Aspect ratio bug on Android TV

[McChen 7]

There is an aspect ratio bug with anamorphic videos, but it only happens with the stream is not transcoded. When the stream is transcoded, it displays properly. I tested with standard h.264/aac streams (DVD rips) which can play without transcoding on most systems. These are encoded with Handbrake's "loose anamorphic" settings. I change the maximum bit rate setting in the Emby client to force transcoding to test. I've tested on Shield TV and Nexus Player.

 

For 4:3 video, it displays too wide horizontally. For 2.35:1 video, it displays the video too narrow horizontally.

[McChen 7]

Update: I tried to test this on the web client and the regular Android client, but I could not play streams without transcoding. Setting the maximum bitrate above the video bitrate did not allow me to play the video, it just brought me to a screen with a background picture and nothing else.

[ebr 14903]

Sounds like the device's video player itself doesn't support that anamorphic setting.

 

Changes that will be coming may help but, other than forcing a transcode, not sure what you could do right now.

[McChen 7]

Thanks! I tested the native player on shield which can play local files and you are right, the player does not handle anamorphic video correctly. On the nexus player, it is even worse...not only is anamorphic not handled right, you get this awful "soap opera effect" like you see on some hdtv's with motion smoothing. On my android phone and tablet the native player works fine with these files, odd that android TV would not use the same code. Hopefully they get this fixed at some point. My workaround on Android TV was to use the Emby for Kodi addon and use Kodi for playback.