Roku unable to Direct Play Interlaced 1080i Channels (HDHomerun)

[troyhough 57]

@ebr

@cayars

@Luke

Are the logs posted above what you needed? Hopefully a solution can be made. Thanks!

[troyhough 57]

Ok so I figured out something interesting over the weekend. I recorded the Husker football game on Fox. At the very beginning of the recording the game didn't start yet, it was just standard pre-game programming. Game didn't start until 3 or 4 minutes after the recording started.

When playing back from the BEGINNING of the recording on my devices that usually only Transcode, it Transcodes. Nothing unusual here.

However, if you stop the playback, close Emby, re-open Emby and continue where you left off in a new session, during the actual game, it Direct Streams on the problematic devices. If you fast forward, rewind, even drag status button to the beginning during that same playback session it continues to Direct Stream perfectly!

So, when there is a sporting event, such as a College Football game, is the audio track or something different that Emby likes and enables a Direct Stream?

Edited August 29, 2021 by troyhough

[Luke 37099]

On 8/26/2021 at 12:28 PM, troyhough said:

I just tried to play the 2 problematic channels. I then pulled the logs from my Pixel 4 XL. I don't know what I am looking for but is this the error in question?

Thu Aug 26 11:12:38 CDT 2021 Playback Error TYPE_UNEXPECTED: : Attempt to read from field 'float com.google.android.exoplayer2.Format.pixelWidthHeightRatio' on a null object reference
java.lang.NullPointerException

a6bce7b2-2b87-41e6-ab95-730752d1c08b.log 59 kB · 1 download 06b82062-0f05-49e9-a9d7-3438d463c779.log 3.57 kB · 1 download

Yes this is helpful. Can you provide a recorded video that triggers this? Thanks.

[troyhough 57]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

Yes this is helpful. Can you provide a recorded video that triggers this? Thanks.

Hi @Luke

This triggers a transcode. I just uploaded it to Drive so it still may be "processing".

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TA2v0M9T1lt5wqNKbPSDiVm7NfrSujMq/view?usp=sharing

[troyhough 57]

On 8/30/2021 at 8:09 PM, Luke said:

Yes this is helpful. Can you provide a recorded video that triggers this? Thanks.

@Luke

@cayars

@ebr

 

I just tested this a lot over the last couple days and this seems to be fixed on my Pixel 4 XL! I am on 3.2.11

Do you know if there has been a fix yet for some Roku devices that won't Direct Play 1080i content?

Thanks 

[Luke 37099]

Thanks for the feedback. On Roku there's not much we can do other than force it to transcode.

[troyhough 57]

56 minutes ago, Luke said:

Thanks for the feedback. On Roku there's not much we can do other than force it to transcode.

Is the issue that they just don't have enough horsepower to play 1080i but there is enough horsepower to do 720p?

@speechlesare you able to provide any additional information? Thanks

Edited September 20, 2021 by troyhough

[Carlo 4330]

More like the device can't deinterlace but Roku TV can so that dictates how interlaced content is handled.

However, it's been reported that some of the higher end Roku devices can deinterlace (not tested) so ebr has mentioned it's possible to add a config option to allow interlaced content or not.

[troyhough 57]

41 minutes ago, cayars said:

so ebr has mentioned it's possible to add a config option to allow interlaced content or not.

In the Roku Emby app?

[troyhough 57]

43 minutes ago, cayars said:

More like the device can't deinterlace but Roku TV can so that dictates how interlaced content is handled.

However, it's been reported that some of the higher end Roku devices can deinterlace

I believe that most (maybe all?) of the higher end Roku's Direct Play the 1080i without issue but when it's in the cheaper integrated TV's is where I run into the 1080i issue!

Edited September 21, 2021 by troyhough

[Luke 37099]

1 hour ago, troyhough said:

Is the issue that they just don't have enough horsepower to play 1080i but there is enough horsepower to do 720p?

@speechlesare you able to provide any additional information? Thanks

I haven't personally looked at this on Roku so I'm just generalizing and can't give an answer as to why it can't direct play at this stage. But in general if something can't direct play on Roku then there's not much we can do other than report it to Roku and update our app to play it via transcoding to ensure that you can at least play somehow. This is not like android where we can embed our own player, which means that when the player has trouble with something we can actually try to fix it in the player. On Roku it's the system video player.

[Carlo 4330]

4 hours ago, troyhough said:

I believe that most (maybe all?) of the higher end Roku's Direct Play the 1080i without issue but when it's in the cheaper integrated TV's is where I run into the 1080i issue!

That's funny and backward from how it would seem.

 

At around the time of that post the server was changed to deinterlace all channels regardless of settings in clients like ATV so I think that lost interest at the time.  The server no longer does this so it could be explored again.

This post has a rather unique test using DNLA which could be tried from both the HDHomeRun tuner and from Emby Server to see if the interlaced channels can play back on your Roku with deinterlacing.

@troyhough any chance you could try that experiment and post your results?

[speechles 1920]

https://support.roku.com/article/4404885645079

Here is a support article about interlaced video. Change HDMI inputs into your television (go from 1,2,3,4,etc) and try the other HDMI connections. Not all the HDMI connectors will deinterlace.

Edited September 21, 2021 by speechles

[Carlo 4330]

But that won't really matter if using Emby as it will force transcode the interlaced file.
Might direct play using DLNA however. In this case the HDMI port could be important.

[speechles 1920]

If there is an INPUT marked DVD on your TELEVISION that is the HDMI port to use. If there is one that says CABLE BOX that will also work. If they are just HDMI 1,2,3,4 it is a guessing game.

[troyhough 57]

4 hours ago, speechles said:

https://support.roku.com/article/4404885645079

Here is a support article about interlaced video. Change HDMI inputs into your television (go from 1,2,3,4,etc) and try the other HDMI connections. Not all the HDMI connectors will deinterlace.

HDMI inputs are irrelevant when Roku is integrated into the TV, such is the case with my TCL TV's.

[speechles 1920]

4 hours ago, troyhough said:

HDMI inputs are irrelevant when Roku is integrated into the TV, such is the case with my TCL TV's.

Wrong. Read the article. HDMI 1 & 2 are for HIGH DEFINITION, HDMI 3 & 4 are for low definition. Only low definition supports deinterlace.

[ebr 14925]

19 minutes ago, speechles said:

Wrong. Read the article. HDMI 1 & 2 are for HIGH DEFINITION, HDMI 3 & 4 are for low definition. Only low definition supports deinterlace.

But that would still be irrelevant if the app is running on the TV itself.

[troyhough 57]

40 minutes ago, ebr said:

But that would still be irrelevant if the app is running on the TV itself.

You are correct @ebr. HDMI inputs are NOT being used.

[Carlo 4330]

Nor would it matter if the server is transcoding/deinterlacing the stream.  Hence the option to control server deinterlacing.

[troyhough 57]

2 minutes ago, cayars said:

Nor would it matter if the server is transcoding/deinterlacing the stream.  Hence the option to control server deinterlacing.

Is that being worked on for 4.7.x ? You said it was there in the past but the option was removed? For what reason?

[Carlo 4330]

That might have been confusing.
Android TV has an option to force the server to deinterlace SD or HD content.

For a brief time this was broken on the server and it was always deinterlacing streams, thus the option didn't do anything thing.
That was fixed and now you can control this at the app level but the deinterlace settings.

I was suggesting that same sort of config for the Roku so you the operator can adjust it.

[visproduction 123]

Did anyone check for digital encryption roll out is happening now with these channels? 
https://www.optimum.net/pages/encryption.html 

Maybe test this by taking component video out, instead and see if the problem goes away.

Edited September 21, 2021 by visproduction

[Carlo 4330]

That has nothing to do with this topic.  That isn't DRM (digital rights management) but just encryption.  They are removing Clear-QAM from the basic channel lineup. That means you won't be able to plug the coax cable directly to a TV or tuner and get the "clear" channels.  Now you will need a cable card or STB (set top box) to decrypt the channels.

When not encrypted you can use actually use most OTA tuners (https://www.silicondust.com/product/hdhomerun-flex-duo/) plugged into the the cable network to get the channels. That was an easy method some people used without having to get a tuner designed to work for cable.

 

[troyhough 57]

2 hours ago, cayars said:

That might have been confusing.
Android TV has an option to force the server to deinterlace SD or HD content.

I was suggesting that same sort of config for the Roku so you the operator can adjust it.

Is this something we can ask @speechlesto implement? I would love to test it in a beta if needed.