August 13th OS update

Vega Open Beta Announcements
1

:exclamation: Important: Starting August 5th 2025, Appstore app submissions must be built using Kepler SDK v0.20 or newer, or the submission will be rejected.

Like the previous few releases, this release has no updates to the installed SDK itself, but there are many OS level improvements and bug fixes. Key improvements include:

  • Video Playback Enhancements: Optimized video rendering with improved frame scaling, reduced stuttering in 4K content, and better ad playback handling.
  • Audio-Visual Synchronization: Enhanced caption rendering, audio track switching, and proper audio behavior during Alexa interactions.
  • System Stability Improvements: Resolved app crashes during transitions, background operations, and HDMI hot-plug events.
  • User Interface Refinements: Improved VoiceView accessibility, splash screen behavior, and display resolution management.
  • Performance Optimization: Implemented asynchronous metrics collection and enhanced memory management for smoother system operation.

This release requires OS 1.1 (201010441050) on your Kepler Fire TV Stick, which is compatible with the Kepler SDK v0.20. You can check your device software version by navigating to My Fire TV > About.

To validate, run kepler -v and you should expect that version 0.20.3351 is returned.

OS improvements and bug fixes

  1. Addressed intermittent app crash issues when navigating to settings in playback overlay options.
  2. Resolved audio playback issues (no audio heard) when an ad plays during the video on demand (VOD) content streaming.
  3. Optimized caption frame building performance by fixing memory management and improving text decoder timing.
  4. Addressed permanent playback freeze in VOD content when changing audio tracks.
  5. Corrected system behavior to properly mute audio while maintaining subtitle playback, instead of pausing media, when Alexa is invoked during video streaming.
  6. Fixed VoiceView accessibility issue to properly announce text when navigating Switch components.
  7. Resolved secure buffer release issues during background transitions of an app and frequent seek operations in video playback.
  8. Resolved black screen issue when switching between different resolution displays.
  9. Optimized video playback initiation for 4K content in low bandwidth scenarios, addressing initial video playback stuttering.
  10. Fixed Application-Not-Responding (ANR) crashes in notification renderer by resolving window management issues during foreground-background transitions in SystemUI.
  11. Fixed app freezes by resolving deadlock issues when requesting app information during system operations.
  12. Optimized video playback performance by implementing asynchronous metrics collection in KeplerGstreamer video processing pipeline.
  13. Fixed background app crashes during HDMI hot-plug events, preventing unexpected app restarts during display transitions.
  14. Fixed app launch failures by preventing splash screen from closing prematurely when system notifications appear.
  15. Enhanced video playback smoothness (reduced video playback stuttering and flickering) by optimizing how the system handles resizing and scaling of video frames.
  16. Fixed video freeze issue during transitions between AD (SSAI) and main content in Live TV playback.
  17. Fixed issue where an app becomes unresponsive with grayed-out UI and navigation problems after device idle period of ~45 minutes.
  18. Fixed closed caption duplication issue where the first line of closed caption text appears twice during playback of content stream.
  19. Fixed Application Not Responding (ANR) issue in an app when handling WebVTT subtitles with a large number of cues by optimizing TimeMarchesOnAlgo (TMOA) in ReactNativeW3CMedia, reducing sorting time from ~330ms to ~20ms.
  20. Fixed audio playback issue where rapid audio track switching in Bitmovin player causes audio to stop while video continues playing. Issue was related to SourceBuffer.changeType handling during consecutive track switches without intermediate data buffering.
  21. Fixed caption display issue affecting Fire TV devices connected to LG 43" TVs where captions were being clipped by display’s plastic border padding. Implemented adjusted safe area margins to ensure complete caption visibility across different display configurations.
  22. Fixed video player behavior where paused content displays black screen instead of freeze frame when users navigate away and return to paused content.
  23. Fixed audio-video synchronization issues for specific DRM content by resolving deadlock during seek operations and optimizing audio path reconfiguration. Implementation includes enhanced handling. of low buffer scenarios and improved mediaplayer/gstreamer interactions to prevent ANR conditions.
  24. Fixed persistent audio loss issue in occurring during transition from ad playback to main content on live streams.