couple times in this thread).
Would you prefer that I set transcoding aside for now and focus on finishing up a release that only does direct play, or to take a little longer and continue to work on the transcoding so that goes out with the initial release (if I find a way to make it happen well). The testing this week may make the decision easier for me if transcoding happens to work nicely on the newer TVs.
I personally have an older device that doesn't support a ton of formats, but I don't have a very beefy machine setup for my PMS. So in the end, I'll end up manually re-encoding my media anyway, and transcoding won't be that important to me.
Just looking for some opinions on the matter.
Thanks,
Crash...
I say focus on the big picture if you feel like you can stabilize everything else. Save the transcoding for the 2nd release.
I think a first release will be fine without transcoding. It'll give us something to look forward to in the future releases! :)
I agree with the other folks so far. I'd prefer a Direct Play-only release initially if it meant getting the app sooner rather than later.
Crash...
Just came across this thread. Like everyone else, I'm a Plex fanatic. I can't wait to see this for the Vizio. I have an LG TV that comes with a plex client built in and its awesome! I know you have all your testers but If I can help out testing in anyway let me know! I use Plex daily in all kinds of formats.
IMHO.. I agree with the last three. I think the transcoding is not as important as getting it out. I also have the e420i-a0 and it doesn't like both mp4 and mkv. Running it through a DLNA server right now. I will have to do what your doing and physically recode them.
You Rock!! Good Luck!
ATC
Crash...
Just came across this thread. Like everyone else, I'm a Plex fanatic. I can't wait to see this for the Vizio. I have an LG TV that comes with a plex client built in and its awesome! I know you have all your testers but If I can help out testing in anyway let me know! I use Plex daily in all kinds of formats.
IMHO.. I agree with the last three. I think the transcoding is not as important as getting it out. I also have the e420i-a0 and it doesn't like both mp4 and mkv. Running it through a DLNA server right now. I will have to do what your doing and physically recode them.
You Rock!! Good Luck!
ATC
The wide variety of devices and formats out there makes this an interesting challenge. I tested on a e470i-a0 today. It handled mkv just fine, but woudln't handle the mp4s that I have been watching on my own Vizio (an older m550NV). Most people have reported no problems with mkv and mp4 on the newer devices. If I was writing for something like the Roku, there are about 3 devices in a couple different revisions. It is easy to know exactly what everything supports. I'm surprised to find out that you can't play mkv files. I was surprised to find that I couldn't play MP4 files. Of course, it also depends on the video and audio codecs. I am not an expert on audio and video encoding or container formats. I suspect that maybe there are nuances to each format that can cause compatibility problems as well. In other words, maybe an MP4 that is a little different in some way would work on a TV where other MP4s wouldn't. Who knows...
Interesting challenge, anyway.
Great job on the app mate,
I don't think that the problem is with the codec, as much as with the container. My Vizio SV473XVT cant handle mkv files.
Once I convert the container from mkv to mp4, they play fine.
If a a tool like MkvToMp4 is used, there is no transcoding need it and typical time for converting a 3-5GB file is less than 10min, 15-20GB less than 25min.
cheers
lubeto
Great job on the app mate,
I don't think that the problem is with the codec, as much as with the container. My Vizio SV473XVT cant handle mkv files.
Once I convert the container from mkv to mp4, they play fine.
If a a tool like MkvToMp4 is used, there is no transcoding need it and typical time for converting a 3-5GB file is less than 10min, 15-20GB less than 25min.
cheers
lubeto
I agree, but it the variety of support I'm seeing is baffling. I saw a TV yesterday that won't support the MP4s that work on my TV (even though MP4 is one of the 2 guaranteed supported formats), but will play the same media remuxed to MKV. Then another TV of the exact same model but a 42 inch instead of a 47 will play any mkv or mp4s that have been tried on it.
