Compatible with G-Box M2?

[deadrich]

I've had limited success getting the plugin to work with a G-Box M2. Anyone tested or have any suggestions? When the video playback starts, the lights dim, but never cycle colors. The lights return to previous setting when the video completes, so I know the box is talking to the lights, just not 100%.

Thoughts?

[cees-elzinga]

just to make sure, you're not running the add-on in theatre mode?

[deadrich]

Yes, confirmed that it is in Ambilight mode. When in Theater mode, the lights turn off completely and it acts as expected. In Ambiligit mode, the lights dim (not 100%) and return when video ends.

After more tests, it appears to work correctly on a few add-ons, but not all. This leads me to believe it may be related to the video player being used?

[cees-elzinga]

cool. yes it sounds like it's unable to calculate a color (and it stays on the same one color during playback).

dont have the time to help you out further right now. you could try running this add-on:
https://github.com/cees-elzinga/script.palette

it outputs the calculated colors to a png image. but never tested it on anything else then ubuntu so you might run into some issues getting it to work

[deadrich]

Thanks, I will take a look at the add-on. Would love to get Ambilight working. Let me know if you're accepting donations to focus on a possible fix. Happy to support your efforts however I can.

[s1kx]

Seems like the RenderCapture interface (at least with DVDPlayer on the linux builds for the mx2) is only returning a white screenshot in the getImage() buffer. Maybe AMLPlayer has the capability to capture the video stream correctly.
The boblight addon had a similar issue on Raspberry Pi's and they solved it first by using a modified OMXPlayer and then replaced that by using a dedicated daemon that captures the (X11?) screen... But I think that would be overkill here if it's possible to capture it in xbmc.

[Bruur]

I'm having the same problem on a generic MX Box both on Android and on Linux. It sports an Amlogic 8726 MX Dual Core Dual Cortex A9 CPU, and a Quad MALI 400 GPU.

The problem must indeed be related to the video rendering. The hardware for the box requires customization of the video player in XBMC and I'm assuming that xbmc is branched to make this work (I'm running a custom 12.2 on Android and a custom 12.3 on Linux). I think getting the getImage() function to work was not a prioritiy for the developers.

Changing the video player to an external video player in Android is not an option for me. What can be done to make the Ambilight mode work on this hardware?

[mattnewham]

This is still an issue, do we have any way forward to enable functionality in the MX xbmc builds?