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 1652]

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 1 hour 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 after your response on a bunch of 4K content to 5 AppleTVs (simultaneously ) with the player set to MPV, all showed direct play on the Dashboard.   No issues....   Happy!

 

Edited 35 minutes ago by Lostboy66

[Luke 42911]

I would leave it on auto. We've put a lot of work into choosing the best player depending on the situation.

[Lostboy66 9]

Respectfully, since 2.0.7 the Auto setting appears to have failed me regularly, and frequently.   The very same file that I played under 2.0.6 without any Audio sync/loss issues, has repeatedly and randomly lost audio playback while continuing to keep video and subtitles in sync.   It's not any one movie but happened across most of my library.  Only on the Apple TV Client.   The very same movies play back flawlessly in Plex, Infuse, and off the Emby Web Client, Mac Client, and Android Clients.   When I did my stress test a little while ago (Player set to MVP), not a single client showed the audio loss.   I have even played these files back through iTunes sharing without issue.   

I am happy to help and provide any details info I can.   I already submitted logs in the Apple TV 2.0.7 thread, but haven't heard anything back.

[vdatanet 1652]

16 minutes ago, Luke said:

I would leave it on auto. We've put a lot of work into choosing the best player depending on the situation.

Direct play works with MP4 — that's not the issue. The native Apple player will happily take an MP4 with HEVC Main 10 + AC-3 straight off the server. What it won't do is keep the buffer fed.

Measured on an Apple TV 4K, same box, same LAN, same files, with an on-screen buffer readout:

67 Mbps remux, direct: buffer starts around 10 s, drains to 1–2 s, never recovers — stalls for good.
15 Mbps file, direct: 5 s after a minute, 1 s after two, but it claws its way back.
Either of them over HLS: 50–60 s of buffer, steady for the whole film.
The bleed is proportional, not a threshold: ~92% of what playback consumes, so ~5 s of buffer lost per minute played. The bitrate only decides how long you've got before you hit zero — no safe "max direct play bitrate", just a slower death.

Not decoding, not the network (a Mac direct-plays the same files over the same LAN with 32–52 s and no stalls). Specific to AVFoundation's progressive path on tvOS.

So, you've put a lot of work into choosing the best player, but without support for HLS with fMP4 this work is not enough.