Jellyfin AndroidTV Client Thread

I think there is some confusion here:

1) My client always sends the file/stream to the normal internal Zidoo player (the same HT4 uses), so unless its a transcode stream (the 1 track limitation) you can always switch via player default menu, audio/sub keys configured in the Zidoo settings.

2) If the audio/sub is embedded in the file, you still can switch normally even with the default http stream playback. Only transcodes have this limitation and transcodes are only happening if the device can't play the video/audio, like for 10bit H264/Hi10.

3) On the client under "Playback settings" there is a "Direct path" setting for mounting, that uses the server "network path" settings, just follow the onscreen help. Yet the only main advantage over direct-streaming, is external file support for BR-disk folders or external sub files. So if you use .mkv with everything embedded you should not need to mount via smb/nfs. You can ofc use the Direct-Path option if it gets you smoother playback.
There is the "allow transcode fallback" option, so you get the best of both worlds. So direct-play for anything that can be directly played and stream's for anything that would fail or need special audio transcodes, like DTS only audio with disabled DTS output.

PS: Atm audio-only/music playback will use the default vlc/exoplayer and not the zidoo music player. That's simply because i focus on video playback currently and anything music related is very low on my to-do list.

 

Yeah. Sorry. DirectPlay should be able to switch tracks. "Transcoding" can not.

 

Can anyone write a simple step by step instruction guide on how to install this jellyfin on Zidoo?

 

1. Download the client from https://github.com/Andy2244/jellyfin-androidtv-zidoo/releases (current version 'jellyfin-androidtv-v0.14.5-zidoo_edition.beta10-release.apk')
2. Copy the .apk file either to a USB stick or to a lcation you can access using Media Center.
3. If copied to USB insert into one of the players USB slots
4. Open Media Center and navigate to the location (USB or share drive/disk) where you copied the .apk
5. Click the .apk file and you will be prompted to install.
6. Install and go back to main UI.
7. Open 'Apps' from main UI and you will see a new app called Jellyfin.

 

As blenky has clearly detailed above, installing Jellyfin on Zidoo is relatively simple.
Do you, however, have a Jellyfin server up & running? Setting up & configuring the server is a bit more involved & will vary from user to user depending on the hardware you're using.

 

Quick update, just so you know that i'm still working on the client.

Atm i'm redesigning several aspects of the Ui, this includes removing weird/unnecessary spacing, padding and generally adapt card/row/grid layouts to automatically scale its content and textsize, instead of using hard-coded values.

The main reason is that i will add a lot of advanced Ui customization options, so you as user can better tinker the layouts/sizes to your wimp.
This includes individual home-row sizes, how you want cards to-be presented and focus, spacing options.
Stuff like card corner options and solid or transparent card info areas. You will also be able to pick from several card info area styles.
There will also be options to customize how row/card focus behavior is handled, if row/cards should be dimmed, scaled, have focus icons or borders.

I try to get as many options working and later-on depending on feedback, i can package them as some extra community themes.

 

Great to hear!
Can’t wait to test it.

 

Nice!

A highlight frame around the selected poster would be a welcome addition - can be quite difficult to see which poster you're on at times.

 

Andy, another slight bug is that VC1 gets transcoded even though the Zidoo can play it natively.

 

That all sounds awesome, Andy.
Not to rush you, but any timeframe for the next beta release?

 

Ideally some time after the next Zidoo FW update, so i can remove all the special mounting code.
I will add a FW version check, this way i will automatically use the correct code for the device. So i can remove the special "legacy" option.

 

Hi - can anyone help I cannot get past the first page connecting to server. I have a mac and have setup a SMB server. When entering server address I am using the format smb://IP Address It then says cannot connect to server.

 

https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/installing.html#macos

This address is for the jellyfin server not a smb server/share (you don't need to setup any smb shares for Jellyfin). You need a Jellyfin server running in your LAN/WAN, so the client can connect to it.

 

Would any changes include icons for genres instead of text, some sort of UI indicator that a movie is in a Collection, or the ability to manually set the display order of a Collection? Or are those specific Jellyfin requests and not specific to your client?

 

This would be great.
Genres icons that can be selected to display files in a vertical grid (like Kodi). It's a bit of a pain casually browsing through horizontally-locked genres when they contain hundreds of files

 

Its all possible, the "smart" or "genre" screen is separate from the actual grid/home-views, which is what i'm redesigning atm. The main reason is simply, because i personally only use the home-screen and the grid-views. While testing i noticed how bad the "smart" and genre vertical views are, so i rather fully redesign those, instead of trying to fix them.
I also want to add a left/right view or "quick" settings slide-pane, which can help make views cleaner and more user-friendly.
This quick setting pane is than what would have the genre filters, similar to what the web-client does. So instead of scrolling vertically over genres, you would filter "by Genre" and the result is displayed in the selected grid layout.
Will ask for ideas/feedback, if i start working on those screens.

Yes, but....
Unfortunately i had a bit of a fallout with upstream, basically i'm tired of arguing or needing to explain any change i want to merge upstream or getting a lot of "why this or why that" responses. I just want to improve the way i see fit, so from now on i just keep all changes in my fork. I still try to follow general upstream changes and merge those into my version.
On the upside this means i waste less time creating/babysitting pull-requests and can quickly iterate or change stuff how i see fit.

 

On the homescreen front it would be good to have a row for genres, with a nice icon for each genre or the ability to add custom vector graphics to customise if the users don't want to use the default icons. Something similar to this gif (though the icon would be more like Zappiti Video than text w/ graphic behind it like below). At the moment my Jellyfin home screen is My Media, Latest, Continue Watching & Next Up. Would love to be able to select a genre from this screen too and then never have to use another screen.

On that note, a row for Collections would be cool too. I have a link to All Collections in My Media, but if I had a row to browse the collections using their backdrop that'd be sexy af.

 

I see what you mean, yet i'm confused on why this should be on the home-screen?

So where would this row pull its actual genre selection from, since tv, movie and music all might have different genres.

Than what would be displayed, if i select "romance" from this home genre row?
Since there is no context given, it would now display all "romance" items with that genre from all collections?
So we would end-up with Tv's + Movies + Music and any custom collection that also has genre information's.

So adding a generic genre row to the home-screen makes no sense to me, since this filter is always context dependent.
What could work other than adding a genre-filter to the actual collection views, is add a per "Latest..." sub-row option, which than displays the available genres under each "Latest ...." row.

 

I haven't added Music or TV yet so I'm not sure what the behaviour is now for Next Up or Continue Watching, but I assume Genre would be the same. If Next Up is pulling all media or just 1, the Genre should perform the same behaviour. So if I select Comedy, I would expect to see Dazed & Confused movie, Two & A Half Men TV and George Carlin CD's in the one group, with either a filter to select only 1 media type or set them up as individual rows similar to Continue Watching, Continue Reading, Continue Listening (i.e. Movie Genres, Music Genres, TV Genres, maybe an All Genres for all media and allow the user which to select).

I'll see if I can add some TV shows this week and check out how Jellyfin behaves with different media libraries and maybe refine this a bit further.

With Latest Media I'd like to see this split between each type, i.e. Latest TV, Latest Movies.

 

Yeah lets postpone those genre-display ideas, until i actually start working on this or it might be lost or all for nothing.

I'm still very busy getting all my first round of ui changes working and ready. I keep getting more familiar with the overall code, so can now quickly judge what feature is easy to implement or change.
I also found a lot of issues with how the actual image loading/display is handled and fixing those atm, which should result in smoother overall feel and quicker loading times, especially for large collections.