Fire TV - Why can't I choose bitrate and resoltion?

[stephen_hill 35]

Hi

I tried searching the forum for an answer but I couldn't find one.

In a web browser, an iPad, and my Android phone, I can click the cog icon and change both the bitrate and resolution of the video - perfect.

However, I have a slightly older Amazon Fire TV (2nd Gen) in my bedroom connected to a 24" 1080P display. Clicking on the cog icon only allows me to select the bitrate, not the resolution.

Is there a reason why resolution is not available?

I ask because it appear that when my server transcodes 4K content, it keeps the content at 4K, just reduces the bit rate. It would be much better for this slightly older Fire TV if the video was converted to 1080P (or 720P). It seems to struggle when the content is 4K, regardless of the bitrate.

Cheers
Stephen

[Luke 37099]

Hi, have you explored the playback settings in the app?

[rbjtech 4284]

4 hours ago, stephen_hill said:

Hi

I tried searching the forum for an answer but I couldn't find one.

In a web browser, an iPad, and my Android phone, I can click the cog icon and change both the bitrate and resolution of the video - perfect.

However, I have a slightly older Amazon Fire TV (2nd Gen) in my bedroom connected to a 24" 1080P display. Clicking on the cog icon only allows me to select the bitrate, not the resolution.

Is there a reason why resolution is not available?

I ask because it appear that when my server transcodes 4K content, it keeps the content at 4K, just reduces the bit rate. It would be much better for this slightly older Fire TV if the video was converted to 1080P (or 720P). It seems to struggle when the content is 4K, regardless of the bitrate.

Cheers
Stephen

I think you'll find that the resolution is automatically reduced as a consequence of reducing the bitrate.

In your case, it will be reduced to 1080p - or lower if you have reduced the bitrate to less than 8Mbit

[stephen_hill 35]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, have you explored the playback settings in the app?

@Lukeyes. It only allows you to set the bitrate. See attached.

 

[stephen_hill 35]

2 hours ago, rbjtech said:

I think you'll find that the resolution is automatically reduced as a consequence of reducing the bitrate.

In your case, it will be reduced to 1080p - or lower if you have reduced the bitrate to less than 8Mbit

Yes you are right, the resolution is automatically reduced - I did not notice this before.

However, I would still like to choose the resolution and bitrate.

What I don't understand is that both options are available in many other Emby apps, but not the Fire TV app. A decision was made to only allow selecting bitrate and I'm wondering why this is.

I think resolution is also important if the 4k content is under my selected bitrate. Most of my 4k content is under 8mbps, so I assume this would direct play. And this older fire tv stick struggles.

If I could set 1080P 4mbps as an upper bound, then I know that 4K content will never direct play or transcoded to a lower 4K bitrate.

Would it be possible to allow selecting Resolution and bitrate, like it is in many other appa and devices?

Thanks

[ebr 14925]

Hi.  Can you try sideloading our standard android app on the same device and see how that compares?

https://emby.media/emby-for-android.html

Thanks.

 

[stephen_hill 35]

A quick follow up. It appears that, even if you can pick resolution and bitrate on other devices, it isn't honored.

I chose 1080P 4mbps and watched a 4K 6mbps movie. The transcoding log shows the  resolution was reduced to 720x300.

[stephen_hill 35]

7 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Can you try sideloading our standard android app on the same device and see how that compares?

https://emby.media/emby-for-android.html

Thanks.

 

Thanks. I will give that a try tomorrow evening and report back.

[rbjtech 4284]

You may want to do some research on resolutions vs bitrate - 6Mbps @ 4K resolution is far too low and will just be a macroblocking mess during fast moving scenes - it would be much better to play this at 1080p (where it's still under the recommended bitrate of 8Mbps) or even 720p (which is ok) and let the TV upscale it.

 

[stephen_hill 35]

@rbjtech

Thanks, over the next couple of weeks I will take a more detailed look at the problem I'm experiencing with this Fire TV stick.

Initially it appeared that any 4K content that was transcoded above 2mbps, would stutter during playback - or not play at all. (The server was transcoding at over 100fps, and the Wifi is capable of over 100mbps). Any other content, transcoded or otherwise played fine. I had assumed, because resolution was not selectable in the Fire TV app, that the resolution was being maintained during transcoding and was the cause of the issue. Obviously not the case.

On a related note for the Emby developers, I do now feel that maybe resolution should be remove as an option from all devices, as this is clearly not being honored.

However, the is a downside with that is that less technical users will probably not understand bitrates. Anecdotally, I would say my non-technical users of Emby understand resolutions (1080P, 4K, UHD) but wouldn't have a clue what bitrates are. (I'm including my wife, daughter, and grand parents as non-technical users)

Maybe the list of bitrates/resolutions could be configured on the server. For example, the quality option is just "HD" but the server knows that to be "1080P @ 4mbps".

Anyway, thanks for all your help so far.

Cheers

Stephen

 

 

[rbjtech 4284]

5 minutes ago, stephen_hill said:

@rbjtech

Thanks, over the next couple of weeks I will take a more detailed look at the problem I'm experiencing with this Fire TV stick.

Initially it appeared that any 4K content that was transcoded above 2mbps, would stutter during playback - or not play at all. (The server was transcoding at over 100fps, and the Wifi is capable of over 100mbps). Any other content, transcoded or otherwise played fine. I had assumed, because resolution was not selectable in the Fire TV app, that the resolution was being maintained during transcoding and was the cause of the issue. Obviously not the case.

On a related note for the Emby developers, I do now feel that maybe resolution should be remove as an option from all devices, as this is clearly not being honored.

However, the is a downside with that is that less technical users will probably not understand bitrates. Anecdotally, I would say my non-technical users of Emby understand resolutions (1080P, 4K, UHD) but wouldn't have a clue what bitrates are. (I'm including my wife, daughter, and grand parents as non-technical users)

Maybe the list of bitrates/resolutions could be configured on the server. For example, the quality option is just "HD" but the server knows that to be "1080P @ 4mbps".

Anyway, thanks for all your help so far.

Cheers

Stephen

 

 

Yep - this has come up before - the use of just HD, FHD (maybe) and UHD is probably all that really needs to exist - or maybe even Good, Better or 'Best Available' to keep things really non-technical. 

Edited October 19, 2022 by rbjtech

[stephen_hill 35]

I've come to the conclusion that the 2018 2nd Gen Amazon Fire TV Stick is simply not capable of high bitrates (> 5mbps), either that, or my device is faulty.

I've tried side loading the Android version and the app crashes when I press play.

I think I'll have to buy a 4K stick.

Edited October 20, 2022 by stephen_hill

[stephen_hill 35]

Well, there has been 1 more development this evening. I changed the USB power supply to my Fire TV Stick.

Now I can stream at close to 20mbps without stuttering, comfortably at 10mbps.

Obviously the stick was not able to draw enough power, but now can.

One to remember.

[Luke 37099]

10 minutes ago, stephen_hill said:

Well, there has been 1 more development this evening. I changed the USB power supply to my Fire TV Stick.

Now I can stream at close to 20mbps without stuttering, comfortably at 10mbps.

Obviously the stick was not able to draw enough power, but now can.

One to remember.

Well that's very interesting. Thanks for the update.