Kodi v18.x can now play Widevine encrypted streams which has opened up a world of add-ons that can LEGALLY play a number of streaming internet videos, such as those from my local sports TV provider which is great considering they do not provide a native Android TV app. However, it appears that my TV (Sony X950G) is just not capable of playing these streams; at least via Kodi. The result is regular video compression artifacts with random pixelated frames throughout playback. There should be no reason why the Mediatek SoC is not perfectly capable of decrypting these streams and playing them, but it appears that there is an issue with Widevine playback. This could be a broader "Android" issue too, since even my phone (Galaxy S10) shows similar artifacts, albeit to a lesser extent. Kodi on PC exhibits no such issues whatsoever and the streams play flawlessly.
I'd love to hear from more Android TV users to see whether they experience the same thing or not. If you feel like trying this, please report back with your findings.
Steps:Create a file called test.strm and paste the following contents into it:
#KODIPROP:inputstreamaddon=inputstream.adaptive
#KODIPROP:inputstream.adaptive.license_type=com.widevine.alpha
#KODIPROP:inputstream.adaptive.license_key=https://proxy.uat.widevine.com/proxy?video_id=48fcc369939ac96c&provider=widevine_test||R{SSM}|
#KODIPROP:inputstream.adaptive.manifest_type=mpd
https://storage.googleapis.com/wvmedia/cenc/h264/tears/tears.mpd
Copy the file to a flash drive, or to your TV directly.Add a "Video source" to Kodi, pointing to the location of the file and load it.
If you did everything correctly, Kodi should load a free DRM-protected video called Tears of Steel. Let it play for a few minutes and look out for blocky artifacts on-screen.
Here is a video showing the corruption. Timecodes in the description. https://youtu.be/RCC23Y1lxGo
Thanks in advance!
$600 with Android TV: https://www.walmart.com/ip/JBL-Link-Bar-Voice-Activated-Sound-Bar-with-SW10-10-Powered-Wireless-Subwoofer/701638912
$180 without Android TV: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075SH93CL/
Difference: $420
What do you think? :)
I apologize in advance for the long posts and many questions, but I am not sure where to begin troubleshooting.
I recently purchased a Sony X800G Android TV and it's great! However, there are are few issues that are just bugging the heck out of me and I cannot figure them out (my wife is holding a knife at my throat as our $1k TV now has silly issues that our small/cheap TV did not :) ).
My TV is using ARC with this Monoprice HDMI cable back to this Yamaha RX-V377 receiver.
Apps that play audio in Dolby Digital Plus don't output any audio to my receiver. Changing the Audio in the settings to standard Dolby Digital solves this problem, but it seems like I either have to change it per app or that it's occasionally changing back to DDP. Either is a slight pain, but isn't terrible. How can I get DDP working OR is there a "global" setting for the TV audio to never use DDP?
The audio "clips" occasionally while watching (on anything we've cast at least, doesn't seem to happen with the Switch that is directly plugged in to the receiver with only video going to the TV). We get varying lengths of happiness and then get a quick cut out of the audio. It's super short and almost immediately comes back in, but is frequent enough to be annoying. Any ideas how to get rid of the audio clipping?
When I power off the TV it causes my receiver to mute. This seems to cause issues if I power off while I had been casting, but then power on the Switch. The CEC handoff (or whatever it is) to the new input doesn't unmute the receiver. So I have to manually unmute the receiver about every time I change inputs (if it was all powered off in between inputs being used). Is there a way to disable the TV muting the receiver on poweroff?
Thanks in advance!