Received my Stream+ today and set it up. It is a new Android TV product I pre-ordered from Channel Master in December. It is built on the Technicolor "Skipper" platform with two internal OTA tuners and DVR capability. It's a $149 product with more units expected in stock by April. Here are my first impressions.
Channel scan was quick ... actually I think it's too quick. I have a very strong "out of network" signal from Santa Barbara that I get off the back of my CM 4228 antenna that is pointed 180 degrees away from it, toward the Los Angeles stations. The Stream+ channel scan included every one of the Los Angeles stations, even the ones with no signal here at all (I'm 65 miles away from the transmitters). But it didn't pick up the strong signal that is "out of network" for my location. In contrast, my Samsung TVs and my DVR+ all scan and find the channel (Tivo/Rovi guide also populates for the Santa Barbara station now, but prior to the merger I had only PSIP data on it). I don't see a way to scan for a single channel. I'll try the different zip code trick later to see if I can grab the channels.
Setup went well, and was easy with the step-through on screen guide. I assume this is part of Android TV and the same on other devices. I ended up with all 100+ stations I usually get, plus about 50 others that are never strong enough to register on my TV or DVR+ scans. I was wondering how to hide unused channels (there are only about 80 that are not shopping, non-English, or otherwise content I'lll watch). I had to refer to the Channel Master instructional video, and it's easy enough ... while watching an OTA channel click the OK button, then DOWN to select the action bar at the bottom, then RIGHT until you get to Settings. The first option is to show / hide channels. The interface is pretty nice here ... you can select the channel, and it plays in the left window ... then you check or uncheck it and go to the next channel. I didn't have to make a list of the 70 odd channels I don't want in the guide. I just scrolled through them and clicked OK to toggle the show / hide function. I assume this is how Android TV handles this across all devices.
I added the Pluto, Bloomberg and Haystack apps to add more channels, and figured out how to add them to the guide data. Pluto adds over 100 movie, TV show, cable website streams, and music channels. Haystack appears to be a customized feed for news, weather and sports on their 10 channels; I'll configure those later to see how well it aggregates the stories that interest me. If you turn off the Stream+ while in the "Live Channels" (watching TV) it returns to that spot when you turn the TV back on, so it's really simple to use. Once you have it set up you just turn on your TV and surf the guide.
While viewing the guide, if you click the left arrow, a genre menu displays. It shows you everything in the guide that matches. Selecting "Movies" shows me the movies on the OTA channels, and all the movies on the linear TV channels provided by Pluto. It works pretty well, and is a nice addition to the guide data. I assume this is the same on all Android TV devices.
Channel Master uses the microSD port for the DVR recordings, and recommends a U3 microSD. I had a 200 GB microSD rated as a U1. I installed it and it seems to be working fine. I have several recordings set up but so for, the ones that have recorded and have really well. Out of the 200 GB there is 180 GB left for recordings. For this TV that's plenty, but I am interested in seeing how the testing with the USB hard drives turns out for DVR storage which Channel Master has said is "coming soon". At least one other early adopter has a hard drive plugged into the USB port and it is working, but he is powering the drive through the port and has had one 'freeze' so far (unknown if that's due to the drive or not).
The Stream+ is "pending approval" for both Amazon Prime and Netflix. It needs at least Netflix to be competitive.
My wish list so far is:
- Amazon Prime
- Seven+ day guide data
- Ability to scan individual OTA channels rather than relying just on the zip code
- USB hard drive storage for DVR
- Netflix
Curious to see how PS Vue is on it. On my Xiaomi Mi Box it's a little slow. Was hoping the performance of this box is better or at least comparable with the Nvidia Shield TV. Anyone have any word on this?