Question for those that have the Rear Media/Entertainment Package...

[05RubiconLJ]

This is nuts! I cannot believe that this wasn't vetted before they shipped these things (for that matter, a lot of things should have been vetted). I hope they get it sorted out quickly. I test drove a Yukon last week and the salesman said he had not heard anything about issues with the 2021's. This week he reached out to check in and said that the service department has seen several Yukon's back for various issues. He hopes they get it sorted out before the AT4 (what I'm interested in) his the market.

 

[ebelp]

Your first question is certainly a valid question and one that has been on my mind since the start. I'll come back to it in a minute.

I hooked up a BluRay player last night and it worked beautifully for about an hour. I also hooked my laptop up via HDMI and played a few 4K YouTube videos. I had a thought that maybe 1080p+ videos were making the control unit (assuming it's a small embedded device) work too hard, and it was overheating which manifested in the flickers and audio issues. Not sure I thoroughly debunked it with my tests, but didn't prove it either.

Back to Chromecast. Yes, it could be that the Chromecast just isn't compatible with this GM system. My argument then becomes, "Ok, suppose you purchased a $2k television and your Chromecast doesn't work. Would you be upset and want the TV either fixed or exchanged?" My answer is yes. These screens are a $2k option that relies on external components for video playback. There's no onboard disc player and there are numerous references to "streaming sticks" in the marketing. It should work.

That said, I bought Xiaomi Mi Box S last night, which has "chromecast builtin" and I'm probably going to pick up a Firestick tonight. If I can successfully cast YouTube and Disney+ to either of those devices without issue, I'm going to be happy enough to let it go and not pursue a fix with the dealer. Not worth the hassle.

Good detective work. I'd honestly be doing the same type of troubleshooting if I was in your situation. I have one of those Chinese do-it-all streaming boxes and it works pretty well at home. Hopefully that works better. Hopefully it's an issue specific to Chromecast/Roku. I'd hate to think that it's an input issue, which means nothing will work properly. Looking forward to seeing what happens with your Firestick/Xiaomi box. Keep us updated!

 

[Highway3]

My notes from playing with the RSE for a roadtrip:

* The sdcard is only for the nav, don't touch it (you can't load media with just an sdcard)
* USB keys need to be formated FAT32 to work as video/audio content; exFAT does NOT work
* Video content in .avi containers are not supported, but .mkv are
* The included headphones seem glitchy - they are slow to connect and seem to give us problems; at one point one set was permanently hearing the audio from both sources, and to restart everything to fix that
* Successfully used an apple lighting to USB dongle - this feels very reliable
* Successfully used a SHIELD TV, powered by the 2nd row outlet; had to enable low power WiFi to connect to the car's wifi, and suffers reboots related to auto start/stop (see my other thread on that), but otherwise worked great

 

[cpayne5]

Good info, Doc!

I'll add a couple notes of my own.

• The system can also read NTFS. I had the same exFAT issue. I tried FAT32, but ran into file size-limit issues. NTFS is the sweetspot for me.
  
• I bought a small (in physical size, but 256GB capacity) USB flash drive and stuck it in the USB port in the center console. It is completely out of the way and works great.
  
• My ripped movies are contained in MP4s, encoded by Handbrake. They work fine, also. Good to know about AVIs.
  
• Concur on the headphones. They're IR, and the transmitter/receiver must be weak because they have to be directly in front of the screen to work. Even tilting the screen up or down seems to affect the headphone signal. Not a good option if the backseat passengers use the RSE frequently.
  
• I purchased a couple sets of mid-tier bluetooth headphones for my boys. Bluetooth works great for this application. Better audio quality and range.

 

[Highway3]

Re: using a USB, I'm doing the same thing. You can safely eject them by pressing the bottom bar at the homescreen and scrolling down to the eject button (which exposes what looks like Android system UI coming through as a toast; does anyone know more about the OS and software running on this system?)

I'll have to try NTFS... I went through a bunch of pain to format as FAT32 (easy on a Mac), let alone convert the movies that were past the 4GB size limit.

I have also noticed that music uses ID3 tags when browsing. I'll have to find a way to generate playlists because I've never done that before.

Videos seem to use the file properties (defaulting to the filenames when they aren't filled in).

 

[cpayne5]

Picked up a brand new Chromecast Ultra (I thought maybe the Ultra would have better hardware) on my way home today. Got it set up and within the first minute of watching a YouTube video...screen flashes and popping audio.

The Xioami device that I ordered should be here tomorrow, so I'll give it a try tomorrow evening. Rumor has it that a new Chromecast is coming to market next week. So, I may give that a try, too.

 

[malba2366]

This sounds like some sort of issue with HDMI handshake. Take your chromecast to a TV and in the settings force the output to either 720p or 1080p and see if that works.

 

[cpayne5]

Chromecasts do not allow you to configure output resolution.

 

[malba2366]

Chromecasts do not allow you to configure output resolution.

Try fixing the resolution output on the roku you were trying to use. See if that works. If the blu ray was working fine then it has to be some sort of issue that is occurring when the output resolution is changing, or try a device like an Nvidia shield which upscales cast content to the selected resolution.

 

[cpayne5]

Thanks for the posts, Mike.

I think I understand what you're saying...see if you agree. With streaming content, the resolution changes as bandwidth changes/stabilizes. The stream may start out at 480, then bump to 1080 or 2160 if bandwidth allows. It's at those changes in resolution that you feel may be causing issues? By forcing the device into a resolution, you remove those transitions. Higher end devices like the Shield upscale, so there's no changes in the resolution as far as the screen/tv is concerned.

I'll try forcing the Roku.