On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 21:12:41 +1200, Michael Cree wrote:
Does it play transport streams recorded from Freeview? I have my own software that I wrote to record channels direct from a DVB card but I discovered at some point when I tried out Kodi it could not play them, despite ffmpeg and mpv having no problem.
I tried part of a random .ts file, not from Freeview (I haven’t tried recording Freeview in a long time), and that played both audio and video no problem. I also had a corrupted (partial) video download lurking around, that the old WDTV would play only a second or two of before getting stuck. The Vero played through the whole thing, gracefully skipping over the gaps (of which there were plenty). If you have any test files you want to try, that can be arranged.
Can you set it up to play from the major streamers (Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime), e.g., via a browser? Or do they have Apps for that?
Hmm, the addons are grouped into categories ... looks like access to streaming services is under “Video Add-ons” ... can’t see any of those names there. I do see some regional names, like france.tv, NHK Live, TV Ontario ... also video sites like LBRY, YouTube and Vimeo. Of course, it could be that other addons are available from, um, “unofficial” sources ...
I have a RockPro64 running Debian as my media centre, but it has some limitations that really annoy me: there are occassional drop outs on the SPDIF and HDMI sound; I can't get AC3 passthrough on the sound working (despite the datasheet for the SoC saying that it supports it on SPDIF and HDMI) and the HDMI output is not compatible with my old surround sound audio pre-amp so I get no sound. I currently feed HDMI direct to the TV and then export sound via SPDIF from the TV back to the audio pre-amp. Overall a bit disappointing.
My ancient Sony TV dates from the time when HDMI was new, and has a plethora of analog inputs which are largely useless nowadays, so I have to share its one HDMI port between Freeview and the streamer via another switcher box. So far I’ve played maybe a couple of hours of video today, without problems. Not sure if any of that had AC3 sound, though. One remaining issue is that my TV doesn’t *not* do overscan. In the beginning, the Vero’s info displays were getting clipped at the edges of the screen. I discovered the Vero’s Video settings panel had “Basic”, “Standard”, “Advanced” and “Expert” modes (defaulting to “Standard”), and on going straight to “Expert”, I found the option to adjust the overscan (and even make fine adjustments to the aspect ratio), and while that works for the info displays, I’m not sure it makes much difference to the actual video playback.