What's the current state of the MVP vs Native Player in the AppleTV Client

[Lostboy66 9]

I normally set it to Auto, but would think Native would be more efficient (all my content is either H.264 or H.265 which are all native).   What advantages/disadvantages  the MVP player have vs the Native player, and how does the Auto setting work?

[vdatanet 1651]

In practice the choice matters less for what plays natively and more for what doesn't.

Native player – Goes through AVFoundation, so decoding is done by the Apple TV hardware and it's the only path that can output HEVC HDR/Dolby Vision properly. The weak point is the streaming/buffering side: with high-bitrate content it's not very efficient and it's fairly easy to run into buffering, even on direct play.

It's also limited to containers and protocols AVFoundation understands. MKV isn't one of them, and since Emby doesn't currently support HLS with fMP4 segments, MKV content can't simply be remuxed into something the native player accepts — it ends up being transcoded instead. That's why in practice pretty much all HEVC HDR content gets transcoded.

MPV player – Handles almost any container, so it avoids the container-driven transcodes and generally holds a stream better. The trade-off is HDR: MPV tone-maps the picture itself rather than passing HEVC HDR through to the Apple TV's own decode/display pipeline, so you don't get true HDR output.

Auto – Emby decides per item: it uses the native player when the stream is something AVFoundation can direct play, and falls back to MPV when it isn't. So "Auto" doesn't mean "always native" even if all your content is H.264/H.265 — the container and the HDR metadata matter as much as the codec.

To be fair, the MPV implementation on Apple TV has improved a lot over the last releases. But Dolby Vision is still problematic, as you can see from various threads on this forum. Since DV is a proprietary format, the only real solution there is to let the native player handle it — which brings us back to the same thing: support for HLS with fMP4 and remuxing, so the Apple TV could play HEVC HDR and DV natively without transcoding. That's not possible today

Edited 51 minutes ago by vdatanet

[Lostboy66 9]

THANK YOU!!!!  I'll set to MPV, unless I find something (Either DB Vision or HDR) that annoys me to the point I change it for that session!  One of the best explanations and responses I've seen in a while.   KUDOs!

I have no MKV, I make it a habit to re-encode any MKV to a lower resolution H.265 (HEVC).   I keep my server and content optimized for remote playback.   

I've found video upscaling on modern hardware devices more than makes up for it.  I have a Laser 4K Projector that plays 720P beautifully, and I've never heard a complaint on resolution or color.

I did a stress test this morning or a bunch of 4K content to 5 AppleTVs (simultaneously ) with the player set to MPV, all showed direct play.   No issues....

 

Edited just now by Lostboy66