Apple TV version?

[Kazbah]

With the new Mac version, I now have a reason to upgrade to Catalina.

Thanks Arlo.

A side-question tough .. I often Airplay BH to my AppleTV when I rehearse (yes i am getting older and big screen are easier to read) and was wondering about the possibility of a native BandHelper App for the AppleTV.
Think it would be technically possible ?

[arlo]

What would be the benefit of running BandHelper directly on an Apple TV versus running it on a tablet (where you can use the touch-screen interface to control it) and broadcasting its entire image or just the document/lyrics image to the Apple TV, as you can do now?

[Kazbah]

What would be the benefit of running BandHelper directly on an Apple TV versus running it on a tablet (where you can use the touch-screen interface to control it) and broadcasting its entire image or just the document/lyrics image to the Apple TV, as you can do now?

Apart for easy big screens...
The big benefit to me would be to remove Airplay from the equation.. my main problem with Airplay is that I can't see on my TV what my iPad is showing me.
My iPad (3rd Gen) is 1024 by 768 in Big Lyrics Layout ...the Apple TV (Model A1625) is connected to my 1920x1080 TV.. the TV is at 1080p ..but what is being display on the TV thru Airplay is less (vertically) than what is on the iPad.
On my previous AppleTV (2nd gen) I had the same problem.. I was seeing less on the TV than on the iPad which made some sense because 720 < 764..so I tought by upgrading the AppleTV it would fix it ...no.

I understand that BandHelperTV would be a poor editing device since there are no real input methods but as a remote controlled device it has potential, the screen resolution is predictable, the device is compact, affordable.
Brainstorming ...Let's say you would want to use BH as a stage prompter for lyrics ... you put an AppleTV and whatever TV or monitor that meet you size requirement in a box...
You go to a party where there is a couple of people playing music, just bring your AppleTV.. you can't have 5 people looking at the same iPad but but you can have a multitiude look at a TV ...

The loss of a touch-screen interface is no biggie for me when I rehearse I want my hands on my instrument (bass) not on a touch screen. I am using a MIDI foot controller to control BH.

Does TvOS support CoreMIDI and the required frameworks ? obviously it would have to be MIDI over Bluetooth or the network..
That is why I asked if technically it would be possible


Thanks for all the good work. Bandhelper is an amazing piece of software.

[arlo]

Are you using the Settings > General Settings > External Display > Content = Document setting to show only your document/lyrics/video on the external display? That should accommodate any differences in screen aspect ratio to use the full screen area.

[Kazbah]

Was using Doc+1, changed to Document
Restarted the App
Same result

According to what I see on screen I wonder if it is still sending 720p scaled up to 1080p ...

[arlo]

Can you send a picture showing your iPad screen and the TV screen?

[Kazbah]

See below .. as you can see there is less content on the TV

[arlo]

Okay, what you're seeing is normal and correct. The TV has a wider aspect ratio, so you see less content vertically. However, the pagination controls should account for that -- so if you trigger the next page function in the app, both screens will scroll to the correct spot to show next part of the content.

If you want the content to match exactly, you can't change the aspect ratio of the TV,* but you can change the aspect ratio of the document viewer in BandHelper. Don't toggle to full-screen view on the tablet. Instead, make a layout that includes the document viewer and size it to match the aspect ratio of the TV (this will take some trial and error).

* Actually if it has settings to change the resolution and those settings include a 1024x768 pillarboxed size, that would work, too. But then you wouldn't be using the full area of the TV screen.

[Kazbah]

However, the pagination controls should account for that -- so if you trigger the next page function in the app, both screens will scroll to the correct spot to show next part of the content.

Tested it , works well with Lyrics but not so with PDF document

[arlo]

Actually, I was wrong when I said, "If you trigger the next page function in the app, both screens will scroll to the correct spot to show next part of the content." When you use the pagination controls, the external screen will scroll to the same position, so you will see the same content at the top of the screen, but some of the content would be cut off at the bottom of the screen if the aspect ratio is wider. I just checked and that was the case for me with a document or lyrics. So you would need to adjust the aspect ratio of the document viewer on the tablet to be at least as wide as the external screen. I guess this hasn't come up much because many people rotate their external displays to portrait orientation and then the tablet viewer is wider, even if the tablet is also in portrait orientation.

[matthew_]

Not sure that a native AppleTV app is completely necessary, but just thinking out loud; what if the ATV app wasn't necessarily completely standalone, but acted as another slave. Would that make it any more reliable? Another plus would be that it could also have its own layouts, and be optimized for the screen.

[arlo]

If you wanted to have a separate layout on the external screen, rather than the current options of either mirroring the primary screen's layout or only showing the document/lyrics, that could just as easily be done within the current app than with a separate or standalone or companion AppleTV app. The only benefit I can see to a separate AppleTV app is that you could run BandHelper without a tablet, but then you'd be limited to the AppleTV remote for navigating the interface and that doesn't seem like a good tradeoff.