AndroidTV for Kodi + TV m3u8 streams

by NOIZA

So my parents are pretty pissed cable is raising their subscription price to 100$/month even if they dont watch 90% of all channels, they just want to watch som few spanish ones.

So Ive been thinking about maybe buying them a Box and install Kodi, I have found m3u8 stream link to all the channels they watch.

But what Box should I buy them? Would be best if I buy something cheap that is simple to navigate and with a controller that dosent have many buttons.

Was thinking about the Nexus Player but I live in Europe and its pretty much sold out here, there is no retailer who sells it anymore.

nic2849

Being a shield owner myself, i would recommend it together with the shield remote. However if you are willing to wait for a while, xiaomi is coming out with its own android tv box, and maybe asus would release an updated version of the nexus player soon.

There is also an ongoing promotion for the razer forge at $99 but many of us in this subreddit would advise against it.

For the m3u8 stream, you can try cumulus tv , created by a redditor I think

mongler_richard

Shield is the best box out there right now

infeststation

Sling TV is a decent option for 20 a month, and T-Mobile was offering 20% off for one year to bring the price down. They were also offering discounts on hardware for signing up. I'm not sure if these promos are still active or stackable, but if you're interested, it shouldn't be too hard to find out.

I used it for about 6 months when I was transitioning away from cable, and now I'm comfortable enough that I don't need it anymore. PlayStation Vue would be a good option if they would just build a damn Android TV app.

Android TV, IMO, just isn't parent ready yet. I believe the fire TV is still the best option at this point in time for them. It has most of the apps we have, including Sling, but has some other apps we don't have (notably Prime).

nolookjones

you can just put the url for the stream in a text file with *.strm file extension. then just open in kodi like it's a video file....

Bluebull32

Kodi is not for your parents! Seriously, unless your parents are the rare "techie" old people, just forget it. Don't get me wrong, I think that Kodi is great...for me, but I have to fiddle around with it on a daily basis just to get content to show up. Add-ons stop working out of nowhere...When streams don't play, they hang the process for several minutes..."Force-quit" from the android apps menu just to stop the process.

Old people need something to "just work". I love Kodi, but it doesn't "just work"....not by a long shot.

trinipirate

Get the Shield and go the SPMC (Kodi) route. M3u streams tend to go dead after a while. Your parents will appreciate Kodi more.

NOIZA

seems like many are shilling for the shield TV here, to be clear: parents are not interested in playing video games and the box is really expensive compared to other boxes, they dont need such advanced hardware.