www.makemkv.com

Please note pass-through of high definition audio signals eg. TrueHD and DTS-MA is not supported.
Please note pass-through of object-based audio signals e.g. Atmos is not supported - your files will be decoded to a lossy format e.g. Dolby Digital.
Please note pass-through of Dobly and DTS audio is not support - your files will be decoded to LPCM.
Please note Dolby Vision is not supported - your files will be displayed using HDR10.
Please note DLNA is not supported.
Please note SMBv2 and SMBv3 is not supported.
Please note ISO is not supported.
Please note m2ts is not supported - your files can only play locally from the USB connection.
Please note 3D MVC is not supported.
Please note PGS subtitling is not supported.
Please note MKV with the Dolby core audio track separated is not supported.

We are happy to inform you that we can encode all your files to a lossy format so they can play on any player!!!
Enjoy your expensive 9.2 channel home theater setup, bro!

Sincerely, the streaming media cartel.

Nvidia Shield


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

thrillcat wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 29, 2020 3:55 am

Nvidia Shield

Since this topic was apparently intended to be a rant, I'll rant some.

I read a lot about the Shield, but, so far, it looks like I'll have to dedicate a week or so to learning obscure magic spells to make it useful. And maybe another week making it capable of doing all the wonderful things it allegedly can do.

Note: the store I bought it from didn't have a demonstration set up working, because none of their technical staff had figured it out yet. Even the Nvidia demo wouldn't work.

I honestly think that making media players based on Android was a big step backwards in ease-of-use. YOU can make it do ANYTHING. Emphasis on YOU doing it, because the flexibility comes at a price of no one actually giving a damn about selling a WORKING configuration.

I was accustomed to players like the Asus, Uebo, and KDLinks 7xx-series that, once you told them about your network, you found the video you wanted to play, and hit play. Sometimes there was a firmware update to add a new feature (PGS subtitle support, for example), but you didn't have to reconfigure everything when the update finished and the box was rebooted.

The problem was Asus stopped doing updates, and the hardware on Uebo/KDLinks units lasted about 13.5 months (12 month warranty), then stopped booting.

So, I stepped into the world of Android-based players with the KDLinks A-300. Before its hardware died (at 14 months), the build-in Android video player was the only thing that worked reasonably reliably. Kodi flat-out sucked, because I didn't have time to figure out how to get it to talk to a network without linking it to ever shared directory individually; how to get it to display subtitles when it was supposed to and not when it wasn't supposed to; but it came pre-configured to act as a bittorrent client! Well, my NAS isn't configured as a torrent server, just DLNA and SMB.

It got worse with future Android-based devices, where they came with Kodi completely unconfigured.

Finally, I spent the big bucks to get the supposed greatest device on the market, the Nvidia Shield. Not only does Kodi come unconfigured, it complains that it needs to update just about every time I boot the thing. The Android video player, which used to work with most of the files I have, no longer works, so it's Kodi or nothing. And the menu system, for some reason, offers up everything you've already watched as suggested videos to watch again, pushing new content further down.

When I did get it working for a while, I did not see a way to say, "Play all the files in this directory in order". It would play each one, then go back to the menu, and I could scroll back down to the next file and hit play again.

The TV the Shield is attached to used to be used every day; it's been on maybe 10 times in the year since the Shield got attached to it, because it take 20 minutes to go through updates to the operating system, Kodi, Kodi add-ons, and other stuff I don't use, THEN I can configure the network for Kodi AGAIN, because the update to Kodi removed the last configuration.

People tell me there are add-ons to make all of this work, but they can't seem to think of what they are when asked for examples.

I don't need 4K HDR Dolby Video 47.9 HYPEr definition audio. I just want to watch stuff without spending 20 minutes preparing to watch stuff. And the only way I can currently do that is at my computer workstation, running VLC, with stereo speakers. Find the file I want to watch, double click, and sit back in my uncomfortable chair to watch it. Or use the Android-based FireTV stick via wifi, and deal with the network drop-outs.

I've bought an Android player with S905X chipset and immediately installed LibreELEC/CoreELEC and Kodi is working just fine.

Woodstock wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 29, 2020 5:12 am

I don't need 4K HDR Dolby Video 47.9 HYPEr definition audio. I just want to watch stuff without spending 20 minutes preparing to watch stuff. And the only way I can currently do that is at my computer workstation, running VLC, with stereo speakers. Find the file I want to watch, double click, and sit back in my uncomfortable chair to watch it. Or use the Android-based FireTV stick via wifi, and deal with the network drop-outs.

Yeah, check out "Dune HD" Media Players. Bootup in 30 sec, using folder structures, SMB share or NFS, can play a single file or all files in a folder, play most of the video and audio formats, automatic selection of forced flagged tracks for subtitles, ......

Woodstock wrote:

thrillcat wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 29, 2020 3:55 am

Nvidia Shield

Since this topic was apparently intended to be a rant, I'll rant some.

Sorry. Let me expand on my original statement.

Nvidia Shield. With PLEX (running on a windows 10 server).

The only thing that’s caused me issues is connecting my Harmony Elite, and a problem with lossless audio dropouts when connected via Ethernet (which has been fixed).

This thing plays everything you throw at it. It doesn’t show Atmos or X or IMAX Enhanced in the display due to licensing, but it plays back with metadata intact, and sends it to your processor with full quality.

The only thing that it doesn’t do is hi-res audio, so there are a handful of BluRay audio discs it struggles with.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

thrillcat wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 29, 2020 3:55 am

Nvidia Shield
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No thanks.
I have an RTX2080 with Asus ROG PG27QZ for playing games.
I want a proper media file player.

Woodstock wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 29, 2020 5:12 am

thrillcat wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 29, 2020 3:55 am

Nvidia Shield

Since this topic was apparently intended to be a rant, I'll rant some.

I read a lot about the Shield, but, so far, it looks like I'll have to dedicate a week or so to learning obscure magic spells to make it useful. And maybe another week making it capable of doing all the wonderful things it allegedly can do.

Lol, this is a God-tier rant.
I agree, and the Shield's shortcomings are very well documented.
It may work fine for some people, but it is so far away from the be-all do-all it's not even funny.

Grauhaar wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 29, 2020 8:15 am

Woodstock wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 29, 2020 5:12 am

I don't need 4K HDR Dolby Video 47.9 HYPEr definition audio. I just want to watch stuff without spending 20 minutes preparing to watch stuff. And the only way I can currently do that is at my computer workstation, running VLC, with stereo speakers. Find the file I want to watch, double click, and sit back in my uncomfortable chair to watch it. Or use the Android-based FireTV stick via wifi, and deal with the network drop-outs.

Yeah, check out "Dune HD" Media Players. Bootup in 30 sec, using folder structures, SMB share or NFS, can play a single file or all files in a folder, play most of the video and audio formats, automatic selection of forced flagged tracks for subtitles, ......

I'm currently checking out Dune and Zappiti. I tried a Zidoo Z9S but it was very unpolished and the FW updates break more than they fix. It's weird that Oppo could do everything before they bailed from the market and all these me too boxes still are working out the kinks and don't support everything yet. Zappiti claims Dolby Vision models may come out this year with the next chipset revision. There's a new AppleTV maybe this month. I'm in wait-and-see mode and have reverted to using physical discs until something better shakes out.

Maybe I should open up the various Android players I have and see what chips are in them, on the off chance that CoreELEC will work on them. I might be able to install ViMu on them - that works well on the FireTV sticks... At least better than VLC or Kodi.

The Dune units have nice specs, but their "Dune USA" branch seems to be based in the UK like the rest of the company.

No need to open, I'm sure there's enough boards where people can tell you what chip is inside (if it's not mentioned on the manufacturer's page already).

The one working Android box I have (other than the Shield) that has a network connection is a "GooBang Doo XB-III". It was cheap enough to do some experimenting on. I've got another REALLY cheap unit that I'll have to see if it supports a USB network.

Vero 4K+

The specs on the Vero are superficially the same as the GooBang. The price is OK, but the US distributor lists it as "Sold Out", with no anticipated restocking date.

I run a couple of Vero’s as well as an OSMC Pi off a NAS backend hosting the Kodi database and media. The OSMC version of Kodi is very actively supported and most of the time the Vero “just works”, to the extent that the whole family uses them with no issues. You get passthrough audio on hi-res formats, gigabit ethernet, full frame rate switching and 4K too, all for around £120.

The osmc.tv store page notes worldwide shipping, but perhaps there is a US restriction I’m unaware of.