(2014-06-03, 17:24)rushingjs Wrote:

(2014-06-03, 15:26)indigest Wrote: I have been playing with a Fire TV for about a week, but I'm not satisfied with the software decoding of MPEG-2. The device is most likely getting returned unless I can figure something out. I've tried Gotham 13.0, 13.1 RC1, and SPMC 12.4.2. They all have provided a similar experience for me in terms of video decoding.

I have tried MPEG-2 with 1080i and 720p with all combinations of libstagefright, MediaCodec, software decoding, and multithreading. The best one is libstagefright only, but I'm still not satisfied with it. It seems that the CPU cannot keep up with high bitrate (>12Mbps) streams and I get dropped frames. Lower bitrate streams are also unacceptable as they appear slightly jerky and they are not de-interlaced (where applicable). 480p MPEG-2 videos look perfect, but I don't care about those. H.264 videos also look perfect, but most of my content is MPEG-2.

I have enabled buffermode=1 and 100MB buffer in my advancedsettings.xml and have confirmed that the dropped frames are not occurring due to network congestion.

I'm comparing the video quality to my Nexus 4 or a PC with hardware acceleration for MPEG-2. On those devices, the MPEG-2 decoding is excellent.

I'm disappointed because Fire TV seems like a perfect device for me with the exception of lack of hardware acceleration for MPEG-2. Now, I'm planning to watch closely what happens with the Android TV announcement at the end of this month.

Anybody else have issues with high bitrate, HD MPEG2 video? Earlier in the thread I saw some users state that HD MPEG2 worked fine with software decoding. I would potentially be using the AFT to play 1080i ATSC video from a mythtv PVR backend, so this is critical for me before I decide to buy this device.

(2014-06-03, 16:10)logan_x50 Wrote: ...thanks this is very enlightening...and yet I think mediacodec is advised to be disabled on XBMC+AFTV. Is that incorrect advice?

(2014-06-03, 17:24)rushingjs Wrote: Anybody else have issues with high bitrate, HD MPEG2 video? Earlier in the thread I saw some users state that HD MPEG2 worked fine with software decoding. I would potentially be using the AFT to play 1080i ATSC video from a mythtv PVR backend, so this is critical for me before I decide to buy this device.

(2014-06-03, 07:43)wunderdrug Wrote:

(2014-06-02, 18:55)navigates Wrote: Thanks for the reply and sorry for writing back late.
With a sftp server do the trick with rewind forward etc? I'm thinking of
www.coreftp.com/server/

Are there any other free recommended?

Hi. I guess you are running Windows, eh? I guess I just assumed
you were running some *nix variant (like Linux) since you mentioned
Samba and not SMB/CIFS/Windows Share (Samba is actually the
open-source implementation of the Microsoft SMB/CIFS protocol
for *nix type systems).

Anyway, I'm using a Linux server so basically OpenSSH is the "default".
I really don't have one I can recommend for Windows. Maybe someone
else can help you with that. I have used OpenSSH via Cygwin on Windows
in the past, but I would not recommend it if you are not familiar with *nix
(as it is a bit of an ordeal to setup since it's basically an *nix environment for
Windows).

I can say that CoreFTP is not the solution you are looking for. What you
linked is an FTP/SFTP client. What you want is a server implementation.
Your XBMC will be the client (which has SFTP support built-in).

(2014-06-03, 19:28)Packetcrypt Wrote: I am a FireTV fan now !! I find the unit is extremely responsive and XBMC performs very well on it. It definitely performs better then the new M8 AmLogic box I have. I was also very impressed with some of the games and the fact that the standard remote actually works well to play many of them. Problem with Android boxes is that stock remotes are pretty much useless for anything other then XBMC. Would be so cool to have the voice commands working with XBMC !!

(2014-06-03, 17:47)sadboy Wrote: Well the cmyth pvr on FireTV worked out of the box for me since at least 13.0rc1 (on libstagefright). Playing 1080i Fios TV, no dropped frames or de-interlacing problems (don't really know how to look for that), actually no discernable visual differences between FireTV and my core-i7 desktop or xeon server. Or maybe it's just all the channels I watched are all super-low bitrate.

(2014-06-03, 17:47)sadboy Wrote:

(2014-06-03, 17:24)rushingjs Wrote:

(2014-06-03, 15:26)indigest Wrote: I have been playing with a Fire TV for about a week, but I'm not satisfied with the software decoding of MPEG-2. The device is most likely getting returned unless I can figure something out. I've tried Gotham 13.0, 13.1 RC1, and SPMC 12.4.2. They all have provided a similar experience for me in terms of video decoding.

I have tried MPEG-2 with 1080i and 720p with all combinations of libstagefright, MediaCodec, software decoding, and multithreading. The best one is libstagefright only, but I'm still not satisfied with it. It seems that the CPU cannot keep up with high bitrate (>12Mbps) streams and I get dropped frames. Lower bitrate streams are also unacceptable as they appear slightly jerky and they are not de-interlaced (where applicable). 480p MPEG-2 videos look perfect, but I don't care about those. H.264 videos also look perfect, but most of my content is MPEG-2.

I have enabled buffermode=1 and 100MB buffer in my advancedsettings.xml and have confirmed that the dropped frames are not occurring due to network congestion.

I'm comparing the video quality to my Nexus 4 or a PC with hardware acceleration for MPEG-2. On those devices, the MPEG-2 decoding is excellent.

I'm disappointed because Fire TV seems like a perfect device for me with the exception of lack of hardware acceleration for MPEG-2. Now, I'm planning to watch closely what happens with the Android TV announcement at the end of this month.

Anybody else have issues with high bitrate, HD MPEG2 video? Earlier in the thread I saw some users state that HD MPEG2 worked fine with software decoding. I would potentially be using the AFT to play 1080i ATSC video from a mythtv PVR backend, so this is critical for me before I decide to buy this device.

Well the cmyth pvr on FireTV worked out of the box for me since at least 13.0rc1 (on libstagefright). Playing 1080i Fios TV, no dropped frames or de-interlacing problems (don't really know how to look for that), actually no discernable visual differences between FireTV and my core-i7 desktop or xeon server. Or maybe it's just all the channels I watched are all super-low bitrate.

(2014-06-03, 23:42)wunderdrug Wrote: I tried a 1080i 29.97fps MPEG2 TS @ 17Mbps and had no issues. No frame drops
and quality was excellent. Connected via 100Mbps Ethernet (not wireless). Although,
CPU usage was pretty high -- peaking at around 90% on all four cores.

(2014-06-03, 20:38)WDB1234 Wrote: Do you get smooth playback when fast forwarding or rewinding? I have not played with any advanced settings but out of the Box my S802 box works great when skipping ahead and my Fire TV does not.

(2014-06-03, 20:58)indigest Wrote:

(2014-06-03, 17:47)sadboy Wrote: Well the cmyth pvr on FireTV worked out of the box for me since at least 13.0rc1 (on libstagefright). Playing 1080i Fios TV, no dropped frames or de-interlacing problems (don't really know how to look for that), actually no discernable visual differences between FireTV and my core-i7 desktop or xeon server. Or maybe it's just all the channels I watched are all super-low bitrate.

I'm on Comcast and using HD Homerun Prime with MythTV backend. My highest datarate stream is probably ESPN, coming in at around 15Mbps. Jerky playback is especially evident on this channel due to the presence of the scrolling ticker at the bottom. The lack of de-interlacing shows up as subtle horizontal lines.

You can view the video bitrate by plugging in a keyboard and typing 'o'. This will also show you any dropped or skipped frames as well as the buffering status. In my case, the drop number continually ramps up on high bitrate MPEG2 videos. I see the CPU usage on CPU0, CPU1, CPU2 vary between 50%-75%. Strangely, it seems to stay high even when paused.

Does my CPU usage seem normal to someone who has AFTV working with MPEG2? Maybe I got a bad device or some other setting/program is consuming my CPU.

(2014-06-04, 00:14)indigest Wrote:

(2014-06-03, 23:42)wunderdrug Wrote: I tried a 1080i 29.97fps MPEG2 TS @ 17Mbps and had no issues. No frame drops
and quality was excellent. Connected via 100Mbps Ethernet (not wireless). Although,
CPU usage was pretty high -- peaking at around 90% on all four cores.

Hmm, it seems everyone else has AFTV working well with HD MPEG2 streams. I will try a factory reset and load Gotham 13.1 RC1 and give it another try. I'll also try transferring a test video to the device to rule out any connectivity issues.

(2014-06-04, 00:29)elmerohueso Wrote: Which S802 box do you have?

(2014-06-04, 04:59)WDB1234 Wrote:

(2014-06-04, 00:29)elmerohueso Wrote: Which S802 box do you have?

The box it came in says "TT TV Box"