First off, thank you for developing this. It shows great promise and what little i have been able to test on my Vizio Co-Star, has shown it to be more capable than the Plex for Android app. This question may have been answered, but as I could not find it, I will ask anyways. If I am reading this correctly, this app is based off of the Home Theater Plex Application and as such we should have "context" menus. While I read the section on what keys to press ('C' - long press), I am unable to get my Co-Star Remote (cool one by the way) to work with "long presses". So i guess i have two questions. First, as a user of the Co-Star yourself, are you using the remote/keyboard pad that came with it, or another remote and if so, how long is a "long press". Second, if this is based on the Plex Home Theater Application and has context menus, do we have the option for "Play All", that we only seem to have on the PC Applications and Samsung App? thank you for your time and effort.
This isn't based on the Plex Home Theater, but some of the keyboard commands are similar. The Co-Star long press is funky to say the least. If I remember correctly. You can't hold down the OK button like you would think you could to get the long press to work. You have to move the mouse pointer over the item, and then hold down the dash key on the front side of the remote. That should give you the long press functionality. Vizio messed up the remote mappings according to the google developers I talked to about this.
If the 'C' key isn't working, I can take a look and see what is wrong.
I currently now use a Sony second gen device as my Co Star died and needed one quick. Been very happy with that device as it natively decodes AC-3 audio, which unfortnately the co star didn't do. I still like the remote better though on the Co-Star.
Currently there is not a Play All functionality, but I'm working on a Video/Audio queue system where you can create Playlists for the media, and will have an option when complete to Play All in either Music or Video categories. Basically it'll create a Playlist of all the episodes for a show, and then have the Queue play them back. Keep an eye out here for the 1.3.x developer versions for testing when they are ready.
Thank you for the quick reply. Sorry for the misunderstanding on the home theater bit. I will certainly try the “-” key and see if long press starts working. I looked into the sony next gen as I have the older bluray model, but could not justify the cost without dts support. I will continue to look for updates. Thank you.
This provides basic music playback for Album Tracks, and some performance improvements for tablet and google tv users when navigating the various gallery views. Also, Manifest restrictions have been loosened to allow XHDPI phones to install the app through the play store. This doesn't affect test users who can always sideload the app on any device.
1.3.0 has been released to the play store. 1.3.0-M5 is available for free download off the projects web site. It is functionally equivalent to what was released.
CoStar is on network (able to download from playstore).
Plex server is up and running (can access it from Galaxy S4)
When I go in to Serenity, I don't get the option to scan (DLNA is enabled) so I manually put the plex server IP in. I'm not getting any options in Serenity other than Settings and Options. I installed aVia if an external player is required (is MX Player available for GTV, I don't see it in the play store).
I have all of 3 hours experience with GTV, so not sure what I may have missed.
CoStar is on network (able to download from playstore).
Plex server is up and running (can access it from Galaxy S4)
When I go in to Serenity, I don't get the option to scan (DLNA is enabled) so I manually put the plex server IP in. I'm not getting any options in Serenity other than Settings and Options. I installed aVia if an external player is required (is MX Player available for GTV, I don't see it in the play store).
I have all of 3 hours experience with GTV, so not sure what I may have missed.
Thanks.
Are you sure you have the correct IP address for the server entered. See the following FAQ for some troubleshooting, if you can access the Web interface via the ip address you need to use the same IP address. Also by default you need to have a Movies or TV Shows library setup on Plex, if you only have a Music Library you will need to enable the Music Library.
MX Player isn't in GTV. You can also try ViMu, but that is only needed if you want to use some of the advanced functionality that ViMu provides. First we need to figure out why your Menu options aren't showing.
Here is the trouble shooting section, we'll need XML files suggested to debug further.
Are you sure you have the correct IP address for the server entered. See the following FAQ for some troubleshooting, if you can access the Web interface via the ip address you need to use the same IP address. Also by default you need to have a Movies or TV Shows library setup on Plex, if you only have a Music Library you will need to enable the Music Library.
MX Player isn't in GTV. You can also try ViMu, but that is only needed if you want to use some of the advanced functionality that ViMu provides. First we need to figure out why your Menu options aren't showing.
Here is the trouble shooting section, we'll need XML files suggested to debug further.
Serenity client on Vizio CoStar does not find (?)/display movies.
Yes, it is configured for movies (as well as music and photos)
FYI, I am using a different port outside my firewall, but it is port-forwarding to 32400 and Serenity shouldn't be looking at the outside info anyway (configured for internal IP's).
I can access the /servers et al from the server itself. Do you want that content posted here?
I use it on Minix Neo X5 where it works perfectly.
A lot easier to in than XBMC + PlexBMC especially with an external player -> very nice app.
Some wish for future improvements:
- Watch status is not visible and you have to go on the movie/show to see it. I would preferred the "bullet" & "half bullet" for partially seen shows display on each thumbnail like Plex client or at least a "V" like PlexBMC.
- Actually if we use external Player the “half watched” status is not updated, it is always the full watched one even if we do not finish the movie/show. Probably difficult to implement with an external player but it should be a nicer improvement.
- Is that possible to support BS Player as well, not only MX ?
I use it on Minix Neo X5 where it works perfectly.
A lot easier to in than XBMC + PlexBMC especially with an external player -> very nice app.
Thanks. Appreciate it.
Some wish for future improvements:
- Watch status is not visible and you have to go on the movie/show to see it. I would preferred the "bullet" & "half bullet" for partially seen shows display on each thumbnail like Plex client or at least a "V" like PlexBMC.
- Actually if we use external Player the “half watched” status is not updated, it is always the full watched one even if we do not finish the movie/show. Probably difficult to implement with an external player but it should be a nicer improvement.
It is something I'm looking at addressing in the 1.3.x maintainenace releases. I've pushed some minor UI updates yesterday to add the Resume Offset time in the internal player, and will be looking at the indicators for shows that haven't been completely watched but partially. As it is now there is no distinction between a partially watched show and one that has been completely watched.
MX Player is the only player I know currrently that returns the last played position back to a calling activity once it completes playing. So MX Player would be the only one that can support this as far as I know.
- Is that possible to support BS Player as well, not only MX ?
With the 1.3.0 version if you turn off the Force MX Player Resume functionality, and you don't have MX Player set as your default Video Player it will prompt you for which video player to use. You should be able to use BS Player, VLC, MX Player, or any other external player that can support the video and audio format you are trying to play. If you have a default video player set for the entire system it will use that one every time.
Many thanks for your answer. I know, probably I ask too much, but the watched status on each movie/TV show season & TV show episode is very important at my eyes, so we could see what episode/movie is still not shown in blink instead of browsing each one by itself.
In addition, some look improvements (from my point of view only)
I would prefer to have only one background at the main menu possibly customisable. Because changing from one to other option is disappointing, it flash too much.
I would also for TV show episodes the panel view like Plex Aeon or Amber skins. It is more efficient to walk through.
I probably ask too much, but there are perhaps other people around who think like me.
Nope not asking too much, the features you listed are on my todo list, but right now I'm the only one working on the app and I work on it part time in the evenings and weekends. I'm working on some cosmetic changes right now for the app, so will see what can be done about the watch indicator. Maybe I can overlay the time left or duration information over the image to help indicate how much time is left?
I know your app, is raising a lot of interest, the only one around that can be installed on stb without any knowledge, and which work properly with or without an external player.
For information only,
Actually, I run into some issues with video having a Video bitrate / Audio bitrate ratio > 9. It seems there is a kind of bug in Android drivers because this issue appears on each Android device I own and even on my new Samsung TV but not on older device such O!Play or my old LG TV via DLNA. Therefore, I am trying to find the best player for that. It seems that BS player handle a little bit better these kind of files but only via SMB, because when use PlexBMC or Serenity I run on these same issues. Anyway, for the time being, more that 90% of my videos work well with serenity and MX player.
I would like to make a suggestion. Could it be set up so that it can resolve domain addresses to for connections? For those of us that do use plex in a moble fashion this would allow connection back to a domain address that is updated whenever the IP address changes.
Possibly but without transcoding the bandwidth usage is not going to be ideal for mobile use. I haven’t tried it yet but you may be able to enter the domain address in the preferred address field instead of the ip address.
Possibly but without transcoding the bandwidth usage is not going to be ideal for mobile use. I haven't tried it yet but you may be able to enter the domain address in the preferred address field instead of the ip address.
For my application that works fine as most often where I am has Wifi and I direct play my media anyway.
Currently I set my phone as a wifi AP where public high speed wifi is unavailable and stream to my tablet anyway (6GB of data to use up). I have yet to hit 1GB on my DATA plan to date.
I have tried setting the domain address. Serenity seems to choke on it (Freeze) and I end up having to clear data in my settings to get it functional again.
I'll see if I can get it working during the 1.4.0 development. Once I have something for you to test, we can work through it on the bug report. Source code is also available so if you know any programming at all you can also take a look and try and provide a patch as well.
No problem. Bug and features requests are always needed. Screen shots of the app running on different devices. Testing and language localization are always needed as well. Lots of ways to help am open source project.
