We hope you all are enjoying the holidays this week. It's been a crazy year, but one of the main things that's kept us excited is this community. You all have been enthusiastic, kind, and super helpful with each other.
We've been working on this for a very very long time and wanted to surprise you with it.
How did you do it?
PIP is very tricky. It requires the native video player, but, as has been discussed on many, many threads...we don't use the native player. Luckily we found a way to bridge our player and the native PIP player, thanks to the work we have been pursuing all year to modernize our playback engine.
This means that PIP now Just Works, without the need for transcoding, and without a DVR server requirement. When you want PIP, just select the button and you'll enter PIP. This works with everything: HDHomeRun video, TVE video, recordings, etc.
Caveats.
While PIP is working well, you might notice some things. We love to set expectations well so here's a couple things you might notice right now. These may get better or may stay the same. Like I said, we've been working on this for a really long time.
- Be sure you're on iOS and tvOS 14.3
- Swiping to exit the app on iOS does not auto PIP
- You may notice some glitching coming back to full screen from PIP
- On tvOS, if our PIP window is active while another video player is started, audio focus will remain in other player until it is stopped
What to look out for.
We did a lot of work on our video and audio core to make this happen. Because of this, you might see bugs or crashes during normal playback. Please report these to us by submitting diagnostics and emailing at [email protected].
PIP is supported with both the Default and Experimental Video Driver, but the latter may be more robust. If you notice problems with PIP, try switching the driver under Settings > Playback > Advanced > Video Driver.
Have Fun
Have fun with this! Please remember that it's not perfect, but it's real close. We know you all have wanted this for a longgggggggggg time and we hope what we've delivered suits you well.
Have a good rest of the year!