I'm hoping to find answers or ideas here, I posted this to the Shield subreddit but figured I might as well ask here as well and try to collect some ideas. Thank you for your patience.

First, my apologies if this has been posted before. I've searched reddit for a few hours and couldn't find a decent answer. The only things I find are years old and clearly out of date.

Background. I upgraded yesterday from my previous setup (Xbox One for most streaming, Raspberry Pi for Kodi-local media, Roku Express for Playstation Vue) to a Shield TV with the idea of this being my one size fits all TV solution for the family.

Out of the box the Shield is blazing fast, Kodi was seamless, Playstation Vue is miles ahead of the crap Roku app. Love the performance on this.

But the app store, looking for things like Cartoon Network, The CW App and such are unavailable. Again, I've found this discussed a lot but no real answers.

Per a post I read I installed The CW app on my phone and using ES File Explorer attempted to send it to the Shield TV, only to have the Shield close the connection time and again without receiving the upload. Not only do I not know how that will work since I believe I turned on everything needed for permissions, but I don't know if the app will load anyway.

I want to love this box, but the lack of apps might be the killer that forces me to buy a Bezos Fire TV instead (I don't have Prime, so it kinda sucks the life out of a lot of the setup of that)

Anyway, i'm hoping to install some official TV apps on here, and wondering if anyone has had any real luck. Thank yous to anyone who might have some ideas.

*Edit: Formatting