Develop Bugs

Received my MHL converter today - first impressions pretty bad

As the title states I got the MHL today. Output to a 73" 1080p DLP, 55" Samsung LED 7000 series smart TV, 50" 1080p Panasonic Plasma, and 39" 1080p westinghouse LED all produce similar results... and if I do say so myself, it's really bad.
Lets see where to begin:
The Good:
-Watching 1080p content from local or network storage produces a pretty good picture
-Text is sharp, webpages look great
-Phone charges while mirroring
The Bad:
-Audio output is descent at best through HDMI, when connected with a very nice surround sound decoder it only decodes as "multi-channel", so DTS and other streams are not preserved on output
-Lag. And let me say this again... LAG. Don't even bother playing a game, it's unbearable. The phone experiences no lag while mirroring, but the output is about 1/3 the framerate.
-Lag on movies. On every TV the lag was exactly the same, whether I hardware decode or software decode the lag is present. Youtube videos look laggy even.
-Netflix does not properly mirror. I presume this is related to HDCP or copy prevention, but streaming HD content to the phone produces a nice widescreen image on the phone, but the output to the connected monitor is pure crap. Take a nice 720p HD movie, compress it using the bitrate of a low quality MP3, transmit it via AM radio to your least favorite country somehow, and then watch it on a ****ty color TV from the 1980's. This is my experience with Netflix output. Also, you can tell it is not "mirroring" because when you tap the screen, the position slider appears on the phone but not the TV.
-Cannot turn screen off while mirroring
All in all, I'm somewhat pissed off. In its present state I would have preferred the phone not support HDMI. I would accept this as a "Oh hey the phone doesn't technically support MHL HDMI mirroring but we hacked it and look what we can do" but this is definitely not a finished product to advertise. Anyone else experience similar problems? Anybody have HD output with no lag? Maybe I have a defective MHL adapter/phone?

I think you may have a defective adapter/cable. I got the adapter tip today and most of your cons were nonexistent for me -
Audio Output - I don't know much about audio but I have a 5.1 surround sound setup and it worked perfectly.
Lag - I had 0 lag. I played a racing game and watched a few episodes of Breaking Bad (MKV so the phone was working hard at decoding it too) and I had no lag.
Turning screen off - I see this as a pro since you cant accidentally turn it off while mirroring
But this brings me to my point about netflix...
Netflix has been horrible with MHL on my last 3 phones, including this one. If I try to watch a 16:9 HD show on netflix through MHL, it plays fine on the phone but becomes 4:3 on my 16:9 HDTV somehow. I don't know why this happens, but if there was a way to make it mirror exactly what was on the screen, that wouldn't happen.
I'm actually quite pleased since the signal is very solid with this phone. With previous phones, the signal constantly dropped and reconnected. I tried every cable but it was a no go.

The Netflix I don't believe is the phones fault directly, I think it has to do with Netflix restricting output. As for the lag, I will return the unit as defective if I can and get another one. Hopefully that's the problem, the lag is incredibly noticeable for me. Audio wise, it's not bad, but I don't see why it can't just output (or at least give as an option) uncompressed audio from the source. My main irk is the framerate I've seen, hopefully it's limited to this unit. Anybody else experience lag or more importantly not experience any?

I ran Netflix ok.. but same ratio issues as above... didn't look great but was ok. Any regular video files looked great.. but I had to order 2 adapters before I got the right one.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda app-developers app

I also received my MHL adapter in the mail today. I like the picture quality and sound quality on my 42" 720p plasma, but I am wondering if it supports headphone port output somehow.

I got a connector also, but does seem to work with my monocable NHL,
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda premium

I have a Samsung mhl and it works great
Sent using my Galaxy S III

I just used the official Samsung one today to deliver a training for a few new hires, and it worked perfectly. I had a full 10 slide powerpoint, afterwards I opened up the camera app and used the connected LCD screen as the viewfinder.

Issues with the MHL adapter lag, and possible fix
I have noticed similar problems as the OP. About an 1/8 of a second lag when trying to play SNES. For those of you who wanted to retro game with a bluetooth controller (like a PS3 sixaxis) I was able to get it to work. It could be my TV, but I got the lag down well below a second, enough so that you can play a game like donkey kong country and dodge opponents. The game plays at 30Hz which isn't the best frame rate, but fine for SNES.
The TV is a Samsung 1080p and there are two options that I enabled that seemed to help; video game mode, and BD mode. I don't think the TV should matter but I thought I should mention this. After much tinkering I realized that the phone is sending two different streams instead of exactly mirroring the phone's own stream. I think this is the case because when I was playing with settings I noticed in some cases it would send a landscape view to the TV when the phone's own display was in portrait mode. There were a couple other things that indicated that this is the case.
The Fix:
Anyways using a third party app like Titanium back up you need to freeze almost everything, anything that is not essential to running the game of your choice; this includes things like Verizon bloatware, Samsung bloat ware, s voice, maps, Facebook etc. You also have to turn off things like wifi, GPS, sync, etc. I also enabled force GPU rendering in the developer settings. Make sure you don't have a live background running. I also overclocked my phone to the max with setCPU. Also if you use an app like nova launcher you can make a back up of your settings and app placements which you can restore to keep your icon placements. I realize this is not a very viable fix, but this seemed to work for me.
End Fix
It's a pain, but worth it if you want a portable retro game machine. Samsung or someone at XDA needs to look into fixing this because I am pretty sure it is a software related issue. I hope anyone who bought a MHL adapter and wanted to retro game finds this useful.

So with the guys who have good results where you ordering it from.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda app-developers app

Hey just an update for anyone having issues such as screen flashes and lag I did a little more research and found in Samsung documentation that when connected to hdmi the s3 disables the output when a text or phone call is received but this was not implemented. I found that the device still checks for phone use and texts when connected to mhl. I actually had random screen flashes at set intervals on my TV! I disabled the phone and sms and this seemed to stop the flashing and help with some lag. I also noticed if you restart the device with the MHL to hdmi cable inserted the connection is a tad better and it also fixes screen flashes. I wish the damn thing worked and I have already replaced the MHL to hdmi cable twice now, and the slight lag (noticable when gaming) seems to affect a lot of people. It could be a problem with the actual device and not the software which would suck
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

Perfect AirPlay Audio Set Up

I switched from the Apple TV2 that I loved so much but started to crash a lot with Kodi.
Loving the FireTV, but was going insane trying to get my airplay setup working. I use airfoil from my mac to stream spotify to 3 airplay zones. With all the FireTV apps I downloaded, there was some latency issues that would be off during every connect and reconnect. Adjusting the settings didn't matter as it would be off again the next connect.
Tried Kodi's Airplay support, and not all that bad, though no volume (didn't know when I bought it that FireTV can't adjust internal audio), and no album artwork on the screen.
Thought about it for a few days and remembered that Airfoil has a speakers app for Android phones to turn it into an Airfoil receiver. I side loaded the app and Viola, all zones play simultaneously and album art on the screen. Tried the volume up and down on my mac (master volume) and low and behold it adjusts the volume on the FireTV. So happy that I have all the functionality of my AppleTV in a much more dynamic and faster device. Thought I would post this in case it helps someone else out as I have seen a few people ask about this in other forums, but haven't come across this solution.

grinny11 said:
I switched from the Apple TV2 that I loved so much but started to crash a lot with Kodi.
Loving the FireTV, but was going insane trying to get my airplay setup working. I use airfoil from my mac to stream spotify to 3 airplay zones. With all the FireTV apps I downloaded, there was some latency issues that would be off during every connect and reconnect. Adjusting the settings didn't matter as it would be off again the next connect.
Tried Kodi's Airplay support, and not all that bad, though no volume (didn't know when I bought it that FireTV can't adjust internal audio), and no album artwork on the screen.
Thought about it for a few days and remembered that Airfoil has a speakers app for Android phones to turn it into an Airfoil receiver. I side loaded the app and Viola, all zones play simultaneously and album art on the screen. Tried the volume up and down on my mac (master volume) and low and behold it adjusts the volume on the FireTV. So happy that I have all the functionality of my AppleTV in a much more dynamic and faster device. Thought I would post this in case it helps someone else out as I have seen a few people ask about this in other forums, but haven't come across this solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is why I love XDA, splendid.

Hi there,
Is this solution still working on your side? I tried the same last night and side loaded Airfoil speakers app. This is the first time I sideloaded anything. It is perfectly in sync with my other devices as long as I use my system audio from my PC. But when I try to use Spotify as source the app on the AFTS crashes. Do I need to have other apps services installed on my fire tv stick for this to work? What versions are you using?

I use apple music on my Macbook and it works fine. I use the latest version apk from the android play store.

Possible handshake issue?

For as long as I had this aftv it has the sound cut in & out maybe 50% of the time. I thought it was a bug/defective unit since no other streaming device has issues. A reboot ALWAYS fixes the sound issue.
Last nite I pretty much confirmed its the tv causing this because I had set the sleep timer, but was still watching xbmc. I turned the tv back on. The video was still playing but sound cut in & out.
I have tried different cables, though I only have a couple of hq hdmis. There is no firmware update I could find for this tv. Taking a chance someone might know of a trick to fix this VERY annoying issue.

KLit75 said:
For as long as I had this aftv it has the sound cut in & out maybe 50% of the time. I thought it was a bug/defective unit since no other streaming device has issues. A reboot ALWAYS fixes the sound issue.
Last nite I pretty much confirmed its the tv causing this because I had set the sleep timer, but was still watching xbmc. I turned the tv back on. The video was still playing but sound cut in & out.
I have tried different cables, though I only have a couple of hq hdmis. There is no firmware update I could find for this tv. Taking a chance someone might know of a trick to fix this VERY annoying issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been losing audio sometimes too. I have my FTV hooked to my Yamaha receiver with HDMI. I figured out that my receiver needs to be on first, before I wake up the FTV. If I wake the FTV up, and then turn on the receiver, I have no audio. Make sure you power on your TV first, then wake up the FTV. If that doesn't work, try the opposite. Wake up the FTV, then turn on the TV.

Tinny audio on Amazon Fire TV

Just in the past 2 weeks or so, my Amazon Fire TV started having this problem. The audio sounds very tinny. It's not an issue with Kodi because the other video apps launched in the Fire TV Launcher sound tinny as well. The only thing that fixes it is rebooting the device.
I've tried clearing the data for the Amazon Video app but that seems to have no effect.
I found this reddit thread with a few others who have the same issue:
http://www.reddit.com/r/fireTV/comments/2r5kev/everything_was_fine_but_now_theres_a_tinny_sound/
Anyone know what's going on?

Can you try using it on another TV? I've never heard of it exactly as you're describing but quite a few people have had cec problems with aftv and some TVs. Mine will have audio cut in and out until rebooting. This happens if the aftv is powered on before the TV. I'm going to try purchasing an HDMI with pin 13 removed.
For you I'd recommend trying to replicate this on a different TV. If you can't then its your current TV that's the problem.

KLit75 said:
Can you try using it on another TV? I've never heard of it exactly as you're describing but quite a few people have had cec problems with aftv and some TVs. Mine will have audio cut in and out until rebooting. This happens if the aftv is powered on before the TV. I'm going to try purchasing an HDMI with pin 13 removed.
For you I'd recommend trying to replicate this on a different TV. If you can't then its your current TV that's the problem.
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Well, it was working normal up until about two weeks ago.
I tested it on another TV and it sometimes has the tinny sound as well.

Neo3D said:
Well, it was working normal up until about two weeks ago.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you install any new apps during those 2 weeks ?
Sounded like some app is messing with the volume control.
Install setting.apk and check the volume is at max.

lowbee said:
Did you install any new apps during those 2 weeks ?
Sounded like some app is messing with the volume control.
Install setting.apk and check the volume is at max.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I didn't. Where can I get settings.apk?

Neo3D said:
Where can I get settings.apk?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check first post in this thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=51837005&postcount=1

lowbee said:
Check first post in this thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=51837005&postcount=1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still have the tinny audio issue
This time while watching Netflix.

Updated Fire TV to 5.0.5, then no sound and no audio/video streaming, help please.

I bought the fire TV when I can pre-order it, and I rooted it and block the firmware update. Recently youtube is not working, so I decide to update to latest OS as root is not that important to me. So I reset to to factory default then update to 5.0.5 (must be from 51.x). After installing new OS, there is no sound at all, not even from menu navigation. I tried each settings in audio and still no solution, reset, restart, change the HDMI cable etc.
What even worse is that I cannot stream video and audio at all. I have wired LAN to a router directly with 150Mb Comcast. Now I cannot even load the fireTV introduction video. I can install the youtube without any issue and it can load the play list, subscription list etc. I tried to stream Amazon video and MP3 and it stuck at the beginning and would never start.
I side loaded the latest kodi, it plays mkv from NAS but still no sound. The FireTV and TV have not been changed except OS update. Please help.

Do you have a little red muted audio sign in the top corner (right hand side) of youre screen? If thats the case using a keyboard press the + button to get the audio back on! If not search on Google i also had a problem simular to this a while back after a new install of Kodi & found the solution from there after looking through for around 5 minutes.
Hope this helps if so press that thanks button

It is not just kodi, but fire TV itself does not have sound.

Amelia2006 said:
It is not just kodi, but fire TV itself does not have sound.
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I looked on the net for you, try these -
Go to Settings > Display and Sounds > Audio > Dolby Digital Output > Select Dolby Digital Plus OFF (I used Dolby Digital Plus Automatic and that worked)
Or this -
If you hear regular TV sound that means that whatever that sound comes from is still running. Maybe you have a cable box or DVR connected to an amplifier? You need to turn it off when you are using the Fire.
You should hear the sound from the Fire TV directly from your TV, not your amplifier. You'll need to make sure the TV's sound is turned up.
Or -
Check the volume setting. Most TVs have separate volume controls for each input, so it may be you just have that input turned all the way down. Also check your TV's owner's manual and see if the input you are using supports sound. On my TV one HDMI input processes sound and one is video only for some reason.
Or this -
Do you have another HDMI cable you can try? & have you tried on another tv?
Hope this solves ur problem (I keep my fingers crossed for ya), if it does press that thanks button
Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

I had the same problem and called amazon, and they told me it was a known issue and are looking into a fix.