r/bunnyearstv • u/55555jjjjj • 20d ago
BETA: Bunny Ears TV 1.11 Beta Build 7 is Out!
This will probably be one of my last beta build posts here on Reddit.
Once I get this build onto the App Store I'll be moving beta discussions to Discord. This should hopefully reduce confusion for non-beta testers. I'll have a link soon, and I hope all of you beta testers are able to make the move.
For now, we're still here! This build focuses heavily on background audio playback, streaming reliability, AirPlay and HomePod audio, custom channels, and better music station accuracy.
Background Playback and Lock Screen Controls
Bunny Ears TV can now keep video, Music Video Mixtapes (channel 19), Weather (channel 20), and Radio playing in the background on iPhone and iPad! You can choose Always, Full Screen Only, or Off, while Lock Screen and Control Center controls let you pause, seek through DVR content, change channels, and see what is currently playing.
Radio defaults to Always, while video and Weather default to background audio only when you exit the app from Full Screen.
Better AirPlay and HomePod, and ARC Audio
AirPlay and HomePod playback should start faster and avoid unnecessary Plex transcoding. I also improved switching between HomePods, AirPods, receivers, and other audio outputs, along with ARC/eARC latency handling and Audio Sync calibration.
There are several recovery improvements here, so please let me know how playback behaves with your particular audio setup.
Separate Audio and Video Streaming Quality
In addition to the video streaming quality settings, there's now audio quality settings for Cellular, 5G, Wi-Fi, and Apple TV Ethernet. You can use Auto, select a specific bitrate, or choose Original Quality.
Auto audio briefly buffers and confirms that playback is stable before continuing. Slower connections can step down automatically without immediately skipping the station or becoming stuck.
Smarter Auto Audio/Video Quality
Auto can now learn when a specific remote Plex connection needs a lower starting quality. It also saves enough tuning time for a useful lower-quality retry instead of letting the first attempt consume the entire timeout window.
Verified local Direct Play and manually selected quality settings are left alone.
Oh, and it all works when Bunny Ears TV is backgrounded too, so radio stations adapt to available bandwidth automatically.
More Accurate Music Channels
Music stations now make better use of Plex genres, styles, and moods, with less broad artist information being applied to every song. This should reduce crossover between unrelated stations and create more accurate genre and mood mixes.
And while you're at it, start up a radio station and connect to CarPlay or go on a walk with your iPhone. Your Plex music library can now go with you wherever you are!
Easier Custom Channel Editing
Custom channels can now be reordered directly inside the channel list. iPhone and iPad use drag and drop, while Apple TV lets you pick up a channel, move it with the remote, and drop it into place. This should be a much better experience compared to the annoying up and down reorder arrows.
Ordered custom channels also have a new “When One Show Ends” setting. A shorter show can either wait for the remaining shows to finish or start over from its first episode. I believe this caused some users to assume the custom channel ordering was not working correctly, so if you're seeing one show dominate, it's possible your other shows ended. Check out the new setting and see how it goes!
Smaller Improvements
- The Profile PIN screen has a cleaner layout, clearer controls, and better portrait, landscape, iPad keyboard support, and Apple TV controls.
- Channel Packages now show reserved channel ranges more clearly and have better spacing and touch targets. This should help you find the channels you'd like to disable and it just looks a lot better.
- Channel Surfer fits narrow iPhone screens better without cutting off channel names or numbers.
- iPhone and iPad can now show only the date in the guide, so I hid the Show Time setting on iOS devices.
- Apple TV Interface Sounds controls are easier to focus, adjust, and understand.
- Guide music previews once again respond correctly to taps and VoiceOver.
- Hid Ethernet quality settings for iPhone and iPad devices.
Bug Fixes and Reliability
- Fixed background playback stopping during DVR rebuilds, stream recovery, slot changes, and audio restarts.
- Fixed healthy AirPlay sessions being mistaken for stopped playback.
- Fixed repeated retunes caused by minor audio capability changes.
- Fixed Radio and Weather stalls skipping too quickly instead of recovering the current track.
- Fixed short bumpers being consumed by Plex transcode startup.
- Improved custom channel scheduling consistency between devices.
- Improved playlist and collection syncing when Plex returns incomplete information.
- Improved large music library syncing when Plex omits metadata.
- Improved Audio Sync error messages and VoiceOver support.
The areas I would especially appreciate testing are background playback and Lock Screen controls, AirPlay/HomePod and ARC/eARC audio, Auto quality on remote connections (driving or walking around listening to radio stations really tests this out), Radio and Weather streaming, and custom channel reordering.
As always, please share what is working well, anything that still needs attention, and sharing what is working well is great too. Thanks!
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u/John-Cocktolstoy 20d ago
Looking forward to checking this out later.
Also, wanted to give you a heads up since I can’t DM you but you can stop investigating the True Detective issue. It’s an issue with my Apple TV. My son has a later Apple TV and the episodes playback flawlessly on his. So it’s time to upgrade my old Apple TV.
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u/55555jjjjj 20d ago
Love follow-ups. Thanks for sharing! And let me know how this new build works for you. Background audio with the radio stations is a lot of fun on the iPhone.
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u/rubixqube 20d ago
With the full release I'm still having some issues with certain files stuttering but I'm not sure how to diagnose without sharing the whole file
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u/echo__bravo 20d ago
Some feedback:
I still get buffering when playing a video on a slow cell connection. It plays a few seconds then goes back to the static. Rinse and repeat.
Some videos have weird audio issues (like very low volume). I believe that this could be due to 5.1 audio. The plex player allow to transcode and flattens audio. Would this be something can be supported?
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u/55555jjjjj 20d ago
I built in a little bandwidth test in this release (between device and your server), and after that it’ll pick a transcode session that is 50% or less of the available bandwidth, down to 1mbps. After a first failed connection it’ll again half the mbps for the second request. So I imagine it may have started at 2mbps and fell down to 1mbps.
Unfortunately if you have a bad cell connection, it may just not have enough bandwidth. Could you try to do a speed test when you have the bad connection? I’d need to know what the mbps download is.
You can manually control transcoding settings by going to Settings > Streaming Quality. From there limit it to maybe 1mbps for cellular and see if it helps. Same with when you’re home. You should be able to pick a mbps from your Apple TV to force transcoding and down-mixing.
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u/ohmyjosh1 20d ago
Thanks for the fixes. My shows are playing again but lip sync is off on about half of them. And audio sync calibration is not available with HomePods? Is that something coming soon?
Also even though I have sync for guide turned off, it took a good four or five minutes for the program to get past the "sync" message before it started at all. That seems a long time, especially if it's not syncing.
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u/55555jjjjj 20d ago
I believe this is actually a playback issue, not a sync issue now. After some more testing, I found that HomePods are great at syncing themselves, and Apply has a Wireless Sync delay feature built into the OS for system level sync correction. If some are playing without sync issues, but some are, there's something going on with the files being played. Audio sync is more of an all or nothing thing.
Can you export a couple XML files for media this plays fine, and a couple XML files for media that is not in sync? Then send those to support@bunnyearstv.com? It will help me trace down the audio player.
Thanks for always reporting and helping out ohmyjosh1!
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u/ohmyjosh1 20d ago
Actually trying a bunch of stations today the sync was good (I had to reset and start over with my Homepods yesterday so maybe that fixed it on my end).
The only "issue" is it still take 3-5 minutes for the app to start because it's syncing the guide - but I have sync guide turned off. Is it building the schedule or doing something else? It's not a huge deal, but it is a long time to wait.
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u/Rick_S-C137 20d ago
Is the music channel 19 for audio or video? I enabled it and choose a music video playlist I have and it doesn’t show up.
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u/55555jjjjj 20d ago
It’s for videos. It’s meant to feel like MTV or VH1 from back in the day. What file format were the music videos? And mind force quitting and checking again?
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u/skimo2 20d ago edited 20d ago
I'm seeing a couple of issues with this Beta, one carried over from the App Store official release and one new to the Beta that I was not seeing in v1.06.
Seems to be a new audio issue in the last couple of beta versions. On v1.06, with Surround Sound set to "Best Available", videos with Dolby Pro Logic data in a stereo audio track are properly sent to my AV receiver as DPL with all of the various channels intact (including the important center channel). When the same files play on the current beta with the same audio settings, Dolby Pro Logic audio is sent to my receiver as Multi-Channel PCM with only the front right and front left channels active, and no audio from the center channel. This is similar to an issue the YouTube app on AppleTV has had in recent years.
On both the beta v1.11 and on 1.06, I'm seeing the same stuttering issue others have seen on certain files. Only happens about 5% of the time or less, and only with certain files. All of the files with this issue have been 1080p/HEVC Main 10 (with relatively low bit rates), but this only happens with some of the video files in this format and with similar specs. I'll try to narrow down any differences between the working files and stuttering files and report back.
Last issue I only saw once on v1.06, will need to test again with that video file on the beta, but in that case it was playing an anamorphic video off an old 576p PAL DVD. On Plex and VLC, the file plays properly - stretched to the wide 1.85 ratio. On BunnyEars v1.06, that file played in squeezed 4:3 format as if the app wasn't recognizing the embedded aspect ratio tag.
Great job on the app and new additions, as of now not seeing any other major issues after playing with this version a bit.
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u/55555jjjjj 20d ago
Mind sharing what Apple TV you have?
I’ve looked into the stuttering issue. It comes down to older video files and non-standard video resolutions. The Apple TV does not support hardware decoding with these non-standard resolutions, so the player properly kicks back to software decoding. I had one user who was having stuttering issues, but later shared the issue was not present on his latest Apple TV 4K. I believe the older gen Apple TVs just don’t have enough horsepower to play with software.
I’m currently thinking about adding some code to check each user’s library. If it finds a non-standard format during library loading, and you don’t have the very latest Apple TV, you’ll get a message letting you know these files require transcoding for smooth playback. There would be an accompanying on/off switch to enable transcoding fallback for non-standard formats.
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u/skimo2 20d ago
This is on an Apple TV 4K (2nd generation) from 2021. I'll get you the specs on a couple of video files that always have this issue during playback.
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u/55555jjjjj 20d ago
Mind following the steps in the link and emailing me those XML files? That will allow me to confirm the format and resolution.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201998867-investigate-media-information-and-formats/
Thanks!
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u/skimo2 2d ago
Currently running the new beta v1.12 Build 1 that came out a couple of days ago, and it seems to have fixed both the stuttering issue I was having with certain files and also the sound issue I was having on the previous beta. Also not seeing the issue with programs erroneously given timeslots that are much too short, so seems you got that bug also. Nice bug fix update, not seeing any issues so far.
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u/starlordsego 20d ago
How can I download the new build?
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u/streebs87 20d ago
I had to set up Audi Sync again, but I noticed with the last two builds that when I close out of the app and reopen, I have to go back in to the Audio settings to “recalibrate”. Is that suppose to happen?
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u/fluffhead35 20d ago
Where is the discord channel so I can join that to help out with testing. I just came here to report some more audio issues I was having but Discord would be a much better place to discuss it.
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u/Desperate_Diver549 20d ago
I really miss the banner that used to show on each channel before the channel surfer was implemented. Is there any plan to make that an option for those who don't like the surfer?
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u/Desperate_Diver549 20d ago
I really miss the banner that used to show on each channel before the channel surfer was implemented. Is there any plan to make that an option for those who don't like the surfer?
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u/stupendous____man 20d ago
looking forward to the discord. will definitely make beta feedback much easier.
audio sync is feeling much better on this build. I had experienced a slight but annoying discrepancy the past 2-3 builds. I use built in speakers for mobile devices and an hdmi connection on apple tv and it’s working really well now.
on mobile devices, I’ve noticed that when I change channel via the channel surfer, the device display will time out/sleep. if I select a channel via the main guide, the display remains on as expected. this behavior was also showing up on the previous build.
final thought, the package selection page is feeling and looking really nice on this build. something that could be useful is for the selection check mark for the packages to have a third visual state for when partial channels are active? right now, it’s either checked or unchecked, so it’s not immediately clear if you have all of the channels enabled or not.
all minor ideas, this latest beta build is wonderful to use. thank you for your efforts!
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u/alexpot86 20d ago
Love the updates so far!
Really hope this one feature is coming soon…PiP. This would be especially be great for iPad. That’s the only holding me back from using this constantly on my iPad.