Merge pull request #1209 from jellyfin/nvv-atv-18

Add Jellyfin for Android TV 0.18 release blog post

blog/2024/11-30-android-tv-18/index.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
+---
+title: Jellyfin for Android TV 0.18
+authors:
+  - nielsvanvelzen
+slug: androidtv-v0.18.0
+tags: [release, android-tv]
+---
+
+Version 0.18 of our Jellyfin for Android TV app is ready! Exciting features like lyrics and media segments are now available, along with
+significant improvements to subtitles and more.
+
+{/* truncate */}
+
+This release marks another milestone in our journey to delivering the best media app on Android TV. Jellyfin 10.10 or newer is required. A
+complete list of changes, including their respective pull requests, can be found on
+[GitHub](https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/releases/tag/v0.18.0). I've listed a subset of all changes below.
+
+### Skipping intros, outros and more with media segments
+
+Media segments are a new feature added in Jellyfin 10.10. A segment provides metadata for specific parts of a video or audio file. This can
+be used to mark an intro in your episode or the credits of a movie. The Android TV app can now use those segments to skip parts. By default,
+the app will ask to skip intros and outros, but you can fine-tune this to your liking within the app preferences. All media segment types
+are supported: intro, outro, preview, recap and commercial with three actions to choose from:
+
+- **Skip**  
+  Immediately skips the playback forward to the end of the segment, or the next episode
+
+- **Ask to skip**  
+  Shows a popup that the segment can be skipped by pressing the OK button on your remote and disappears after 8 seconds or when pressing the
+  back button.
+
+  ![Ask to skip button shown during video playback](./asktoskip.png)
+
+- **Do nothing**  
+  The segment will be ignored, with no skips or popups.
+
+More actions and functionality related to media segments is already in the works for future releases, like a "mute" action that temporarily
+silences audio.
+
+### Revamped subtitles
+
+This release completely redesigns the way subtitles are loaded and shown on screen, resolving a large number of issues reported over the
+past few years.
+
+Previously the app did not support embedded subtitles and forced the server to extract them from video files first. This is a resource-heavy
+process and often causes subtitles to not show up or with a big delay. A workaround for this was to use the "Subtitle Extract" plugin that
+will do this extraction ahead of time, this was cumbersome and is now no longer necessary.
+
+Together with these loading changes, the app now reliably supports Presentation Graphic Stream (PGS) subtitles and positioning tags in the
+SubRip Subtitle Format (SRT), a much requested feature!
+
+To make these changes happen, the preferences for subtitles have also slightly changed. It is now possible to choose your own background and
+outline colors.
+
+### Sing along with lyrics
+
+Not only did video playback improve, playing music has gotten some upgrades as well! The most exciting change here is support for lyrics.
+Whenever your song has lyrics available (added by a plugin or on your file system), they will be shown in the app. This works especially
+well when combined with our screensaver, which will show lyrics fullscreen.
+
+![Screensaver showing lyrics for the playing song](./lyrics.png)
+
+Currently, 2 types of lyrics are supported: timed lyrics, which will highlight the current line of the vocal track, and untimed lyrics,
+which will automatically scroll based on the track duration.
+
+In addition to the lyric changes, some bugs have been fixed where a music queue would never disappear when the last track ends and some text
+elements did not update properly.
+
+### Other changes
+
+In addition to the previously mentioned changes there's a lot more to enjoy. The video player will no longer randomly show its controls and
+they stay hidden when the video is loading for a smoother experience. An issue where sorting libraries by "last played" did not work for TV
+shows was fixed. And finally, a lot of improvements under the hood were made to make the app faster, easier to maintain, and more stable
+than ever.
+
+There are as also two new experimental options for playback. The first one is related to decoding audio codecs, while normally the app will
+automatically fall back to using a different decoding approach using FFmpeg, this might not always work. You can now enable the "Prefer
+FFmpeg for audio playback" preference to force the fallback approach.
+
+The second experimental option adds support for previews when scrubbing, once "Enable trickplay in video player" is checked you'll see image
+previews above the progress bar while scrubbing through your videos! There are some issues and annoyances with the current implementation
+which will be resolved before this feature will be enabled by default and marked non-experimental. Make sure the Trickplay feature is
+enabled on your libraries for the previews to show up.
+
+![Video scrubbing previews in the video player](./trickplay.png)
+
+## Contributors
+
+Jellyfin is completely developed by volunteers, and couldn't be made without their great skills and dedication. Consider donating if you
+appreciate their work. A big shout-out to all contributors that made this release possible:
+
+**Jellyfin Team**
+
+- [@nielsvanvelzen](https://github.com/nielsvanvelzen) - Donate via [GitHub sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/nielsvanvelzen)
+
+**Other contributors**
+
+- [@MichaelRUSF](https://github.com/MichaelRUSF)
+- [@JagerSprinkles](https://github.com/JagerSprinkles)
+- [@pascalwei](https://github.com/pascalwei)
+- [@kabel2](https://github.com/kabel2)
+- [@starsep](https://github.com/starsep)
+- [@rickysixx](https://github.com/rickysixx)
+- [@ericleb010](https://github.com/ericleb010)
+- [@reacocard](https://github.com/reacocard)
+
+And finally a big thank you to everyone who contributed translations, reported bugs, provided feedback and participated in beta testing!
+
+### Helping out
+
+If you have experience with Android TV development or with Kotlin and are interested in contributing yourself, feel free to dive into the
+[source code](https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv) and open a pull request. Alternatively, you can help with translating the app
+into your own language on our [Weblate](https://translate.jellyfin.org/engage/jellyfin-android/) instance.
+
+## Downloads
+
+Update your app now to check out all these changes! The app stores will auto-update your Jellyfin app if you're already using the app. For
+new users, you can find the app on the app store of your platform.
+
+<a className='margin-right--md' href='https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jellyfin.androidtv'>
+  <img width='153' alt='Jellyfin for Android TV on Google Play' src='/images/store-icons/google-play.png' />
+</a>
+
+<a className='margin-right--md' href='https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TX7Z725'>
+  <img width='153' alt='Jellyfin for Fire TV at Amazon App Store' src='/images/store-icons/amazon.png' />
+</a>
+
+<a href='https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.jellyfin.androidtv/'>
+  <img width='153' alt='Jellyfin for Android TV on F-Droid' src='/images/store-icons/fdroid.png' />
+</a>
+
+Direct downloads are available for sideloading at [repo.jellyfin.org](https://repo.jellyfin.org/releases/client/androidtv/)
+or in the [GitHub release assets](https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/releases/latest).
+
+You can also join our [beta program on Google Play](https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.jellyfin.androidtv) and help test new versions
+before they're released to the public. [Read more](../../2021/07-24-android-betas.mdx) about our beta program.

blog/authors.yml

@@ -48,9 +48,12 @@ Maxr1998:
 
 nielsvanvelzen:
   name: Niels van Velzen
+  page: true
   title: Core Team, Android Lead
-  url: https://github.com/nielsvanvelzen
   image_url: https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/2305178?v=4
+  socials:
+    github: nielsvanvelzen
+    mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@hetisniels
 
 Shadowghost:
   name: Tim Eisele