Hisense TV with Google TV - video does not play

[mleblanc 1]

I bought a new Hisense 4K TV on Black Friday.  It has Google TV built-in, and I'm now using it everyday to stream some content.  Everything looked good until I tried to play some media from my Emby server.  All of the media appears correctly in the Emby menus on the Hisense TV, just as it does when using Emby on another TV with a Chromecast with Google TV,  but when I try to play or resume a video, most media does not start to play, and just shows the initial frame of the video and never progresses any further.  I say "most media", because I found that a few old videos that I have encoded in 480p do seem to play normally, such as the first Shrek movie.

As a temporary work-around, I installed a minidlna server on my Ubuntu media server, and found that the Hisense pre-installed Media Player app can play all of the media that I've tested using the minidlna server.

I did a test so that I could capture the server logs to post here.  I started playing an episode of Stargate SG-1 (season 4, ep 13) called The Curse.  I first started playing the episode on my older TV with a Chromecast, using Emby, and paused the episode midway.  Note that the Chromecast shows as using Android 12 in the logs.  I closed that Emby app, and turned off the Chromecast.

I then opened Emby on the Hisense TV (shows as using Android 11).  The opening screen correctly showed that I had paused Stargate SG-1 S04E13, The Curse, and gave me the option to continue watching.  I selected Resume, and as before, the video shows only the static frame where I paused the episode, and plays no further.  I checked the logs in the web interface, and noticed that I was running an older version of Emby server 4.5.2.0, so I updated the server to the latest for Ubuntu x64, 4.7.11.0.  A little after midnight, the Emby server restarted, and I repeated the test, with the same result:  I see only the frame where I pause the episode.  I'm attaching the server logs from the web interface for just the new server, with my attempt to start the video "The Curse" at:

Quote

2023-01-17 00:09:55.823 Info SessionManager: Playback start reported by app AndroidTv 2.0.83g playing The Curse. Started at 1546560 ms

Any suggestions on why most of my videos remain frozen at the first frame when using Emby on the Hisense?

 

embyserver.txt

[GrimReaper 3309]

You can try sideloading standard Android app from here:

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

and see how does that compare? 

 

[ebr 14930]

Hi.  Can you please play that item for a few seconds and then follow the instructions to send a log from the app?

 

[mleblanc 1]

4 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Can you please play that item for a few seconds and then follow the instructions to send a log from the app?

 

I just tried resuming the SG-1 episode The Curse, at about 11:40am PST (2:40pm EST), as user mleblanc.  I then did "Send Logs".

As before, the video shows the first frame, then stays frozen.

I'll try the sideload suggestion a little later.

[ebr 14930]

Hmmm.... I'm not sure.  There is no indication of any problem in that log.  From the app/player's perspective, the item is playing.

Did the resume point change?

If you use the "Playback Correction" feature in the cog menu, does it fix it?

[mleblanc 1]

5 hours ago, ebr said:

Hmmm.... I'm not sure.  There is no indication of any problem in that log.  From the app/player's perspective, the item is playing.

Did the resume point change?

If you use the "Playback Correction" feature in the cog menu, does it fix it?

I checked a few times, but I'm not able to find any option resembling Playback Correction in the Android app settings.

[mleblanc 1]

15 hours ago, GrimReaper said:

You can try sideloading standard Android app from here:

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

and see how does that compare? 

 

I downloaded the arm7 version of Emby for Android to a USB stick, and installed it to my Hisense TV.  The results seem worse than the Android TV version, in that I wasn't able to play any of the videos.  This sideloaded Android version isn't registered, so I tried using "play for one minute", which I assume would let me test the playback.  Every video I try is frozen on the first frame.

I found that for both the Android TV version and the Android version, I can still fast-forward and rewind to different points in the video, but all I ever see is one frame from the point I jump to.

[GrimReaper 3309]

1 hour ago, mleblanc said:

I checked a few times, but I'm not able to find any option resembling Playback Correction in the Android app settings.

In AndroidTV app, bring up OSD during playback (press Down on remote), "Playback correction" is located under cog icon (lower right).

[mleblanc 1]

3 hours ago, GrimReaper said:

In AndroidTV app, bring up OSD during playback (press Down on remote), "Playback correction" is located under cog icon (lower right).

Thanks, that helped me find the option.  Enabling the option from a frozen screen made it advance a few frames, then freeze again.  Each time I fast-forward a bit, a get a few frames of movement, then frozen again.  I guess that counts as progress.  

[GrimReaper 3309]

6 minutes ago, mleblanc said:

Thanks, that helped me find the option.  Enabling the option from a frozen screen made it advance a few frames, then freeze again.  Each time I fast-forward a bit, a get a few frames of movement, then frozen again.  I guess that counts as progress.  

Play the item again, select Playback correction once (that'll trigger remux) and then select it again (that'll trigger transcoding), see how does that compare. 

[mleblanc 1]

43 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

Play the item again, select Playback correction once (that'll trigger remux) and then select it again (that'll trigger transcoding), see how does that compare. 

Interesting!  Selecting Playback Correction twice while paused allows the video to play!  Now if I stop the playback and try to resume, I have to repeat the Playback Correction twice again.

[ebr 14930]

How were these videos created?

[mleblanc 1]

7 hours ago, ebr said:

How were these videos created?

These are downloaded.  I'm attaching the playback info from both the frozen state (trying to direct play the original), and the transcoded stream that results from using Playback Correction twice during playback, in case this has useful information.

[mleblanc 1]

On 1/17/2023 at 10:55 PM, mleblanc said:

Interesting!  Selecting Playback Correction twice while paused allows the video to play!  Now if I stop the playback and try to resume, I have to repeat the Playback Correction twice again.

I'd be interested in settings to enable transcoding by default for this Emby player app, but I couldn't see any options.

I tried two other work-arounds that both worked well:

• Enable the DLNA server in Emby.  I can then use the pre-installed Media Player app while retaining the Emby organization of media files.
• I tried installing JellyFin as a comparison, and that worked smoothly with default settings.  I'd rather use Emby though, if possible.

I'd be interested in any other suggestions of things to try.

[Luke 37116]

On 1/17/2023 at 9:07 PM, mleblanc said:

I downloaded the arm7 version of Emby for Android to a USB stick, and installed it to my Hisense TV.  The results seem worse than the Android TV version, in that I wasn't able to play any of the videos.  This sideloaded Android version isn't registered, so I tried using "play for one minute", which I assume would let me test the playback.  Every video I try is frozen on the first frame.

I found that for both the Android TV version and the Android version, I can still fast-forward and rewind to different points in the video, but all I ever see is one frame from the point I jump to.

Can you try this again? We posted a new build yesterday with an updated video player. Thanks.

[mleblanc 1]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Can you try this again? We posted a new build yesterday with an updated video player. Thanks.

This version worked a little better than the previous Android version, in that it was able to play my 480p Shrek.avi, although playback wasn't very smooth.  For the SG-1 episode The Curse, the result was the same as the Android TV version - I can FF and RW, but I only see a single frame from the play/resume point.  I tried selecting a different playback bitrate from the playback cog menu, but wasn't able to get it to play.

[victor@vialy.com 9]

Got this exact problem.

Rolled back to emby 4.7.10 and worked again.

Of course, all transcoded. No direct playing because stuttering playback of audio/video

 

 

[Luke 37116]

2 hours ago, victor@vialy.com said:

Got this exact problem.

Rolled back to emby 4.7.10 and worked again.

Of course, all transcoded. No direct playing because stuttering playback of audio/video

 

 

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.

 

[victor@vialy.com 9]

1 hour ago, Luke 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.

 

I have them both installed. 

Both play the same way.

Have to correct the stream to avoid stuttering.

 

[mleblanc 1]

On 1/19/2023 at 4:45 PM, mleblanc said:

This version worked a little better than the previous Android version, in that it was able to play my 480p Shrek.avi, although playback wasn't very smooth.  For the SG-1 episode The Curse, the result was the same as the Android TV version - I can FF and RW, but I only see a single frame from the play/resume point.  I tried selecting a different playback bitrate from the playback cog menu, but wasn't able to get it to play.

I case this is helpful...  I noticed that in Emby, the Player is given as ExoPlayer.  When I was testing alternatives, I tried JellyFin, and with that app I got stuttering with ExoPlayer (the default), but smooth playback when I set the player setting to Auto.

[victor@vialy.com 9]

Yesterday I got the new Android App update (3.2.92)

Used it on my phone with no problems playing anything.
Sideloaded it to my TV, and got the same error. Still pictures insteade of video, random success when selecting "Correct playback errors" and have to downgrade to 480 1mb to be able to play.

Strange because I have no problems with some 4k movies.

But I found that I can play the otherwise unplayable videos if I cast them from the new phone app to the TV, using the "Cast to Chromecast" feature.

 

 

[nweishar 9]

I'm having the exact same issues. I can't get the video to play for Live TV or any TV recordings made on my "Skyview" with Google TV. 

I have multiple chromecasts on other TVs (both HD and 4K versions) and both manage to play the streams in question. Android app and Web view also flawless. On the Skyview though, the same content freezes on first frame.

Similar to others, I've had this content working on Jellyfin but prefer Emby.

When I checked the logs, they seemed to indicate it was playing fine so I'm not sure. I'll post them back here in a little bit.

[nweishar 9]

47 minutes ago, nweishar said:

I'm having the exact same issues. I can't get the video to play for Live TV or any TV recordings made on my "Skyview" with Google TV. 

I have multiple chromecasts on other TVs (both HD and 4K versions) and both manage to play the streams in question. Android app and Web view also flawless. On the Skyview though, the same content freezes on first frame.

Similar to others, I've had this content working on Jellyfin but prefer Emby.

When I checked the logs, they seemed to indicate it was playing fine so I'm not sure. I'll post them back here in a little bit.

Here's the logs I mentioned. https://pastebin.com/qR5H06sQ

Pleaze let me know what else I can do to help!

[nweishar 9]

On 1/22/2023 at 11:24 AM, victor@vialy.com said:

Got this exact problem.

Rolled back to emby 4.7.10 and worked again.

Of course, all transcoded. No direct playing because stuttering playback of audio/video

 

 

How did you roll back? Which tag did you use? I'll try the same on my side

[Luke 37116]

7 hours ago, nweishar said:

Here's the logs I mentioned. https://pastebin.com/qR5H06sQ

Pleaze let me know what else I can do to help!

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.