ev77

As the developer of the GBFan app I can say with 100% certainty that the stuttering issue is a tvOS (4k Apple TVs only) issue (with a hacky development "fix") that I reported to apple (I think over a year ago) and still haven't seen any movement on. @rorie I'd be happy to send my findings/fix to the app developer if you want to connect us together.

The quality issue thing has been happening for a while now and unfortunately seems to be a backend issue as reported in the thread here. I think there's the possibility you can just brute force check for a bunch of different "quality" urls by checking URLs (replacing the bitrates from a known URL with one of the different quality bitrates as they seem to follow a specific pattern) but I haven't bothered to go that far yet. Not sure what other app developers like @conmulligan are doing for it.

@rorie A number of videos seem to be missing a HD or high quality when returned from the API for whatever reason. A quick run on xcode reveals the following videos are having issues (though some might be old enough they never had the appropriate quality):

VIDEO id 17366 Jeff Bakalar's Mandalorian Pinball Stream Missing high video url!

VIDEO id 17537 PokeMonday Night Combat - Alpha Hunt Missing high video url!

VIDEO id 17194 PowerBombcast 28: All Out 2021 Missing high video url!

VIDEO id 17144 Garage Talk 9 Missing high video url!

VIDEO id 17433 Tamoor Hussain is Possessed by Nostalgia - Guilty Treasures #04 Missing high video url!

VIDEO id 17363 Bak 2 Skool 12: FINALS Missing high video url!

VIDEO id 17231 VoidBurger's Hot Takeouts: Why We Can't Escape Firewatch Missing high video url!

VIDEO id 17353 Ranking of Evil 04 Missing high video url!

VIDEO id 17734 Quick Look: Salt and Sacrifice Missing HD video url!

I'm not sure I'd place much of the blame for the micro-transactions on Sony. Sure, they might have suggested or otherwise brought it up but given their history I'd say Polyphony was very much in the driver's seat (pun intended) when it came to all final decisions (always online included). Sony seems to:
1) Give studios lots of autonomy and space to do as they please
2) Historically haven't gotten heavily into either micro-transactions or always online
3) Don't seem like they demand returns on investments (see Media Molecule, free Returnal updates/DLC, etc)
4) Most damning, so much of the details in GT7 seems catered to pushing you towards micro-transactions that it's hard to see this as anyone's idea but Polyphony.

What can Polyphony do? Well there is lots they can do, but it seems unlikely they will do much. I had really high hopes for GT7, and I'll still end up getting it at some point in the future but I'm really disappointed with a number of the choices they have made.

1. The roulettes are just insulting. It's bad enough it seems like they are heavily weighted toward the worst item (lowest gold amount/brand "invites") but they also are just insultingly bad compared to GT Sport. Locking away specific tune items is just extra fuck you icing on the cake.

2. Payouts are generally not great, don't seem to be have much relevance to the duration or difficulty of the task, and are slap-in-face-followed-by-spit levels of bad for the online races. It really shouldn't be difficult for them to at least make an attempt at making all race payouts equal to the average difficulty/time needed if they truly believe in not wanting users to "grind the same event over and over". If you make one event way better than everything else then people are going to grind it when they need some quick cash.

3. Online seems to be a further drain on resources as they have quickly pivoted to specific car races and the more expensive gr3/4 groups where you can quickly blow a lot of cash just getting your preferred car/tires. Anyone more focused on the online is going to quickly have to either open their wallet or grind out the best event to even be able to enjoy online. God forbid they have a race with a specific car that costs $1mil+ in the future.

4. There is a lot of FOMO in the game: used cards "selling out", limited time "invites" for specific brands/cars, that all help push a user to pay up lest they miss their chance on getting their favorite car(s).

The biggest sin though seems to be the disconnect between the online races, all the new weather systems they've introduced, all the new tuning and customization of cars, and the need to spend money on all of it that just doesn't seem like it'll ever gel. I'd love to have dynamic weather in all the lengthy "C" races (or even potentially longer races) but don't see it happening because what do you do if a player hasn't bought all the different tire compounds to cope with the weather? Does a user have to spend all that money on inters/wets for every car they enter into a race just in case?

Sport mode really needs to just give some things like tires for free, but that seems to fly directly in the face of Kaz's "must grind or purchase" philosophy that seems to be the direction of GT7.

@silens: I'd love to take credit for that, but that is provided by Apple as part of the native experience for their new video player UI. The reason you aren't seeing the new tv video player UI in a lot of big name apps is because they either A) Use a custom UI for their player or B) Still haven't updated their app and/or development environment to the latest versions since their last release.

But I do appreciate the kind words. Thanks!

A new version has been submitted and should hopefully be in the app store this weekend with fixes for both problems. @samcroft90@silens

@conmulligan said:

@ev77: Hey! Not sure if you've cracked this yet but I had the same issue with Bomb Cyclone so I might be able to point you in the right direction. I wasn't able to pinpoint the exact cause — mainly because `AVPlayer` logging is less than useless — but my best guess is that `AVFoundation` is tripping up on the HLS manifest file delivered by certain GB livestreams (specifically, subtitles). In any case, disabling the automatic application of media selection criteria on the `AVPlayer` instance should resolve the issue:

I had not looked into it yet, so this was a huge help and fixed the problem. Thanks a ton, I owe you one!

Can now confirm the audio issue. This one seems like it'll take longer to fix.

Checked the bombcast today and found the issue with why not all live shows were showing up in the app. Put in a fix for that and now need to wait for another live show to check and see about the audio issue.

Live show not showing is an issue with them using a new url scheme.

Not sure if they'll have any live streams next week, but when they do I'll check in and see if I can find out what might be causing issues.

@samcroft90: I have seen reports of this, and so far I haven't noticed any problems myself; but I've only watched 1 live stream that was hosted in app. The last couple I tried were all twitch.

Could you also tell me the following information:

What version of the app do you have installed?

What version of tvOS do you have installed?

What kind of Apple TV are you using?

Thanks.

@mightymonkeyman: Can you elaborate on that? Do you no longer get the drop down alert when a show is live? Do they no longer show up in the far left navigation bar item? Do they show up in the navigation bar but don't work when you click on them?

Also, can you tell me the following information:
What version of the app you have installed?
What version of tvOS do you have installed?
What kind of Apple TV are you using?

Thanks.