VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

[jjohns]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

I just installed the new version of the Android app...

The HDX playback issues on Chromecast for older titles still exist, but I'm glad to see we now have the ability to change stream quality! HD playback is working nicely.

Thanks VUDU!

[rafael.torres]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

This how chomecast architecture works ( concerning all apps, not only VUDU):

- Sender: This part is responsible to find available Chromecast devices on the same network and send commands to it when connection is stabilized. This is in general implemented by an app ( Android, IOS, Web and etc )

-Receiver: This part runs on the Chromecast device itself and is responsible for streaming the content DIRECTLY from the server. Notice that the sender has no role in playing content.

Once the receiver gets the "streaming command", the sender job is done.This buffering issue that is reported here is related to the receiver app and not the sender app, this is why you will experience it independently of the sender.

The buffering is most likely related to "quality" of the connection between your Chromecast device and the server that is providing the content. So, this issue will most likely be related to geographic physical location of the Chromecast device and the server. That being said, I do recommend opening a ticket for each case, so we can further debug it case by case.

[jjohns]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

This how chomecast architecture works ( concerning all apps, not only VUDU):

- Sender: This part is responsible to find available Chromecast devices on the same network and send commands to it when connection is stabilized. This is in general implemented by an app ( Android, IOS, Web and etc )

-Receiver: This part runs on the Chromecast device itself and is responsible for streaming the content DIRECTLY from the server. Notice that the sender has no role in playing content.

Once the receiver gets the "streaming command", the sender job is done.This buffering issue that is reported here is related to the receiver app and not the sender app, this is why you will experience it independently of the sender.

The buffering is most likely related to "quality" of the connection between your Chromecast device and the server that is providing the content. So, this issue will most likely be related to geographic physical location of the Chromecast device and the server. That being said, I do recommend opening a ticket for each case, so we can further debug it case by case.

Yes, I'm aware of all of that.

But, this doesn't appear to be a buffering issue, in the traditional sense. When content buffers on the Chromecast, I see the spinning wheel and the quality and progress bar display on the bottom of the screen and if it's persistently buffering then it automatically switches to a lower quality stream.

The issue that some of us are seeing is different in that ONLY the spinning wheel appears and the quality does not automatically change. The stream just keeps doing it at regular intervals and never changes from HDX. Also, when the content starts playing again, it skips ahead several seconds and this does not happen when it's normal buffering.

The issue does not occur for newer HDX titles, only older ones. Also, I don't have buffering issues when streaming HDX content from other devices on the same network; just the Chromecast.

EDIT:

Meant to add, thanks for the info anyway. I appreciate your chiming in.

I believe nimmzwei already opened a ticket on this issue.

Now that we can manually change the stream quality as a work-around, it's not a huge issue for me. It would be nice if this problem could get fixed, but I'm happy that I can stream older titles again by manually switching to HD.

[nimmzwei]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

@rafael: Yeah, I'm well aware of how casting works. If you'd actually read the whole thread, you'd know, that the issue has nothing to do with buffering / network performance...

The new version of the android app is a blessing, allowing to change the stream to HD. The interrupt-issue is gone. BUT:

When I stream in HD and pause then un-pause, the VUDU-app on the Chromecast force-closes after a few more minutes of playback. I still have to verify if this is a new issue or how it is related to the movie streamed or the streaming quality.

[rafael.torres]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

@rafael: Yeah, I'm well aware of how casting works. If you'd actually read the whole thread, you'd know, that the issue has nothing to do with buffering / network performance...

The new version of the android app is a blessing, allowing to change the stream to HD. The interrupt-issue is gone. BUT:

When I stream in HD and pause then un-pause, the VUDU-app on the Chromecast force-closes after a few more minutes of playback. I still have to verify if this is a new issue or how it is related to the movie streamed or the streaming quality.

@nimmzwei: Thanks for reporting it. Let me know if you figure out anymore information. I've opened an internal bug to investigate this particular crash issue. We will try to reproduce it and hopefully provide a fix (no guarantees on date).

Every time that the app crashes (apologies in advance for that), do you mind clicking on the "report" button? By doing that, we receive a crash report that help us investigate the issue.

EDIT: Fixing grammar

[Jake]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

Given you say it's only on older titles in HDX, this is likely the issue:

While the streaming is "adaptive" (adjusts to available bandwidth) some of our older streams only have 1080p bitrates, approx 3-4.5Mbps up to 9Mbps. Our newer streams also have 480p & 720p bitrates to seamlessly go down to 1Mbps.

The original Chromecast's wifi & CPU isn't particularly great, and so it can be spotty streaming high bitrate 1080p unless the wifi has a strong connection to the router. On the newer content that will not be very noticeable as when the B/W drops the bitrate will go down to 1Mbps - but on older content you may buffer and need to switch manually to HD/SD quality.

We are converting the rest of our content to be adaptive down to lower bitrates, but it's not all there yet. In the meantime, of course, if the Chromecast can't reliably stream HDX you can switch to SD manually...

[jjohns]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

Given you say it's only on older titles in HDX, this is likely the issue:

While the streaming is "adaptive" (adjusts to available bandwidth) some of our older streams only have 1080p bitrates, approx 3-4.5Mbps up to 9Mbps. Our newer streams also have 480p & 720p bitrates to seamlessly go down to 1Mbps.

The original Chromecast's wifi & CPU isn't particularly great, and so it can be spotty streaming high bitrate 1080p unless the wifi has a strong connection to the router. On the newer content that will not be very noticeable as when the B/W drops the bitrate will go down to 1Mbps - but on older content you may buffer and need to switch manually to HD/SD quality.

We are converting the rest of our content to be adaptive down to lower bitrates, but it's not all there yet. In the meantime, of course, if the Chromecast can't reliably stream HDX you can switch to SD manually...

Thanks Jake.

Agreed about the original Chromecast's wifi & CPU. However, I'm using the newest Chromecast on a 5 Ghz 802.11ac network. Considering the issue doesn't happen when streaming in HDX to my phones and tablets on that same network, I'm rather doubting it's network related. Plus, the Chromecast wasn't having issues playing HDX titles prior to the release of the redesigned Android app.

Additionally, I believe nimmzwei is having the same problems on an Nvidia Shield TV, so it's not specific to the Chromecast hardware.

But, you could very well be right that it's something about the non-adaptive HDX streams that isn't playing nicely when Cast. Fingers crossed that they'll work better once converted.

As you say, in the meantime manually changing stream quality is a viable work-around.

[echopulse]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

I've been waiting for Vudu to use adaptive streaming. It should make buffering less of an issue. About when did you start encoding streams with adaptive bitrates?

[Jake]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

I've been waiting for Vudu to use adaptive streaming. It should make buffering less of an issue. About when did you start encoding streams with adaptive bitrates?

VUDU has used adaptive streaming since the beginning... the difference more recently (in the last year or so) is adaptive streaming with resolution switching (seamless 480p/720p/1080p+) That was a bit slow to launch since some older devices don't support switching resolution on the fly, and we wanted to ensure our solution worked well with every device that supports VUDU (that goes back a while!)

[Jake]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

Thanks Jake.

Agreed about the original Chromecast's wifi & CPU. However, I'm using the newest Chromecast on a 5 Ghz 802.11ac network. Considering the issue doesn't happen when streaming in HDX to my phones and tablets on that same network, I'm rather doubting it's network related. Plus, the Chromecast wasn't having issues playing HDX titles prior to the release of the redesigned Android app.

Additionally, I believe nimmzwei is having the same problems on an Nvidia Shield TV, so it's not specific to the Chromecast hardware.

But, you could very well be right that it's something about the non-adaptive HDX streams that isn't playing nicely when Cast. Fingers crossed that they'll work better once converted.

As you say, in the meantime manually changing stream quality is a viable work-around.

NVidia Shield isn't officially supported, but will be; expect official support sometime in 2016.

Also, there may be other issues with the new Chromecast streaming; in general our stats have shown much less buffering, but I suppose there are always exceptions/bugs. Of course we will be looking into those to improve it ASAP.

[nimmzwei]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

Hi Jake,

thanks for acknowledging that there is a problem with Chromecasting. I really hope VUDU gets this sorted out. I have to admit I've already started to buy from the Google Play Store instead of VUDU - the bugs with the Chromecast are just too numerous atm to have a fun movie experience.

When you say, that NVIDIA Shield Android-TV will be supported, you mean a VUDU-app for Android-TV, right? Would be awesome. The little thing can output 4k so should make a nice addition to the VUDU-UHD crowd...

[nimmzwei]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

Some more observations (that point to A/V-issues).

- Google Play Movies on my Shield TV had the issue of f**** up audio after pausing / unpausing. This could only be fixed by rebooting. This issue is gone after setting the A/V delay in the HDMI-settings of the Shield to 0ms (was 50ms).

- Netflix on the Shield TV NEVER showed the above behavior. The reason: It doesn't decode the audio from the stream but passes it directly on to the amp (bitstream audio). This also means you can't adjust the audio via the Shield TV but only via the amp.

- The VUDU app on Chromecast / decodes the audio (you can adjust the volume on the Shield / Chromecast) and that seems to cause the problems with syncing audio and video. The audio bitstream usually contains sync information. I would assume that in conjunction with the advanced adaptive streaming the loss of that sync information causes the issues we are seeing atm.

If someone has a BD-Player it would be interesting to test this theory. BD-players can usually change between decoding audio to PCM or just passing on the bitstream audio. It may be worth a try.

[pakkman]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

Android TV support would be great. Would it have UHD and 3D support?

[ColiBreh1]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

NVidia Shield isn't officially supported, but will be; expect official support sometime in 2016.

Will the Nvidia Shield/Android TV app support downloads?

[nimmzwei]

Re: VUDU on Android-TV and casting problems with new app / Marshmallow

After some more investigation:

The HDMI handshake protocol is a b****. I've recently replaced an aging Harmony 900 with a new WLAN model and thus the start-up sequence of my home cinema changed slightly.
This led to the Chromecast / Shield negotiating with the projector instead of the av-reciever about what audio decoding is supported.
Thus both devices dropped back to PCM and disabled bitstreaming. When this happenend, I would experience frequent crashes of the VUDU app on the Chromecast (always after pausing and resuming). This doesn't happen when the Chromecast is bitstreaming the audio.

@VUDU support: You might want to check your Chromecast setup in both scenarios (bitstream and PCM decode) and see if the app is stable and how the adaptive streaming is handled.

Everyone else: Check, if your Chromecast let's you change the volume while watching VUDU. If it does, you are getting PCM audio and not the DD+ bitstream. If your equip is DD+ capable, check the sequence in which you turn on your devices! For me, it only works, if the projector (which is NOT DD+ capable) is turned on 10secs or so before the av-reciever (which IS DD+ capable). There is NO option on the Chromecast or on the Shield Android TV to force bistream audio!
Most av-recievers have a HDMI audio passthrough mode, meaning the reciever will leave the audio decoding to whatever device is next in line. If you keep getting PCM when your should get bitstream audio, check this setting!

The problem with the pitched audio on the Shield remains though. This seems to be a device specific problem.

If someone else could verify, that they get crashes with VUDU on their Chromecast if the Chromecast is not bitstreaming, that would be terrific.