Sick of my Nexus Player

by timeconsumerii

So I've been using my Nexus Player since first came out and I'm thinking of moving on for a couple of reasons. First, being an early adopter I figured there would be a lot more apps by now, but the Play Store for Android TV still seems to be a ghost town. Second, I have found the Netflix app to be buggy, and non-Google apps don't even bother integrating with voice recognition on the remote. And third, the casting is really buggy. For some reason, I find my Chromecast to be more reliable when it comes to Chrome tab casting. I have other gripes about it being slow, non-responsive, and just not quite ready to take over my living room yet. Any thoughts? Is there something I'm missing?

sargunster

The two non Google apps I use most often are Plex and Hopwatch, both of which integrate perfectly into the Android TV search and home screen features. The Hulu and Netflix apps are identical to their console counterparts.

xenokira

I'm annoyed with mine too. Between Plex freezing on 1080p content, Netflix issues, and no licensing for MPEG2, I'm ready to jump ship on this thing. Not the platform though--I'm seriously considering the nVidia Shield Set Top Box.

optimisskryme

The lack of new apps is annoying. They could at least show you all the supported apps rather than a small curated subset.

I love my Nexus Player but I've had it crash daily since 5.1 came out and it is getting annoying.

ifixpedals

Have you upgraded to 5.1 yet? This guy reports improved chromecasting. Perhaps it will fix other bugginess.

deadringer28

Just looking at the list of apps in the Play Store on the device is not enough. You need to search for stuff. Try searching for "racing" "fighting" "arcade" and other things like specific games or even just one letter and you will see a whole bunch of apps and games that are not in their "featured" list. I have spoken to a few members of the TV team and they are working hard on app discovery. In the meantime there are some communities on G+ that have good lists of apps and games for your Android TV. Here is one that I look at regularly ..... https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/109694875004529508368

Just filter to apps and games on the side and you will see a lot of great apps and games.

hertzsae

Google had a chicken/egg problem when it came to Android TV. Google TV was a flop and they need app developers to succeed. App developers don't come to platforms without users. Google got a bunch of hardware vendors on board that will be coming out with very nice boxes in the next 6 months (Razer, nVidia, Sony, ...). Google needed to make sure that their are tier one apps available when those device launch.

The best way to ensure app support was get a decent piece of hardware out as soon as possible. That is what the Nexus Player is. It's the box that's good enough to bring in some customers so that app developers will start taking the platform seriously. You're the early adopter that is making it all happen.

Don't worry, over time you'll get the upgrades and your experience will vastly improve. In fact there have been updates and better software already (deadringer28 gives a good link). You picked a very future proof platform. There's just some growing pains along the way as it gets out of the gate.

l3rian

I'll take it off you're hands... ;)