Roku Ultra

[mikeraburn 60]

Not a thread hijack at all.

 

As for 4K, its a fad like 3D was. My opinion.

 

The only reason I got the 4 and Ultra was for HDR if and when my Panasonic plasma craps out.

Hopefully by then us normal people will be able afford an OLED HDR-10.

 

(I hope the Ultra will handle HDR-10. oops)

[speechles 1917]

The roku ultra and premier+ both handle, hdr-10 and dolby vision.

 

https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/The+Roku+Channel+Developer+Program#TheRokuChannelDeveloperProgram-RokuModelsRokuModelsandFeatures

 

 

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Waldonnis 148]

Not a thread hijack at all.

 

As for 4K, its a fad like 3D was. My opinion.

 

The only reason I got the 4 and Ultra was for HDR if and when my Panasonic plasma craps out.

Hopefully by then us normal people will be able afford an OLED HDR-10.

 

(I hope the Ultra will handle HDR-10. oops)

 

I'll disagree with the "fad" part, mostly because higher resolution panels continue to get cheaper to produce and eventually become affordable enough for consumer devices.  Source material, though, is another story.  Despite the growing assortment of mainstream 4k titles, hardly any are actually filmed or mastered in 4k (and it shows, if you know what to look for).  I agree that HDR is far and away more important than 4k resolution, though.  There was an informal "survey" once where people were shown a 1080p HDR10 sequence then a 4k 8bit sequence and asked which looked better - a vast majority picked the 10bit lower-resolution sequence....

 

3D has always been more like a recurring cold - every time they find a new way to handle 3D technically, they try to push it all over again.  Early on, it was anaglyph (red/cyan), then one admittedly bad polarisation technique (think Jaws 3-D or the 3D Friday the 13th film), now we have 4-6 different types (3 in theatres, 2-3 active and one passive for monitors) - none of which really wins people over.  To make matters worse, very few films actually use 3D well or plan for it (or even shoot for it - some 3D movies were made into 3D almost entirely in post).  Until 3D really adds to the "watching"/immersion experience rather than being used as a gimmick or being relatively unnoticeable, audiences generally won't care enough about it for it to gain traction.  Ironically, the most enjoyable 3D movies were often the old "nuclear era" low-budget sci-fi flicks, simply because it was integral to the experience.  Despite the awful anaglyph issues (thankfully, they were b/w films), watching a half-man/half-insect terrorise a town was just more fun in 3D.

 

I also concur about OLED.  It's predicted that prices will continue to drop this coming year on OLED panels.  A few more manufacturers have already made agreements with LG as an OLED panel source, so their production will have to ramp up (and get cheaper) to meet their agreements' demands.  I spotted one of the 50something" LG OLED televisions on sale recently for $1k (down from $2k last year), which is a good sign.  When I finally go for a 4k television, OLED is the way I want to do it as well for a whole bunch of reasons.  I don't blame you for hanging on to that plasma either.

 

As for Dolby Vision (12bit), I'm not too sure how much that'll catch on.  Between licensing and materials costs (it requires distinct silicon, last I heard), many manufacturers don't seem to care.  Source material is also few and far between still, with HDR10 being more widely embraced so far.

 

Now THAT is a thread hijack! 

[mikeraburn 60]

I JUST read an article a few days ago, understood some of it, and you JUST summarized what I actually took away from that article.

 

The one thing I disagreed with in that article was them referring to plasma owners as snobs!

 

My content varies from 480p SD to 1080p HD.

 

Not too many people troll this thread so you are NOT jacking it.

 

You and speechles spread wisdom, common sense, and facts. (maybe not wisdom so much but what do I know anyway)!!!!

[Waldonnis 148]

I JUST read an article a few days ago, understood some of it, and you JUST summarized what I actually took away from that article.

 

The one thing I disagreed with in that article was them referring to plasma owners as snobs!

 

My content varies from 480p SD to 1080p HD.

 

Not too many people troll this thread so you are NOT jacking it.

 

You and speechles spread wisdom, common sense, and facts. (maybe not wisdom so much but what do I know anyway)!!!!

 

Hey, if wanting better response times/refresh rates, wider viewing angles, better colour consistency (especially darker colours/black), and not having to deal with the crappy motion blur reducing schemes used in most LCDs now is being a snob, then I'd wear that mantle proudly!  Sadly, my plasma monitor of old is long dead and I miss it terribly (I nicknamed it "the space heater" back then - it was one of the early ones).

 

And thanks for the compliment.  I don't post much, but try to help when I can, or at least share what I know so others can learn enough to help themselves.  I'm a "teach a man to fish" type, generally, anyway.  While most people just like to watch movies, some really enjoy learning more about how this stuff works too.  speechles is a shining example of that, being a major contributor to the community with posts and Blue Neon (as well as a sounding board for me to make sure I'm not totally insane with an idea or some code).  As a former electrical engineering student, programmer, and having spent some time around the photography, video, recording, and film industries, this kind of stuff naturally draws my interest since it's a combination of everything I enjoy.

[ebr 14903]

My question is, does it even matter anymore?  The new firmware has gone away from needing to specify different images of different sizes and, instead, will scale (like every other platform on the planet).

 

Given that the highest resolution they support in this context is what they call FHD, I'm guessing that is also the highest resolution they support for the BIF images as well.

[Waldonnis 148]

My question is, does it even matter anymore?  The new firmware has gone away from needing to specify different images of different sizes and, instead, will scale (like every other platform on the planet).

 

Given that the highest resolution they support in this context is what they call FHD, I'm guessing that is also the highest resolution they support for the BIF images as well.

 

Probably not, as long as we can confirm that FHD bifs will downscale to both of the other resolution targets.  If it's working as expected, then one would only have to pick the highest resolution that they want to support (and the plugin options could be exclusive of each other, allowing only one to be picked).  It would be great to find out just what that size is for FHD, though, to prevent upscaling on 4k display.

 

I actually haven't tested HD->SD bif scaling yet, but will do so and find out.

[ebr 14903]

FHD = 1080 not 4k and none of the other components or APIs (if you want to call them that) define any values above that.  So I'm guessing there is not one for BIFs either.

[mikeraburn 60]

If you all are discussing plug-in thumbnails are you referring to the "icons" like in the Blue Neon app?

[Waldonnis 148]

FHD = 1080 not 4k and none of the other components or APIs (if you want to call them that) define any values above that.  So I'm guessing there is not one for BIFs either.

 

FHD is 1080p, but that's the interface resolution used when outputting to a 4k monitor (video playback is 4k, but the interface is rendered at FHD).  On 1080p sets, the interface resolution is 720p (HD), and 480p (SD) for 720p sets.  The docs do a poor job explaining it but as an example, a Roku 3 connected to a 1080p monitor (and set to 1080p in the settings) returns 720p when you call GetDisplayMode().  Not having a 4k-supporting Roku, I can't verify first-hand that GetDisplayMode() returns FHD when connected to a 4k monitor, but it's a decent assumption given what I've seen with the Roku 3 and given what's written in the developer docs.

 

The trick mode page itself mentions that biftool can (and should) make FHD bifs, but doesn't define the expected size.  Actually, I'm pretty sure biftool can take any image size, so if the firmware scaling works on thumbnails, we could probably even use full-sized frames and let it downscale (awful for efficiency and I wouldn't do so in practice, but it would be an interesting test).

[speechles 1917]

Actually, you can get a true 1080p gui on only a 1080p TV. I dont have a 4k TV and can see the difference between the roku3 gui and the roku ultra. Even on the blue neon theme I can see the difference. The glowing border is suspiciously thinner, and the entire thing looks sharper. This is due to the upscaling the ui is doing.

 

I suspect the reason we only get FHD bif is because these are using the 2D api, and it maxes out at 1080p. Only the video player is able to display UHD because it runs on a different interface.

 

Roku is using their regular "run silent, run deep" method of answering my post. It is odd no other developers asked this question. I think we should just move ahead and update the roku thumbnail plugin as if FHD were 480. See if we can answer our own questions. This way we can begin the work now and get the hard part done. Then if we are wrong, it is much easier to change the 480 to the correct value and redo the bif generation.

 

Pretty sure the radio-silence roku has given means this may be part of their NDA from their beta access program. People arent sure they can answer me, or not. Gah! Pfft! Meh! Lol...

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Waldonnis 148]

If you all are discussing plug-in thumbnails are you referring to the "icons" like in the Blue Neon app?

 

We're talking about the images that show when you try to fast-forward or rewind while playing a video.  Roku calls this "trick mode" or "trick play", and the images you see are contained in special files called "bif" files.  All they contain are scaled-down single frames from the video file at predictable intervals.  In the past, these images had to be a specific size for the TV resolutions that Roku supported (320 pixels wide for 1080p displays and 240 pixels for 720p displays).

 

The addition of 4k support in later Rokus apparently also added a new expected image width, but we don't know what it is.  What ebr is asking is if it matters how big the images are, since the rest of the interface already scales images up/down (trick mode images may as well, in other words).  I agree that this is likely, but to avoid having to scale these images up, I still would love to know what Roku expects the image width to be for their highest supported resolution.  Frankly, I hate upscaling anything if it's unnecessary and would rather downscale a higher resolution image instead if possible (can't create "definition" that isn't there).

 

I know caring about what probably amounts to an extra 160 pixels of image width is a bit pedantic, but I do...and accept that criticism 

[mikeraburn 60]

I don't have those at all.

 

No images show at all even when I "play from scene".

 

Maybe I have something in my settings somewhere to "off".

[speechles 1917]

I don't have those at all.

 

No images show at all even when I "play from scene".

 

Maybe I have something in my settings somewhere to "off".

No no no.. not the chapter images of play from scene..

Lol.. I understand the confusion so lets use images to explain.

 

In the video player, when you play a video and use pause. Then navigate left or right and these little images showing what would be happening in the video at that point.

 

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Waldonnis 148]

Actually, you can get a true 1080p gui on only a 1080p TV. I dont have a 4k TV and can see the difference between the roku3 gui and the roku ultra. Even on the blue neon theme I can see the difference. The glowing border is suspiciously thinner, and the entire thing looks sharper. This is due to the upscaling the ui is doing.

 

I suspect the reason we only get FHD bif is because these are using the 2D api, and it maxes out at 1080p. Only the video player is able to display UHD because it runs on a different interface.

 

Roku is using their regular "run silent, run deep" method of answering my post. It is odd no other developers asked this question. I think we should just move ahead and update the roku thumbnail plugin as if FHD were 480. See if we can answer our own questions. This way we can begin the work now and get the hard part done. Then if we are wrong, it is much easier to change the 480 to the correct value and redo the bif generation.

 

Pretty sure the radio-silence roku has given means this may be part of their NDA from their beta access program. People arent sure they can answer me, or not. Gah! Pfft! Meh! Lol...

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, the output is always 1080p when connected to a 1080p monitor. It's the interface layer's size that's allocated to something smaller, likely for memory and processing reasons.  For many applications, UI layers are frequently defined at reduced resolutions to allow for faster updating and/or requiring fewer cycles (you see this approach quite a bit in 3D game engines, since they want to dedicate most of the resources and processing to rendering the game world).

 

If the NDA part is actually the reason for the silence, then it's silly since they mention FHD bifs on public-facing web pages.  I bet the reason is that they don't know and the folks they need to ask are out on holiday 

Edited December 18, 2016 by Waldonnis

[mikeraburn 60]

@speechelss

 

Is that a perk with EMBY PREMIERE?

 

I don't have what you are describing above.

[speechles 1917]

You misunderstand.

 

 

The supported graphics resolution on a roku3 doesn't list FHD, but the roku ultra does. I have it set as preferred.

 

The video mode is what can supoort UHD. Mine there you can see is still 1080p.

[speechles 1917]

@speechelss

 

Is that a perk with EMBY PREMIERE?

 

I don't have what you are describing above.

Use the scheduled tasks tab on the server dashboard. Then find the extract chapter images task on the page. You can start it manually, or click it and go into it. From here you can set a schedule when it runs. Extract chapter images is cpu intensive so you want to do it when there is little server activity. This is why the emby has this by default disabled.

 

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[Waldonnis 148]

Ah, interesting.  I guess the FHD interface is available because of the increased memory on the newer models (and better SoC).  That means the new models would benefit as well from not having to upscale the thumbnails (small improvement admittedly) even on 1080p monitors.  Any chance you can test both downscaling large (full-frame) thumbnails as well as trying 480 widths to see what happens?  I suspect both would work, but you may see a bit better image quality out of the 480 compared to 320 (as much as you could, since the way we're used to generating them involves dumping JPEG images) while keeping bandwidth requirements lower than full-frame would require.

 

I'll try them on the Roku 3 as well just to be complete.  I don't mind running my own custom script for generation if ebr/Luke don't want to alter the plugin, but figured I'd ask anyway.

Edited December 18, 2016 by Waldonnis

[mikeraburn 60]

Operator lack of understanding, as usual

 

I did a clean up a few weeks ago and have been turning OFF the server at night since then.

There was a schedule in there but the server was off at THAT time, doh!

 

 

Use the scheduled tasks tab on the server dashboard. Then find the extract chapter images task on the page. You can start it manually, or click it and go into it. From here you can set a schedule when it runs. Extract chapter images is cpu intensive so you want to do it when there is little server activity. This is why the emby has this by default disabled.

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