Jdiesel 1113 Posted November 6, 2018 Share Posted November 6, 2018 Has anyone been able to try out the new FireTV Stick 4K with Emby? Looks like it might be a decent budget option but I have no experience with FireTV products as they were previously unavailable in Canada. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pir8radio 1292 Posted November 6, 2018 Share Posted November 6, 2018 Yea I just moved from MiBox's to all fire stick 4k's due to a mibox oreo update issue that makes them unstable. Other than the fire tv home screen that is full of crap you can't remove, once in emby it works just as well as any good android tv box. I suggest using it. Plus the new remote has built in IR and can control your other devices (TV, Soundbar or AV). I've been finding myself using the factory firetv remote.... which i used to hate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neik 835 Posted November 7, 2018 Share Posted November 7, 2018 Hi @@pir8radio, have you had an older FireTV before that one and are able to compare performance? I have a couple of FTVS Gen.2 and are quite pleased with the performance but some things could still be faster. Other thing I am wondering about is if this FTVS is able to change to the actual refresh rate of the file? Unfortunately the old one is not able. :-( Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pir8radio 1292 Posted November 8, 2018 Share Posted November 8, 2018 (edited) Hi @@pir8radio, have you had an older FireTV before that one and are able to compare performance? I have a couple of FTVS Gen.2 and are quite pleased with the performance but some things could still be faster. Other thing I am wondering about is if this FTVS is able to change to the actual refresh rate of the file? Unfortunately the old one is not able. :-( Thanks! I see two options for refresh rate on the playing video but i don't use it 59.98 & 60hz.. lol so i have no idea if its what you are asking about.. If you are talking about refresh rate switching, yea it works. Again I don't use it. But I can only compare it to FTVS gen 1 and the older 4k FTV I don't have any gen2's. gen1 is laggy when navigating. Even the older 4k box had some lag. So far with only a handful of apps installed on mine, its really responsive. I would compare it to my mibox and nvidia shield for gui responsiveness. I have not used it on my good surround and projector setup yet, so I have not messed with any of the audio pass-through stuff. I purchased 4 of them for my "other" tv's in the house with built in speakers or soundbars. Working great so far.. Hope that sort of helps? Edited November 8, 2018 by pir8radio 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neik 835 Posted November 11, 2018 Share Posted November 11, 2018 Thanks pir8radio, that helped! I see two options for refresh rate on the playing video but i don't use it 59.98 & 60hz.. lol so i have no idea if its what you are asking about.. If you are talking about refresh rate switching, yea it works. Again I don't use it. I am wondering why aren't you using the switch, woudln't the playback be smoother if the TV is set to the refresh rate of the file? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaporTrail 66 Posted November 11, 2018 Share Posted November 11, 2018 The new 4K Firestick is roughly 40% slower than the old FireTV Gen2. That said, the new Firestick handles more diverse file-types, and will continue to get updates longer. Not sure if your FireTV Gen2 runs Fire OS 6, but the new 4K stick has an option in settings to set refresh rate to auto based on media. It may be an OS related setting... I bought the Firestick Gen2 Basic Edition in Canada last year for $30 and pretty happy with it. The difference is it didn't come with an Alexa remote which I didn't want anyway. It's got the latest OS 6 update (which improved CPU efficiency by a whopping 30%), and Direct Plays most of my media sans 10bit HEVC content. I run Emby through Kodi on my Firestick with the Embuary skin, which makes a very nice way to navigate my server. I've also been running a 3rd-party Home Launcher apk which gets rid of all that Amazon crap. It was working for a while automatically, but now have to choose the launcher manually. I barely use it anymore, because the apps I use are a click away in the stock home screen. My biggest gripe is you can't use Amazon devices without connection to the internet. My internet was down yesterday, and couldn't enjoy my media on the big screen for the day. The coolest thing I've found is using Filezilla to FTP into the Firestick via ES File Explorer. Super convenient. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14903 Posted November 11, 2018 Share Posted November 11, 2018 Thanks pir8radio, that helped! I am wondering why aren't you using the switch, woudln't the playback be smoother if the TV is set to the refresh rate of the file? Many TVs do a good enough job of interpolating content that you don't really need the display mode switching (which causes an annoying 3-5 second black out of the screen). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neik 835 Posted November 11, 2018 Share Posted November 11, 2018 (edited) @@VaporTrail, if that was meant for me I do not own a FireTV Gen2 I have a FireTV Stick (=FTVS) second gen, so basically the same as you have. On the FireTV Stick Gen2 the refresh doesn't work with the official Emby App but using Kodi it does switch. I was told this is related to the Android version the FireTV Stick has and that Kodi is using something like a hack for achieving this. €dit: @@ebr, you are certainly right the interpolation gets better and better but native is native, with any computation in between the result can't be as good. Edited November 11, 2018 by neik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrbee99 1551 Posted November 11, 2018 Share Posted November 11, 2018 The new 4K Firestick is roughly 40% slower than the old FireTV Gen2. That said, the new Firestick handles more diverse file-types, and will continue to get updates longer. Not sure if your FireTV Gen2 runs Fire OS 6, but the new 4K stick has an option in settings to set refresh rate to auto based on media. It may be an OS related setting... I bought the Firestick Gen2 Basic Edition in Canada last year for $30 and pretty happy with it. The difference is it didn't come with an Alexa remote which I didn't want anyway. It's got the latest OS 6 update (which improved CPU efficiency by a whopping 30%), and Direct Plays most of my media sans 10bit HEVC content. I run Emby through Kodi on my Firestick with the Embuary skin, which makes a very nice way to navigate my server. I've also been running a 3rd-party Home Launcher apk which gets rid of all that Amazon crap. It was working for a while automatically, but now have to choose the launcher manually. I barely use it anymore, because the apps I use are a click away in the stock home screen. My biggest gripe is you can't use Amazon devices without connection to the internet. My internet was down yesterday, and couldn't enjoy my media on the big screen for the day. The coolest thing I've found is using Filezilla to FTP into the Firestick via ES File Explorer. Super convenient. This might help - it uses the P-word, but try to ignore that... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pir8radio 1292 Posted November 11, 2018 Share Posted November 11, 2018 Thanks pir8radio, that helped! I am wondering why aren't you using the switch, woudln't the playback be smoother if the TV is set to the refresh rate of the file? I dont like when the tv has to change its format every time i change media, like i'm changing inputs... the on screen display comes up, the screen goes black... lol i just dont like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaporTrail 66 Posted November 11, 2018 Share Posted November 11, 2018 @@arrbee99 Wow that's incredibly simple! So simple in fact I never thought to try it. Thanks! @@neik Good to know the Gen2 Firestick doesn't work natively with refresh rate switching. Yet another reason to use Kodi on this thing. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14903 Posted November 12, 2018 Share Posted November 12, 2018 with any computation in between the result can't be as good. It is if you can't tell the difference with your naked eye. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neik 835 Posted November 12, 2018 Share Posted November 12, 2018 It is if you can't tell the difference with your naked eye. Well, that's also true. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nyplayer 90 Posted November 14, 2018 Share Posted November 14, 2018 De-Interlacing of MPEG2 1080I is not very good on the FireTV 4K ... It is best to De-Interlace at the server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neik 835 Posted November 14, 2018 Share Posted November 14, 2018 Interesting! On my FireTV Stick Gen.2 it's working great with the latest beta. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tristanjacquel 1 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Emby app on Fire TV Stick 4K has problems displaying subtitles (external SRT or embedded SRT/PGS) with audio pass-through. It forces the server to transcode and burn subs (with poor picture quality). Beside that, the app is fast and picture quality (without subs) is greater than nVidia Shield (which handles subs nicely). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14903 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Emby app on Fire TV Stick 4K has problems displaying subtitles (external SRT or embedded SRT/PGS) with audio pass-through. It forces the server to transcode and burn subs (with poor picture quality). Beside that, the app is fast and picture quality (without subs) is greater than nVidia Shield (which handles subs nicely). That isn't really true. If the audio you have is capable of pass-thru on the device/system then we can display subs just fine without the need for transcoding. Where you may run into an issue is if you have incompatible audio (like DTS or True HD) and internal graphic subs (like PGS). In that situation, burn in would be required but a compatible audio stream or external text subtitle will alleviate that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tristanjacquel 1 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Thanks ebr. And sorry for my mistake. I own a lot of DTS movies and have issues with subs on these movies, when app passthough is on. But DD and DD+ contents with subs are fine on Fire TV 4K. Anyway, wouldn't it be great Emby Fire TV app could allow selective pass-through ? I mean pass-through for DD and DD+ and downmix for DTS and HD audio (Dolby True HD, DTS-HD...). In that case, power processing for audio downmix would be supported by Fire Stick hardware and not by server. Maybe that would solve issue with PGS subs when server is force to transcode audio ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaporTrail 66 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Has anyone been able to try out the new FireTV Stick 4K with Emby? Looks like it might be a decent budget option but I have no experience with FireTV products as they were previously unavailable in Canada. I've now upgraded to the 4K Firestick from the Gen2 basic edition. Everything direct plays now, so no more transcoding on my cold-war era server. Sold the old Firestick and bought the new one on sale, so paid $40 after tax. #RedFlagDeals 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrbee99 1551 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 You've got a cold war era server. Cool. Is it one of these ? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaporTrail 66 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 That looks great for retro gaming, but mine is all business. This shot was taken by my secretary a couple days ago for Instagram...she loves that sepia filter. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maegibbons 1267 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 So if your secretary took the shot, is that you in the picture? Krs Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrbee99 1551 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Must be old age, bit I'd forgotten how big those old VCR's used to be... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaporTrail 66 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 So if your secretary took the shot, is that you in the picture? Sure is, it was casual Friday! Must be old age, bit I'd forgotten how big those old VCR's used to be... We wanted to future-proof by going Betamax, but it was too expensive. Oh well. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14903 Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Thanks ebr. And sorry for my mistake. I own a lot of DTS movies and have issues with subs on these movies, when app passthough is on. But DD and DD+ contents with subs are fine on Fire TV 4K. Anyway, wouldn't it be great Emby Fire TV app could allow selective pass-through ? I mean pass-through for DD and DD+ and downmix for DTS and HD audio (Dolby True HD, DTS-HD...). In that case, power processing for audio downmix would be supported by Fire Stick hardware and not by server. Maybe that would solve issue with PGS subs when server is force to transcode audio ? I suppose that is a possibility for the future (if we could ever design an option that people would understand what it actually does). Most people are not going to want their DTS tracks mixed down to stereo though. They want 5.1 so converting to DD is a better experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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