[silentbil]

Summary

Live TV subtitles and audio, plus IPTV fixes found while testing them on real playlists.

Live TV: subtitle and audio tracks

• Live channels often carry DVB bitmap subtitles inside the stream and more than one audio language. The Live TV player never chose a subtitle track, so subtitles only showed when the device's system captions were on in the same language — on some TVs and not on others.
• Channels now start on the profile's Default subtitle and Default audio language, and the full-screen controls gain Subtitles and Audio buttons (shown only when there is a choice). A pick is remembered per channel for the session.
• The Home channel preview also uses the default subtitle language (trailers are unchanged).

Muxed subtitles were invisible on some channels

• With chunkless HLS preparation the track list comes from the master playlist's CODECS, which names only video and audio, so subtitles muxed into the TS segments never appeared. Media3 falls back to reading a segment when a variant lists two audio codecs, so channels of one provider had subtitles or not depending on their audio count.
• IPTV HLS (Live TV, Home preview, TvScreen) is now prepared from its first segment. Measured tune-to-playing time is unchanged (~0.5 s).

Every DVB subtitle language on IPTV HLS channels

• Broadcast channels often carry several DVB subtitle streams (e.g. two languages). In HLS mode Media3's TsExtractor keys tracks by stream type and keeps only the lowest PID, so only the first subtitle language ever appeared — picked by stream order, not by the user's language.
• IPTV HLS now uses a vendored copy of the media3 1.9.0 TS extractor (src/main/iptvts-java, same pattern as the vendored Matroska extractor) whose only change gives each DVB subtitle PID its own HLS track id. IptvHlsExtractorFactory routes MPEG-TS segments to it and every other segment type to Media3's DefaultHlsExtractorFactory, configured exactly as before.

Stalled live streams

• A stream whose buffer stops moving while buffering used to spin until Media3's 10-minute stuck-buffering timeout. It now errors after 12 s and is restarted at the live edge, at most once a minute and outside the existing retry budget.

Full-screen controls

• The action buttons (Guide, Choose source, Subtitles, Audio, Replay) no longer overlap the centred playback controls; the controls stay centred and slide aside only when needed.
• Closing the Subtitles/Audio list returns focus to the button that opened it, so left/right move between the controls again — also when the list stayed open past the HUD's 5 s timeout (the HUD hiding used to hand focus back to playback, so Down zapped channels).

Guide missing for playlists that declare their own XMLTV

A plain M3U whose guide is only named in its #EXTM3U url-tvg="..." line showed "No guide data matched" on every channel:

• The saved guide address was only restored from a cache that already held guide data — never true before the first guide load, so the guide could never load. The store-based startup path did not restore it at all.
• Only a typed or Xtream guide counted as an XMLTV source.
• The visible XMLTV fallback downloaded the whole guide but kept only the visible rows, and the same URL may not be fetched again for two minutes, so only the first row ever got a guide.

The saved address is now restored on those paths; when none was saved the playlist header is read once per session; a declared guide counts as an XMLTV source; and for lists up to 10,000 channels one download fills the whole guide.

Pasted addresses with invisible characters

• A pasted playlist address was stored with a trailing NUL character, so every request went to .../list.m3u%00 and the server answered HTTP 400. Playlist, guide and Stalker portal/MAC input now drop control and invisible format characters before use, which also repairs addresses already saved.

Favorite TV row after switching playlists

• Switching which playlist is enabled left the Home Favorite TV row on the old playlist's channels until a restart. Home now rebuilds the row once the new channel list can be read (or removes it when the new sources have no favourites).

Notes

• A second audio language in the same stream is still collapsed by Media3's HLS audio mapping (by type, not id). Out of scope here.

Testing

• ./gradlew :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest passes. New tests: LiveSubtitlesTest, IptvTsSubtitleTracksTest (two DVB languages become two tracks; stock extractor gives one), HudControlBarTest, IptvDeclaredGuideRestoreTest, IptvInputSanitizingTest, additions to LiveTvRetryPolicyTest, LiveTvGuideSourcesTest and FavoriteTvGuideRefreshTest.
• Android TV emulator (API 30):
  • subtitles shown and switchable on channels with one and with two audio tracks; Home preview subtitles;
  • a channel with two DVB subtitle languages lists both, and the second one displays;
  • stall restart observed in the log;
  • HUD layout, and focus after closing the list by OK, by Back and after the HUD timed out;
  • guide: reproduced the empty guide on main, then with this branch a clean state (no saved guide data, nothing typed in settings) filled the guide for every channel from one download, and it survived a restart;
  • a playlist saved with a trailing NUL loads;
  • Favorite TV follows a playlist switch without a restart;
  • an Xtream login still loads and plays.

[ProdigyV21]

Thanks for this, it's a useful Live TV improvement, and the playlist/guide fixes plus emulator testing are appreciated. CI is green and the branch merges cleanly, but I found a few cases to address before merging:

1. Keep DVB subtitle IDs stable across HLS quality switches/discontinuities. In TsExtractor.java:809, the ID now includes the elementary PID. When another rendition carries the same subtitle service on a different PID, it becomes a new track ID. Media3's HLS wrapper discards unknown text IDs after endTracks, so subtitles can stop after the switch. Please use a stable subtitle-service identity and add a test switching between renditions with different PIDs; the current single-segment extractor test doesn't cover this.

2. Honour the profile defaults fully. resetLiveSubtitleChoice always enables text tracks. With Default subtitle = Off, it also leaves any existing preferred text language intact, so system-caption preferences or forced tracks can still enable subtitles. Please distinguish Off from automatic/Forced selection. The language resolver also returns null for the existing Portuguese (Brazil) option and regional tags such as pt-BR; reuse/support the app's language mapping and cover these defaults in tests.

3. Scroll the selected picker row into view before requesting focus. LiveTrackPicker.kt:59 attaches the requester only to the selected row but starts the LazyColumn at the top. If that selection is below the initial viewport, its row isn't attached, the one focus request fails silently, and focus can stay behind the overlay. Please initialise/scroll to that row and request focus once it is placed; test a longer track list.

4. Handle controls that cannot fit on one line. hudCenterGroupX returns minX when maxX < minX, which still overlaps the action group. With the new buttons, narrow/mobile layouts need a compact, wrapping or overflow layout rather than only shifting the playback controls. Please test with Audio, Subtitles, Choose source and Guide all visible, including catch-up mode.

These are code-review findings; I haven't independently tested this build on a physical TV. The feature is worth keeping, but these cases need coverage before calling it fully ready.

[silentbil]

Thanks for the thorough review. All four points are fixed in b5e5084 (the branch is also merged with current main).

1. Stable DVB subtitle IDs. HLS track IDs for DVB subtitles no longer use the PID. They're derived from the subtitle service: language, subtitling type, and the composition/ancillary page IDs from its descriptor. A service without a descriptor falls back to its position among the program's subtitle streams. A rendition that carries the same service on a different PID now keeps the same track ID. Tests in IptvTsSubtitleTracksTest:

   • two renditions with the subtitles on different PIDs and in a different order produce identical IDs per language;
   • repeated PMTs don't add tracks.

2. Profile defaults. LiveSubtitleDefault now distinguishes Off (text disabled), Forced (only forced tracks; the default selection flag is ignored) and a language. Every case sets the text preferences explicitly, including clearing the caption role flags, so captioning-manager settings can no longer switch subtitles on or pick another language. The language resolver now uses the app's mapping, moved unchanged from PlayerViewModel to util/LanguageCodes.kt, so "Portuguese (Brazil)" and tags like pt-BR resolve. The Home channel preview uses the same rules; trailers get the player's defaults back. Covered in LiveSubtitlesTest, including starting from captioning-style parameters.

3. Picker focus. The list starts scrolled to the selected row and requests focus once that row is laid out. Device test: 25 tracks with [FEATURE REQUEST] Trakt Watchlist #20 selected. It fails on the previous code: nothing gets focus.

4. Controls that don't fit. When time, playback controls and actions can't share a line, the actions move to their own line above the controls, and the action group wraps further if needed. Device tests with Audio, Subtitles, Choose source, Guide and catch-up LIVE all visible check that no two controls intersect, at 480dp and at TV width. The narrow case fails on the previous code: Audio is drawn over Rewind. The placement logic is unit-tested in HudControlBarTest.

Unit tests pass; the new device tests were run on an Android TV emulator (API 30). I also checked on-device: subtitle selection on a channel carrying two DVB subtitle languages, and the TV-width control bar on a real channel.