Watching

Playback

How Wren TV picks the best way to play a file, and the player's versions, tracks, skipping and shortcuts.

#How a file plays

Every time you press play, your player tells the server what it can decode. The server walks down this ladder and stops at the first step that works:

1. Direct play. The original file, byte for byte. Nothing is converted.
2. Lossless remux. The video and audio are copied, untouched, into a streaming-friendly container (HLS with fragmented MP4). Dolby Vision, HDR10 and Atmos are kept. This is how an MKV plays in a browser.
3. Lossless audio. If only the audio can't be played (TrueHD or DTS), it's converted losslessly, to ALAC on Apple devices or FLAC in browsers, while the HDR video stays native.
4. Play anything. Apps with libmpv play almost any file directly, including Dolby Vision Profile 7.
5. Transcode, as a last resort: the video is re-encoded to H.264, with hardware acceleration when the server has it, and HDR is tone-mapped to SDR. See Transcoding.

Most plays never get past step one or two.

#Quality

The quality menu in the player limits how much bandwidth a stream uses:

Lower settings help on a slow connection away from home. A file already under the limit still direct plays.

#Versions

A movie or episode can have more than one file, such as a 4K HDR file and a 1080p one. The title's page then has a Version picker. Auto picks for you:

1. A version your device plays without transcoding beats one that needs it. So a phone gets the 1080p file instead of a transcode of the 4K one.
2. Then a version that fits the quality you chose.
3. Then a file on disk over a stream.

#Audio and subtitles

Playback starts in your preferred languages, which you set under Settings (see your account):

• Audio: the best track in your language: the file's default track if it matches, otherwise the first one that isn't commentary. With no preference, the file's default track plays.
• Subtitles: off by default. If you choose a subtitle language, the best track in it is shown: full subtitles before forced ones (forced subtitles only cover foreign-language parts), text before picture-based, and plain before SDH or commentary.

You can switch audio and subtitle tracks while watching. Subtitles stored inside a large file are read as it plays, so on a slow network drive the first lines appear quickly and the rest fill in.

#Skip intro, skip credits and up next

When the server knows where a show's intro is, a Skip Intro button appears during it. At the credits you get either Skip Credits or, for episodes, a countdown to the next episode. Up next plays the next episode in the season, then the first episode of the next season.

The intro and credits are shaded on the timeline, and chapters show as ticks. Open the chapter list to jump to one. How the server finds intros and credits: Intro and credits detection.

#Seek previews

While you scrub through the timeline, the Android TV app shows a small preview of the frame you'll land on. The server makes the previews in the background the first time a file plays, a few frames at a time, so they fill in while you watch. Files it streams get fewer previews, to save bandwidth. On Android TV, holding Left or Right scrubs faster the longer you hold it.

#Keyboard shortcuts

In the web player:

#Watch progress

The player reports your position as you watch. Anything you've watched for more than 30 seconds and haven't finished appears in Continue Watching, on every device. Every title's page also has a Mark Watched button; press it again to mark the title unwatched. On a show or season it marks every episode.

#"Finding a stream…"

On servers with streaming, a title that hasn't been played before needs a stream first. The player shows Finding a stream… and starts by itself as soon as one is ready, usually within a few seconds. If no cached release exists yet, it says so; try again later.