Sony Media Players SMP-Nx00 family hacking - Android TV General

I think these boxes had a proprietary OS but they received software flash updates so they should be hackable. Anyone interested in looking at this family of HD Media Players for TV/DLNA boxes?

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TVersity realtime WMV transcoder

I've set this up at home, it converts movies on the fly to WMV and acts like windows media center, except without windows media center best of all, it's free:
http://www.tversity.com/
Latest TVersity News
The TVersity Media Server 0.9.9 (beta) is out, featuring on the fly transcoding to WMV. Finally Xbox 360 users need not do any manual conversion! (MCE is NOT required) Get it NOW - It's Free! (Learn What's New)
What is the TVersity Media Server?
The TVersity Media Server lets you manage your Internet and home media and create your personalized lineup of channels, or as we call it your Personal Entertainment Guide (PEG). It then serves this media to a multitude of networked devices in the home or on the go, overcoming their inherent limitations by doing all the necessary conversions on the fly, and thus making your media available anywhere, anytime and from any device.
What devices are supported by the TVersity Media Server?
TVersity is the most versatile media server and the only one that is truly universal in the range of devices it supports. TVersity can serve media to:
* Devices supporting the UPnP AV / DLNA standard (which is the de-facto standard for connecitivity between devices in the digital home). This includes
* Devices like networked TVs, DVDs, Stereo Receivers, Digital Media Adapaters/Receivers (including the Xbox 360), Mobile Phones, Satellite and Cable set-top-boxes and more.
* Devices with a web browser (XHTML-MP or WAP 2.0) and media streaming or downloading capabilities like Mobile Phones, PDAs, the Sony PSP, and more.
* Devices with an RSS reader and media streaming or downloading capabilities like the Sony PSP, iTunes/iPod and more.
What types of media can the TVersity Media Server handle? TVersity can handle almost any media format and streaming protocol whether it is coming from your home network or the Internet including live and on-demand Internet streams. This makes it possible to access from your device of choice, Internet TV and Radio stations, audio and video Podcasts, photo blogs and photo feeds (from flickr and other sources), Internet playlist communities (like Webjay.org), video search engines (from Yahoo, Google and others) and much more.
Why should I try the TVersity Media Server?
With TVersity your typical living room experience can be truly personalized making you the programmer, and making all the multimedia content on the Internet available for playback at a click on your remote. Staying connected on the go has never been easier, as TVersity makes the same program guide you created available for playback from a wide range of mobile devices. The future of entertainment is here, Try it now!
it's great, i use it for my xbox360.. normally it can only handle wmv streams, with tversity i can stream anything!

Android Media Players

Does anyone know if the addition of several media players to the list of devices that use android will enable us to get some more codecs onto the G1? Or does it not matter because all of this stuff will be done in hardware?
What codecs do you want? Cyans 2.9.3 supports FLAC
Yes, what codecs you are looking for would be helpful,
on that thought, anyone want to port gstreamer? xD
I'd love to see a VLC media player for Android. Supports almost ALL codecs..
hey all...I would gladly pay someone to port any media player that would support .asf .avi .wmv....is it possible??....why can the media players that are already here support wma and not wmv....what's the big deal??...Please let me know....Phil...Thanks..
TCPMP would be great on android
phatmanxxl said:
TCPMP would be great on android
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have that on my HX4700 with WM6 and it is awesome. Of course WM6 had more codecs for it. The player was smooth on older hardware and better 4" VGA screen.
I'd definitely love to see it for Android along with more codec support.
i just switched from WM5 to G1
and the first thing i found was all the media players suck
the G1 supports OGG natively yet none of the players will
play a OGG stream
i have a dozen media apps on my G1 and not one of them
works any where near like i want.
i miss TCPMP !!!
i have the android sdk and a emulator running
so off i go into java programming

[Q] Media Streaming

Hi All,
I'm wondering if anyone has had any success streaming media to their A7. I currently have a NAS drive on my network and stream media to all my other devices (Archos 70, Archos 5 Android, EVO, etc.) but for some reason I cannot get the A7 to actually play anything from this network location.
I have been able to navigate to the files themselves, but playing them has not worked out so well. I've tried a variety of Apps and different file formats, but none seem to work. I can attempt to open files, and even get prompted to use various Apps, but nothing seems to work after that, it just fails. Anyone have any ideas or success with this effort please let me know as this is a biggie for me.
Sorry if this is a dup question, as I could not find anything about this for this device in particular.
And many thanks to Dexter, you've made this device surpass it's otherwise limited capabilities. Seems silly such a quality product is being left behind by the Stream, but this seems to be the model of all tablet makers these days. Pump them out as fast as possible regardless of full functionality and forget about them a month later!
The only way I've gotten streaming to work is by using PlayOn.
hi I can access all my movies on my hard drives and play on my a7 this way
download TVersity media server from tveristy.com. I just use the free version. It will change your home page when you install it so you will need to change it back. Install that on your pc and then add your movie files to the library.
On your a7 download a app called skifta from the market and install that. when you run this choose a media source choose TVeristy media server. Under player choose your a7.
then choose browse and play media you will see your library files you added in tversity and some other stuff. You will need a video player installed on your a7. I have act 1 video player and also rockplayer. It will let you choose which to use when you select movie.
select one and your movie should start. Your movies have to be in a compatable format.
it also will let you play music and view photos
I also have a wd live movie box on my tv. With this same setup I can redirect the movie to wdlive box by choosing it as player and the it will playback the movie on my tv.
Thanks for the advice (both of you). I was really hoping for a more direct approach though. I've used apps like Orb that require you to run a host computer, and my NAS drive (Buffalo Linkstation) has a web app built in, but both these methods have proven very slow and often frustrating when trying to access via mobile networks. It just seems odd to me that the A7 doesn't do this while most other Android hardware does. Granted I'm more familiar with Archos products and they specialize in media players. Will keep trying though, Thanks!
DANOinSD said:
Granted I'm more familiar with Archos products and they specialize in media players. Will keep trying though, Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the platform you refer to is different from Tegra2/Nvidia, and you can blame Nvidia for the stock codecs they support.. they partly added mkv's now in latest update.. but 1080p mkv's still stutter on a7 and other tegra2 devices..
LG with their Optimus 2X added their own custom player, and since its incorporated into the framework, its hard to make it run on other devices for now.. but nvidia is primary source for what we can use it for now..
archos is a different story and they havent got what tegra2 can offer for the future, so it might play alot of media's but not perfect for android at all.
Thanks for the info Dex!
Think I'm gonna get a XOOM (been drooling over some honey), then I can officially make my A7 a tinker toy!
by the way, the new 1.41 rom kicks ass, the motoblur keyboard is soo much better!

Video Streaming

Hey. I am about the buy the G Tab 10.1. As my DVD is died I want to use the Tab for streaming videos to my HDTV. How it handles it? The videos are running smoothly?
I've streamed a few to my ps3 and worked great no issues
Careful!
When it comes to video FAR TOO MANY people talk about successes with the tab in generalities. If you want a specific answer then ask a specific question, as in describe specifically what video formats you want to play, where they are to be played from and what they are to be sent to.
Tegra 2 chipset tabs have limited hardware decoding support so don't expect any tablet to be able to play every file you throw at it that you download from the internet.
The way you formulated your question so far its unclear which online services you want to stream or if your source is a shared network drive. Either wary it is unknown what formats you want to play. My first reaction is buy a Roku or something for your TV media needs and only get a tab for what its truly designed for.
muzzy996 said:
Careful!
When it comes to video FAR TOO MANY people talk about successes with the tab in generalities. If you want a specific answer then ask a specific question, as in describe specifically what video formats you want to play, where they are to be played from and what they are to be sent to.
Tegra 2 chipset tabs have limited hardware decoding support so don't expect any tablet to be able to play every file you throw at it that you download from the internet.
The way you formulated your question so far its unclear which online services you want to stream or if your source is a shared network drive. Either wary it is unknown what formats you want to play. My first reaction is buy a Roku or something for your TV media needs and only get a tab for what its truly designed for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
excellent answer. The tab is not an all purpose device. You are better off with Roku for streaming to tv
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
I would like to stream HD MKV format movies, but I will use ordinary low resolution AVI files.
Still only part of the information needed but enough to say you should tread carefully.
To relieve you from having to confess where they're from (LOL) I will say this; if you're encoding your own specifically for this device to play you can adjust your encoding settings to target a specific supported setup for things to play beautifully. It's not hard to do (stick with 720p format, H.264 high profile with B-Frames, CABAC, 8x8 transform and P-frames turned OFF).
If on the other hand you're downloading video randomly off of the internet in MKV format then you will hit some that works and some that doesn't. 1080p stuff that's freely available on torrent sites? Forget it.
TV shows off of EZTV in AVI format (xvid/divx) play wonderfully in Dice Player on the tablet.
Bottom line? You're better off with something like a Roku, Boxee Box or WD Live Streaming Media Player. By the way, each seems to have some support for applications on phone/tablet to control them remotely.
For those with the budget, it's nice to have a dedicated HTPC that also serves as a media server. I'm running Plex on mine to stream movies/shows from it's HDD to my tablet. I run Boxee on it but haven't experimented much with remote control of Boxee using a mobile device yet. My other TV in my apartment has a WD Live on it that pulls the media off of the HTPC so the HTPC serves not only as my playback device for my main TV but as a media server for all my mobile devices and TVs.
Don't get me wrong, these things can play media well, but I'm not going to haphazardly guide you into the belief that they'll play anything you throw at them with simple answers. Those of us who understand what they can do simply adjusted how we do things quickly to meet the specs of the devices and never looked back. I love my tab for media playback on the go.
I'd get a PS3 for your media streaming needs, it plays pretty much any file (MKV's can be handled with PS3Media Server or MKV2VOB) and you also get an awesome games console and Blu-Ray player.

Dolby Digital on Netflix

I noticed that Netflix only shows Stereo audio options on movies that offer 5.1 DD+. Does this mean that the Nexus Player cannot passthrough DD+ because my receiver supports it. I see no audio options in the player's settings either.
According to Netflix, 5.1 is supported on the Nexus Player (https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23004).
So, I'm not sure why it's not working, either. Still researching.
Android TV doesn't have any type of audio passthrough. Google is working on it though. But it can decode 5.1 to multichannel PCM... it's just netflix hasn't updated their app to take advantage of anything new in Android TV - doesn't use the voice search api, the api that adds suggestions to your home page, ect, ect.
well, according to netflix, the app on the nexus player works too.. which it obviously doesn't for half the users... so I'm not exactly inclined to trust them
Luxferro said:
Android TV doesn't have any type of audio passthrough. Google is working on it though. But it can decode 5.1 to multichannel PCM... it's just netflix hasn't updated their app to take advantage of anything new in Android TV - doesn't use the voice search api, the api that adds suggestions to your home page, ect, ect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Passthrough does work. I have kodi(xbmc) installed and it is passing through dd dd+ dts. My receiver changes to the corresponding mode and the audio is as it should. So this means the android os can pass through. The problem it's not Google. It's the app manufacturers.
pchtc said:
Passthrough does work. I have kodi(xbmc) installed and it is passing through dd dd+ dts. My receiver changes to the corresponding mode and the audio is as it should. So this means the android os can pass through. The problem it's not Google. It's the app manufacturers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wrong.
There is no passthrough in the default media player in Android TV (exoplayer)... yet (they are supposedly working on adding AC3 passthrough). XBMC (kodi) doesn't use androids stock media player for playback, it uses it's own that is built into the app... which is why passthrough works in that case.
Luxferro said:
Wrong.
There is no passthrough in the default media player in Android TV (exoplayer)... yet (they are supposedly working on adding AC3 passthrough). XBMC (kodi) doesn't use androids stock media player for playback, it uses it's own that is built into the app... which is why passthrough works in that case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not Wrong
Im well aware of that. My comment was specifically to point out that the issue is not hardware and not the android OS. Which you have just agreed with by starting that the issue is the native player not outputting in passthrough.
pchtc said:
Not Wrong
Im well aware of that. My comment was specifically to point out that the issue is not hardware and not the android OS. Which you have just agreed with by starting that the issue is the native player not outputting in passthrough.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is almost never a problem at the hardware level for android devices. It's always at the OS level, and starts with the built in media player most apps use. This applies to the ADT-1, Nexus Player, even the Fire TV. Android has never had passthrough built in at the OS level, unless it was added by a device manufacture w/ their customized version of Android. Take for example Sony GTV devices, the Vizio Co-Star. Those only had it because they had customize builds of Android. The Nexus Player runs stock Android, which lacks passthrough at this time.
---------- Post added at 02:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:57 PM ----------
melophat said:
well, according to netflix, the app on the nexus player works too.. which it obviously doesn't for half the users... so I'm not exactly inclined to trust them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're having problems launching Netflix on Android TV, clear the app data. The app is very buggy on Android TV. Mine craps out constantly with login errors. Only workaround is to clear data and retype all your login info.
How the **** can they release a MEDIA Player without passthrough? I don't care if it can be accomplished with 3d party app like Kodi. This should be done with native player no questions asked. This is in my opinion a big fail.
Also the lack of hardware support for anything else than h264 is quite disappointing. ?
Johan1976 said:
How the **** can they release a MEDIA Player without passthrough? I don't care if it can be accomplished with 3d party app like Kodi. This should be done with native player no questions asked. This is in my opinion a big fail.
Also the lack of hardware support for anything else than h264 is quite disappointing. ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree, lack of native surround passthrough is really an embarrassment on Google's part. It really shows the lack of practical testing this device went through (if any at all). How did someone not say "wait a minute...you think we should enable surround sound passthrough? It is 2014 after all".
Johan1976 said:
How the **** can they release a MEDIA Player without passthrough? I don't care if it can be accomplished with 3d party app like Kodi. This should be done with native player no questions asked. This is in my opinion a big fail.
Also the lack of hardware support for anything else than h264 is quite disappointing. ��
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google fails at seeing the big picture. People who invest in surround systems don't want audio decoded on the device to PCM, they want their expensive receivers to do the decoding. They should also be including mpeg2 hw decoding in all android tv devices if they intended these devices to do anything with live TV in the united states.
I'm hoping they turn things around, but remain skeptical considering the failures so far. Sony's 2015 line of smart tv's are supposed to be all Android TV... I hope they get it right...
Those TV's better have passthrough, better be able to pass 5.1 over ARC back to a receiver, and better have mpeg2 hw decoding. Do it right, or don't do it at all. People don't want half baked crap in their home theater systems.
Well...putting the Android media player aside and focusing back on Netflix. I'm trying to get in touch with them regarding the 5.1 audio. I sent their developer e-mail a message asking about it. Any other ideas? I sent the e-mail to [email protected], but maybe there's a different place. The only other options I could find would be to call or chat with them.
Hello,
I'm using the Netflix Android App on a Nexus Player running the most recent Android version and firmware (Android 5.0, Nexus Player firmware LRX21V). I noticed that when I watch movies that normally have a 5.1 surround audio option on other devices (such as the Windows 8 app), the same movies DO NOT have that option on the Nexus Player.
According to the weblink below from Netflix's help center, the Nexus Player suggests that there should be an option for 5.1 surround sound ("Learn how to enable subtitles, closed captions, and alternate audio (including 5.1 surround sound..."). https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23004
Is there any chance that this feature isn't working properly on the Nexus Player? Or is it supposed to be coming in the near future? It would be nice if we could have that option.
Thanks for the help!
Best regards,
David
Click to expand...
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YouTube is stereo only as well
What is somewhat infuriating is that this netflix app looks to be the exact same as the firetv stick's netflix and the firetv streams DD+
Well this is a bummer...
Sounds like they just haven't added it yet. No word (at least from the chat people on an update). Wish there was something we could do to push them along.
Netflix Marian
It's just what you were thinking too... The app on the Nexus player does not support the 5.1 at the moment.
You
Understood. Any word if there might be an update in the future?
Netflix Marian
I'm checking but I am not seeing anything here but no worries, once there is an update available it will be sent through to Google so that they can push it to the device... We are always making improvements to our service and features offered to our customers so I will keep my fingers crossed for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not only that but I have alot of Google Play movies, and quite a few are in stereo...including fellowship of the Ring. Its not offered in DD+ or the like.. bizzare. But at least the Big movie with Tom Hanks is....grrr
volwrath said:
Not only that but I have alot of Google Play movies, and quite a few are in stereo...including fellowship of the Ring. Its not offered in DD+ or the like.. bizzare. But at least the Big movie with Tom Hanks is....grrr
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It amazes me the amount of movies on Google Play that are offered in Stereo only. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I was not getting 5.1 with no success (assuming it was a hardware/setup issue). I decided to check the store and noticed 90% of the movies are only available in 2.0 stereo. This is truly disappointing. I can't remember the last movie I got from iTunes that was stereo only. I cannot understand why Google offers mostly in stereo...makes no sense to me.
To clarify, the hardware supports passthrough, it's just the apps that are not implementing it for whatever reason.
We'll just have to wait until the devs get off their asses and add support. Sigh.
Have to say, for something that people were so excited about, Google has really sh*t the bed with this one. Little to no support and no real info from Google support either. Piss poor. I find myself using my FireTV stick more often than the Nexus Player, as much as I'd much prefer to use the latter.
I do actually get Dolby Digital 5.1 out of Netflix on chromecast. Casting to nexus player is definitely different, though. It actually launches the Netflix app when you cast instead of regular casting. Not sure if this is this is android TV issue or if Netflix is accessing with how casting works.
Even after updating to android 5.1 still cannot get multichannel surround. Dont get it ! It would be expected to get at least similar multichannel audio compared to chromecast. When using hbo go or netflix through the player's google cast functionality I can only get stereo. What are we missing here.

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