Trying my hardest to move my friends and family over to the Android ecosystem. Still using Apple TV, but everyone has their Android phones. TV is the last step over here.

SET TOP BOXES

There is no good ~$100 set top box option at the moment. Why?

Nexus Player. Discontinued and out of stock. Can find some on ebay at a premium. This is the only option.

Forge TV. Almost ordered one of these. I even still run an Ouya in my kids room, was going to replace it. This box does not run NETFLIX. Never mind then, it's not an option.

Fire TV. Almost a good alternative. They don't ship to Canada, so again the only option is to buy off ebay at a premium. It also does not have the Google Play store, and that's the point of this whole thing now, isn't it.

Shield TV. Too expensive to compete with the sub ~$100 options. I'm a Shield TV owner myself and it's amazing, however I'm not putting one in the kids room with the 27" tv.

APPS

Not much selection in the store. I know you can side load lots of apps, but who want's to use apps that don't properly support the remote.

Netflix is a solid app, aside from the incompatibility with the Forge TV.

Hulu is just ok. The interface is clunky but it does do the job. The phone and tablet versions of the app are way ahead.

Shomi is not available. Apparently this is important in Canada... well my parents use it anyway.

Amazon Video. No app. I suppose they are hogging it for Fire TV anyway.

There are fantastic apps of course. Kodi, Plex, etc.

VENTING

Frustrating to see the potential and be held back by what seem to be minor issues. Marketing seems to be a huge issue for Google, people just don't know how much better this product is than what they are currently using (Apple TV, WD TV Live, China Android Box).

Here's hoping ^this ^^doesn't ^^^fizzle ^^^^out.

EDIT: I love Shield TV.

I've had this TV for about a month now. I've turned off App and System updates, and I've set illumination led to only respond to IR remote presses.

However, from time to time, the LED automatically shines really bright, and then a large "glow" appears on the bottom of the display (on screen) which seems like it had spawned where the Sony logo and the illumination LED is.

Do you know what the glow means?! And how can I turn it off?

Do you guys know any other app that integrates with google's "Streaming Channel" input option in the OS?

Hi all,

I'm looking to update my media layout at home. I'm looking for a silent setup that will play my local files. I have a wife and a daughter so it needs to be simple. I have a modest budget. I'm currently using Plex on an Amazon Fire Stick which talks my to PC in the same room which drives me crazy because it is a loud brute. It'll be playing mostly large files, 10/15gb movies and TV files between 1 - 3gb.

YouTube and Twitch are also watched a fair bit here.

I have the idea of purchasing an Nvidia Shield TV and a 1TB External HDD plugged into the back of it, running Kodi which I am fluent in setting up and using. I would like to then point my home PC to the external HDD on the network and have it running so that my files are automatically copied to the HDD attached to the Shield when acquired. Again, I am fluent in how to do this locally, just have to tweak it to run over my home wired network. The PC would do all the heavy duty stuff when it is on, as between all my family and I, it is running three or four hours a day, leaving me to be able to watch my files from the HDD with the PC off.

Does this seem feasible?

Looking for a remote alternative for my forgotten by Google Nexus Player. Main reason is the main remote is stupid easy to unpair, by pressing 2 buttons directly adjacent to each other, so every time the remote gets stuck in a couch cushion or someone lays on it the remote unpairs and I have to go through the annoying process of using a phone to reconnect the remote.

The old amazon fire remote that used to work with the player is no longer available, and units off of ebay cost nearly as much as I paid for the device itself. Seeing as it's just bluetooth, I would have thought finding alternatives would be easy but after going through 3 pages of google results, I was wrong.

This is going to sound super basic (and I'm thinking the answer is no after some googling around):

Is there anywhere you can download an iso for the android tv os? To use on a custom box?

I was thinking it could be pretty awesome to get a NUC or other similar mini-PC and run Android TV on that. I want to get a shield for the bedroom but my GF veto'd it based on the "gamer" look.

[deleted]

I know ShieldTV has 'em, but is there a tablet that can also play them? If so, which one would you recommend that has the best price/bang-for-the-buck ratio? Thank you!

Hi,

I have a Phillips TV with Android TV. I can download and install the MLB.TV app and log in to my account, but whenever I try to watch a game (either live or archived) I get an error message.

"Cannot connect to MLB.TV. Please check your network connection and try again.".

All other apps work fine and have no connection issues. I tried the official support forum for MLB.TV but the response I get from the mods is just 'Your TV isn't supported'.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue on Android TVs that are 'not supported' by MLB.TV?

Additionally, when I try to stream from my At Bat app on my iPhone, video looks fine but sound is played at half speed :(

I live outside the US, if that helps.

Hello all :-}

If could only have five apps on your android tv, which apps would you choose? excluding: netflix, hbo go/now, youtube, crunchyroll and all famous streaming apps and common

Which apps you will highly recommend for a newbie? Youtube has a nicer ui compared to the ps4 version of youtube? what are some other apps which have nice ui only on android tv?

[deleted]

[deleted]

TL;DR: Returning my nexus player. Should I get a new device, or just live with Chromecast until something new comes out?

I bought the Nexus Player in May of last year, primarily for the remote functionality, and the convenience of not having to cast everything to the chomecast from my phone because it always seemed glitchy. It was also nice that my wife and son had access to my google play movies and other accounts so that if I wasn't home, they could still watch my library of shows. Lately I've been having issues casting google photos and vudu to the nexus player. When casting google photos it starts lagging worse and worse until finally it crashes and stops casting. With Vudu, the video quality drops from HDX to HD, then HD to SD, and I get alot of buffering issues. It doesn't do this with the chromecast or any of my other devices, my network and speeds are fine, so I've narrowed it down to being the Nexus Player.

I did a factory reset and that didn't help, so I ended up talking to Google support. They told me that I had done all the troubleshooting they could think of, and said the device needed replaced. After they found out that I purchased thru Amazon instead of directly from Google, they said I would have to get in touch with Asus for support. They transferred me, and the Asus rep said they don't replace them, that I would have to send it in for repair which would take a couple weeks. I told them that I wasn't satisfied with that, and they said the only place that could swap it for me would be Amazon (which doesn't even sell it anymore). Just for fun I decided to get in touch with Amazon. I explained everything to them, and they said as a courtesy they would let me return it for a full refund. I couldn't believe it, I purchased it 5/31/15, there was only a 30-day return window, and they are refunding me my full $69.99!? Insane.

But now, I won't have a nexus player. I'll be back to my gen1 chromecast. Nexus Players aren't available anymore. Shield TV's are almost a year old and still cost $200 plus the remote that I'd want. Do I suck it up and buy one, or just get another chromecast and hold off until something new is announced/released?

Are there any good podcast apps that have native Android TV support built in yet? I was looking around but the best I could come up with was casting to Android TV.

Finally! I haven't tried to log in for a while, but now it works. Maybe other TWC blocked logins work too now.. Gonna try a few later tonight.

I noticed of late, all my non digital audio was very, very low.

I have my audio set to fixed since I have a receiver. Apparently, fixed audio only seems to work for digital files. So what you need to do is disable fixed audit, then set the volume to max and then put back fixed audio.

That seemed to solve a ton of minor problems I was experiencing

Edit : low not slow

Obviously it's a feature of the handheld version of Android OS, and it makes soooooooooooooo much sense for Android TV.

I'm just wondering if it's ever, actually been mentioned by the Android TV dev team?