Video player with audio switching (GTVBox/ViMu Player)

[Exaper]

When switching audio track, sound disappears. I have to pause playback and then start it again to have sound playable again. TV is connected to AV receiver via optical cable (hence sound goes to receiver encoded)

Steps to reproduce:
1. Make sure no audio streaming process is running (like Pandora). Best way to ensure this step - just reboot the device via Ctr+Alt+Backspace
2. Start watching movie that has more than 1 audiotrack.
3. Switch audio track.

Sound disappears.

This actually happens with SOME, not all files. It looks like some bug in Google TV OS. I hope they'll fix it in v.3

Not really. It happens for ALL movies I've tried. Every time I change audio track, I have to pause playback and resume it. As for "bug in Google TV OS", I don't see them releasing update any time soon. Is there any way to add option to player to make it manually pause and resume playback when audio track is switched?

[mcd2000]

Not really. It happens for ALL movies I've tried. Every time I change audio track, I have to pause playback and resume it. As for "bug in Google TV OS", I don't see them releasing update any time soon. Is there any way to add option to player to make it manually pause and resume playback when audio track is switched?

Strange. Most of my files switch correctly.
Actually, there will be update soon for 2nd gen units. It will update GTV Media API.

I do not have a Sony TV, but have very few issues with Sony Bluray unit with the similar firmware.

[Exaper]

Actually, there will be update soon for 2nd gen units. It will update GTV Media API.

I do not have a Sony TV, but have very few issues with Sony Bluray unit with the similar firmware.

That's nice to know.
I'm an Android developer and can dedicate some personal time to testing application on my Sony Google TV as well as helping straightening up issues it has. Let me know how I can help.

On the side note: there are couple other bugs that I didn't report yet. Though of taking one step at the time.

[mcd2000]

I'm an Android developer and can dedicate some personal time to testing application on my Sony Google TV as well as helping straightening up issues it has. Let me know how I can help.

On the side note: there are couple other bugs that I didn't report yet. Though of taking one step at the time.

By the way, you can send me one of your files with problems (Dropbox or smth). I would like to check this on my other units.

There are always bugs.

I am mostly looking for LG testers for now. There are very serious issues with it.

[mcd2000]

Had a chance to test audio stream switching on GTV OS v.3. It really works better! Sound basically switches without any artifacts.

[Exaper]

Had a chance to test audio stream switching on GTV OS v.3. It really works better! Sound basically switches without any artifacts.

Audio switching works fine if TV has to decode a signal. Have you tried switching when audio is send encoded to external receiver (via optical cable or HDMI)?

[mcd2000]

Audio switching works fine if TV has to decode a signal. Have you tried switching when audio is send encoded to external receiver (via optical cable or HDMI)?

I mostly use a receiver over optical.

[Exaper]

Audio switching works fine if TV has to decode a signal. Have you tried switching when audio is send encoded to external receiver (via optical cable or HDMI)?

I mostly use a receiver over optical.

Could you check if you have following issue?
Have TV connected to receiver via optical cable.
1. Start music player (I use Pandora). This time optical output to receiver will be 2.0 PCM
2. Pause player (or just press HOME).
3. Go to GTVBox and start watching anything.
4. TV will keep send decoded 2.0 PCM signal from movie (instead of original encoded) via optical cable.
5. Kill music player's process
6. Go back to video and sound output will be encoded as it's supposed to be.

Basically, the problem is that if there's any process that makes TV decode audio signal, output from TV via optical will be send as decoded.

[mcd2000]

Audio switching works fine if TV has to decode a signal. Have you tried switching when audio is send encoded to external receiver (via optical cable or HDMI)?

I mostly use a receiver over optical.

Could you check if you have following issue?
Have TV connected to receiver via optical cable.
1. Start music player (I use Pandora). This time optical output to receiver will be 2.0 PCM
2. Pause player (or just press HOME).
3. Go to GTVBox and start watching anything.
4. TV will keep send decoded 2.0 PCM signal from movie (instead of original encoded) via optical cable.
5. Kill music player's process
6. Go back to video and sound output will be encoded as it's supposed to be.

Basically, the problem is that if there's any process that makes TV decode audio signal, output from TV via optical will be send as decoded.

Well I've just done the following with my Sony NSZ-GT1.
1. Started Playback in Play Music.
2. Switched to GTVBox (music still plays).
3. Selected a movie and started.
4. Music stops and my AV receiver shows change to Dolby format after movie starts.

[Mr. Protocol]

I've used GTVBox player extensively on my Sony Google TV Internet Player (NSZ-GS7), and have encountered the following issues:

1) Most seriously, while playing a Hi10 video from locally streaming content, the video will freeze, generally with a "tear" line across the frame, as if the decoding thread has crashed midway through a frame. Subtitles will continue to appear, but the video remains frozen. Scrubbing (moving the current video point by dragging the cursor in the timeline) will un-freeze the video, but it will generally re-freeze again shortly after. Eventually this stops occurring as the video being played progresses, so it might be a buffering issue. No other player on my network has a buffering problem on local content, so it's probably not my network. I changed the buffer size to the maximum in Preferences; this didn't fix things.

2) There doesn't seem to be a way, using this version, to choose a preference to have subtitles always appear. I have to click the little "Abc" in every video to get subtitles to start.

3) Subtitles aren't reliably taken down. They always appear at the right time, but they often remain long after they should have been taken down; new subtitles overwrite the old ones.

4) Subtitles sometimes switch to Italic (slanted) for no good reason. I think maybe if one word is Italicized, the subtitle engine doesn't notice the switch back to normal font, so the entire rest of that subtitle is Italicized.

5) I've already remarked that the subtitles on many (most) videos seem to consist of one set of black subtitles and one set of white ones, with the black a point or so larger than the white, making the subtitles appear white with black borders, to enhance visibility. In GTVBox, this size difference is not apparent - the subtitles have little or no border - and sometimes, the white and black subtitles are typeset differently, so they have differing numbers of words on a line. The result is a hashed-up overlay.

6) With Hi10 video, there is a fair amount of pixillated video "noise" appearing from time to time, as if the decoding has gone awry. I don't know if this is Google's problem or not. It may be related to the video "freezing" noted in (1), above, but probably not.

Overall I like GTVBox - it's the only way currently to watch Hi10 videos without transcoding - so I'm eager to see it reach a degree of stability similar to ffmpeg. Thanks!