BBC iPlayer 4k support in time for the World cup?

[ajwool]

So, will we finally get Bbc iPlayer support in time for the World Cup? Announcement coming imminently:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/bbc-4k-hdr-world-cup-confirmation-week-away

[rod_hull]

Reposting this again since it was originally flagged as "spam" - not sure how trying to help fellow enthusiasts is spam, when Sony aren't giving us the software support we all deserve from our expensive ATVs...

Anyway:

I have succesfully got the UHD streams running DIRECTLY on my XD93 (which is not officially supported) - I had to use Kodi Leia alpha2 however and the third-party iPlayer addon, so YMMV. By the way, this will also enable the Wimbledon streams...

Streams on my panel certainly look to be playing in HLG HDR (and the correct BT.2020 colour space) - my XD93 is forced into HDR Video mode when the streams are playing - but beware you will have to fiddle a bit to get all this working - if you don't know how to sideload .apks, use Kodi, get a .zip file into your ATV or install Kodi addons from .zip, etc then this is not for you...

General Instructions:

• First, sideload the Kodi Leia alpha2 .apk on your TV - I tend to upload .apks to my Google Drive and then use the X-Plore file manager (in the ATV Play Store) to download/sideload.

• In Kodi's add-ons settings, make sure you enable the built-in InputStream Adaptive addon (it will likely be disabled "out of the box") - also in its settings, you should change the stream selection to "manual" which will allow you to pick during playback between the 1080p, 14400 and 2160p streams depending on capability of your panel/connection speed.

• Next, install from .zip the latest beta of the iplayer www add-on 

• Finally, configure the iplayer www addon's setting to use the DASH and not HLS streams.

When you open the iplayer www add-on in Kodi, you can now pick the UHD World Cup trial streams from the top.

It should offer 5x streams to choose from - 1-4 appear to be the various streams showing live matches (and are also co-opted to broadcast Wimbledon matches if they are currently streaming) and 5 is always the looping FA Cup demo stream. It will depend each day which ones are active and which are not.

During playback, open the video settings and you can change the stream between 1080p, 1440p and 2160p.

On my XD93 with a very quick test last night, the 1080p and 1440p were playing back perfectly, whilst the 2160p stutters - pretty sure it's not bandwidth related, so it's likely a lack of optimisation of the hardware acceleration within Leia itself.

[Kuschelmonschter]

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@rod_hull  schrieb:

On my XD93 with a very quick test last night, the 1080p and 1440p were playing back perfectly, whilst the 2160p stutters - pretty sure it's not bandwidth related, so it's likely a lack of optimisation of the hardware acceleration within Leia itself.

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Kodi indeed isn't the most optimized video player for Sony Android TV. It for example:

- decodes audio in software, MediaCodec Audio is blacklisted for MediaTek devices due to issues

- does not take advantage of tunneled video playback

You could still try to optimize buffers in Kodi, see here.

Would also be interesting to monitor CPU usage. This requires the TV to be put into developer mode, connect via ADB shell and execute the `top -m 5 -d 1` command.

[ScrattyTV]

When you say you have successfully got this working on your XD93, how many people are going to want to try this bearing in mind the picture is stuttering anyway. I can understand why you are trying but it sounds like such a lot of work for so little reward. I guess as Sony seems to be dragging their heels on getting this working (if it's possible)  somebody needs to try something. By the time we get it working the World Cup will be over unfortunately. Will stick with my Roku+ for now. 

[rod_hull]

@ScrattyTV - I can't confirm that others experience will be the same - thought I'd just confirm it was working at least on my XD93 so others who are similarly minded might give it a try.

Even the 1080p and 1440p streams are easily better than the Freeview HD 1080 broadcast...the HDR makes a big difference so already I've profited.

I will try tweaking further to see if 2160p playback improves and maybe try looking at resource usage. I was getting some visible buffering at least once as it re-filled the cache, but the stuttering was happening during 2160p stream playback - almost like the framerate was incorrect, CPU usage too high, or motionflow was messing with things (I tried disabling MF and choosing a few other modes there and nothing helped, adjust refresh rate in Kodi is on) - I am leaning on the CPU being too weak (or h/w decoding of the stream not fully implemented). Shame that SPMC development has been halted - would have been nice to have Leia optimized for ATV (I understand that you have to be using Leia to take advantage of these UHD DASH streams).

To be honest, it was very little effort for me (I am quite experienced with Android hacking on other devices, and have other Kodi players about the place so know it too very well).

Probably took me <5mins all in to get it going...

[Therealsh]

I'm using Kodi as well on my XE93. 2160p w/o any stuttering. Have a buffer at the beginning, and that's it for most of the cases. No tweaks of buffers on Kodi. I'm using rather than iplayer www, an STRM file I created to direct to these DASH streams.

Had once, on the final whistle right after England's penalties, that there was a stutter (probably even my ATV thought this can't be true ...), so I just restarted the stream and came alright.

If you're fine with a minute delay on stream (i.e. you don't have neighbours shouting GOAL a min before you...) - this is way better to watch football and tennis.

[rod_hull]

The XE93 has the Mediatek MT5891 (quad-core A53)

The XD93 has the Mediatek MT5890 (dual-core A17)

...so not surprised there is superior performance there.

I bet that's why my XD93 stutters - will still be interesting to see if it can be tweaked of course...

[jan.hansen957]

Is there a way to buffer a few minutes so that the mpd file in kodi will be played without lag? I’ve also tried this on a s912 box with 3 GB ram patched with ATV 7.1 rom and 1gbit network. My problem is that I reside in Norway. Guess my DNS server (spoof/vpn) is too slow.

17mbit 4k stream from foxsports Hisense app works ok. Some stuttering on my XD80, but flawless on Mi Box.

[Kuschelmonschter]

The XE93 has the Mediatek MT5891 (quad-core A53)

The XD93 has the Mediatek MT5890 (dual-core A17)

...so not surprised there is superior performance there.

Why would you say that? Because 53 is a bigger number than 17? In fact, the A53 is a so-called LITTLE core of the current ARM CPU generation, while A17 is a BIG core of the previous generation. An A17 is about twice as fast as an A53 running at the same clock frequency, also see here.

And don't tell me now that A53 is 64-bit. Totally useless as Sony deploys a 32-bit OS. It is total bull***** that MT5891 is so much faster than MT5890.

[lukejohnson]

Great post this Rob thanks for trying to help out.

Can you confirm if you downloaded the 32bit or 64bit version of Kodi to your google drive for install on you Sony ATV?

[Kuschelmonschter]

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@lukejohnson  schrieb:

Great post this Rob thanks for trying to help out.

Can you confirm if you downloaded the 32bit or 64bit version of Kodi to your google drive for install on you Sony ATV?

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It has to be 32-bit as the OS on Sony is 32-bit.