[Manifest] Support 4k on Android/Nvidia shield

[maniacgit]

With the native App I'm able to watch 4k content. The addon only does 1080p.

Is it possible to support 4k on the Shield or Android in general?

[asciidisco]

Currently not. Maybe one day, depends on inputstream.adaptive.
I guess @peak3d would be more than happy if someone would just start with and implement this.
Or at least, does the necessary research.

[maniacgit]

Which reasearch is needed?

With Youtube using dash and manual stream selection in inputstream.adaptive 4k is working in the Youtube addon.

[peak3d]

Passing HEVC through the DRM pipeline

[peak3d]

No research needed, we'll do it in the next couple of days

[centralseven]

@peak3d how ist the status of the HEVC passthrough?
I installed v2.1.4 but there are still no 4k streams to select.

[peak3d]

inputstream.adaptive seems to be able to play HEVC in general, not really tested with NX but I don't see any reason why it should not work. To allow 4K the NX plugin must be modified to request HEVC from netflix. @asciidisco and @trummerjo are already informed.

[asciidisco]

Outstanding Pull Request #174 should enable the HEVC profiles. Will close this when merged & released.

[asciidisco]

How to actually watch 4k videos:

• Enable the HEVC profiles in the plugin settings (disabled by default)
• Switch to the InputStream settings and change the stream selection to manual
• With this activated playing an episode initially started in a really low resolution, you then need to go to the video setting & select a higher res profile
• We don't know about a profile for HDR yet, so it´s not supported for now

[peak3d]

Switch to the InputStream settings and change the stream selection to manual << why??

[im85288]

That is what I had to do when I tested this yesterday. With auto selected it was only offering me 1080p at best. Switching to manual allowed me to select the 4K streams. More than happy to try out any other settings you recommend

[peak3d]

@im85288 are you watching on a 4K Monitor?
If not, have you enabled "ignore display Resolution in inputstream settings?

if you have a 4K display, and it does not work with auto, pls provide a debug log, thx!

[im85288]

I’m watching it via my shield tv on an LG oled (kodi resolution is set to 4K). Up until you suggested activating the “ignore display” I had not activated it. I did so now but the result is the same (when stream selection is auto) in that it picks a 1080p resolution.

Going to get a log after s quick cup of coffee :)

[im85288]

@peak3d Hopefully this is of help: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfrk6ajuplv8ni0/kodi.log?dl=0

Started looking through it myself but there is a lot there! In this example I played the first episode of Glow where I know there is a 4k stream but it chose the 1080p version

[peak3d]

Ok, thanx, from log I don't see anything unnormal, but will try (hopefully) this evening on my shield.

[asciidisco]

@peak3d Let me know if you need to have something else logged, I can provide a version with more log options if needed.

@im85288 What might be interesting as well, could be the generated Manifest file contents. You see the address in your log, it looks like this: http://localhost:48417/manifest?id=80115864

Unfortuanately, the port gets determined at every Kodi start, so the address is not persisted. If you have the chance to take a look at your logs while Kodi is running, you could try to open the address from within a browser (could be on a different device as well, just switch localhost with the devices IP address), copy the contents & post it here. Thanks :)

[im85288]

I'm not sure if this helps:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/LK3zSIm.jpg[/img]

As you can see there a 1080p stream is in position 12 (after the 4k ones) could it be picking that one by mistake?

[peak3d]

Yep, this is exactly what I'm looking for (the generated manifest file).
I know that the raw manifest file is in user_data/service.msl/, maybe someone want to write the translated one to this place as well? It would be much easier to read (at least for me)

[asciidisco]

@peak3d Don't see a problem in doing that, I´ll try to get this in (maybe in a separate branch first)

[peak3d]

ok, great, thx!

[trummerjo]

i think we should implement some kind of debug mode (maybe its possible to hook to the kodi debug mode?).
That the json manifest is saved is relic from the early stage of developing the msl proxy and not really necessary anymore

[asciidisco]

@trummerjo Do you possibly have the time to look into this?

[im85288]

Unfortunately I think the port may be blocked, attempting to access the url always gave me a connection error. If there is anything else I can do to help just let me know, thanks.

[im85288]

removed as wrong output

[im85288]

Hopefully the above is the generated manifest you needed? I just added logging locally after the call to get the manifest file is initiated

[trummerjo]

I'll look into this one tomorrow @asciidisco
@im85288 that is actually not the manifest @peak3d requested but: In this one is no HDR content included
I'll try to create a debug mode for the plugin that both manifests are saved so that @peak3d can have look why not the highest resolution is selected.
@im85288 would it be possible to send me the apk of the netflix app you're using?

[asciidisco]

Thank you @trummerjo 👍

[im85288]

@trummerjo yeah sure (though I’m not certain how yet as I’m fairly new to Android). I’ll have a look now to see how to dig it out

[im85288]

@trummerjo I generated the apk and the link to download is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/h76dc9ija8skl8p/com.netflix.mediaclient.apk?dl=0

[camjac251]

Has anyone been able to stream hevc recently?

I've been trying this on Windows with the 20170809-67137d6348-master-x86 version of Kodi and widevine-cdm/970-win-ia32.zip from the Firefox Sources. The inputstream max res secure/general are both set to max and stream selection is on manual. In the Expert tab of the netflix settings, all of the options are checked including HEVC. If I try to play a tv show (known to be 4k), it will begin playing in 640x480 using ff-hevc (SW) (573000~ rough bitrate) just fine, although if I try to up the quality to 720p, the video will freeze (at the previous quality) but the audio will continue. I am unable to play any of the higher qualities than 640x480 on hevc, h264 will work on 1080p though.

Edit: I also noticed that with Hardware acceleration turned on (Render method set to DXVA and Allow HW Acceleration DXVA2 on) the lower qualities will show ff-hevc-d3d11va (HW) as the video codec but when I set it to 720p, the codec reads ff-hevc (SW) like it's not receiving the stream and detecting it.

[asciidisco]

@camjac251 We added the hevc stuff for Android only (but wouldn't limit it, because detecting Android reliably is a shit show). If you´re not using Android, you should turn it off, it will cause more trouble then it helps & inputstream.adaptive wouldn't be able to detect the correct manifest entry.

[DeProf90]

@asciidisco and @peak3d thank you for all your work honestly I have been so frustrated by the fact that I want a legitimate Kodi Box with my accounts but no way of having it.

Are there any plans on porting this android feature to other platforms? I am using an odroid c2 and hevc would help me with the hardware decoder to reach the 1080p resoloution since my cpu on that board will never be able to do this on its own.

Sorry for my bad English :D

[peak3d]

To have h/w decoding for Netflix on Linux/Arm devices, one would need a secure OS (like ChromeOs) and then discussions with widevine. I bet there will be something in the near future, but there is curently no real work on it because device vendors earn so much money with android devices.

[Nerto]

Is there a possibility to get HDR working?

[im85288]

I hope so it’s the only reason I have not switched completely to using this addon. I’m not sure if there is any ongoing development on this addon at the minute though and did not hear back from my above comments. Fingers crossed, I would be happy to implement it if I knew where to look

[peak3d]

HDR is bound to ESN, currently we fake ESN because of crypto reasons.
To be able to use the corect ESN there must be MSL-widevine encryption implemented.

If this is done, we should be able to get the HDR streams.

Ping @trummerjo

[im85288]

@caphm it has been about 6 months since I last tested this, now that up next support is included I decided to try again.

As much as I try (using the same NVIDIA shield) as previously I cannot get any of the 4K streams to show up as being selectable (using Kodi 18 beta 5). I set the expert settings of the addon to include both 4K and hdr profiles. Tried setting input stream to manual selection (as that worked previously).

Is this still supported and working?

[im85288]

@peak3d I recall you have a shield, is 4K/hdr working with your setup? Thanks

[im85288]

@caphm Ok I read the readme and added my ESN and now I can see 4K streams (again only with manual) selected in input stream. I am not however seeing any hdr streams (according to the readme that should work now?)

[Mafarricos]

Did already someone else tested on a Mibox International?
I have one and I changed ESN to the one of my Mibox and can play hdr, but Max resolution is 1080p. I changed to manual in adaptative, so I can change the stream resolution, but 4k streams don't show.

On app I can see 4K.

What I'm missing?