New Hisense TV's with Android TV built in, and a custom World Cup app. Can anyone pull the app?

by fifasarajevo

https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/06/12/hisense-h9-plus-4k-tvs-android-tv-now-available/

New Hisense TV's are releasing and they have a custom Fox Sports app for the World Cup that airs the matches in 4k (I believe), anyone with one of these TV's able to pull this app?

WORKING VERSION See update in post.

Thanks to /u/whatpens for extracting the app and compiling a patched version. I installed in on my shield and it works great. The only small problem (really not a problem at all) is if you close the app, then re-open, you will likely get an "unauthorized error". Clearing data and re-activating works though so not a big deal. You do need some sort of cable/satellite/streaming provider to activate the app with. I have YoutubeTV. Sling works, as does Fubo TV, PS Vue, DTV Now, and others.

If this has helped anyone, please consider donating to /u/whatpens as this is pretty massive in terms of watching the matches in 4k in the US.

whatpens

So, here is how you get the 4K streams from this app

You will need a Fox Sports account to activate the app. You can use Sling TV package that has Fox Sports , it works just fine in the US to activate this app

On Any Computer: Change your user agent on your browser to

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 8.0.0; HAT4KDTV Build/OTT1.180130.001; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/67.0.3396.87 Mobile Safari/537.36

In Firefox do this in about:config and add a key for general.useragent.override

Go to h11ps://api.foxsports.com/prd-hbs-wcfox-tal/?isandroidtv=true

Use your directional keys and enter to navigate. Once you get to the screen to select your stream, press F12, open the network TAB, and watch for the POST call to the File column that says tokenize

Select the response, you will get back an HLS URL in the ContentUrl key of the JSON response

Use any video player that supports setting a user agent. On macOS with VLC for example:

/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC —http-user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 8.0.0; HAT4KDTV Build/OTT1.180130.001; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/67.0.3396.87 Mobile Safari/537.36" "h11ps://fifa2018-i.akamaihd.net/hls/….."

The last argument is the HLS stream URL you got from your browser.

I've heard Kodi allows you to change User Agent as well.

PLEASE NOTE THE STREAM LINKS SHOULD NOT BE SHARED WITH ANYBODY AS THEY ARE TEMPORARY AND ARE PROBABLY TIED TO YOUR TVE (TV Everywhere, in this example Sling) ACCOUNT. The API calls do contain PII (Personally Identifiable Information), so everything seems to be linked together.

On Android TV:

UPDATE : I have made a patched version of the app that overrides the user agent. This is version 7.

h11ps://mega.nz/#!SrRwDIBI!9tu0jIic1KameXghPVnukz0qj9mgxfOKS8kew1sURYo

If you want to run the app from the Play Store you will have to root your device and change your build.props.

Please support my work (I bought two Hisense TVs after bricking one) so I can continue to update the apps and answer questions. Anything helps:

Coin Address
Bitcoin 3Na7FuwtHiuW57bniKvaV1V3uNJkQYhww6
Ethereum 0x4FB58c22b2FB7917692E23C0F4A6348ae2022F63
Litecoin MKCTuD5svCMJW91MA75c3W6rjBPeodECzV
Paypal h11p://bit.ly/2I01C70

EDIT: June 25th

My earlier efforts to make the Hisense Fox Sports 4K World Cup app available to all Android users: many of you said that the streams were a little bit laggy (and not due to the network)

I have updated the Fox Sports App with another patch which allows you to launch an external player. While VLC does not seem to work, MX Player with HW+ Decoding works perfectly. I have not tried Kodi or others, but as long as they support opening an Intent with an HTTPS m3u8 link it should work.

For MX Player: You must enable HW+ Decoding to be the default for network streams. Apparently MX Player HW+ is actually just Android MediaPlayer.

Furthermore for owners of Hisense TVs and maybe other Android TV boxes, please try the following to get smoother playback: disabling "Motion enhancement", "Noise reduction", and "Digital noise reduction" in picture settings. The patched app will be available to all of those that donated to finance me buying two Hisense TVs and all the effort that went into patching it. Please PM me for the updated APK for your device.

For better performance, set the refresh rate of your device to 50HZ to match the content.

For those that did not donate, you can use the web browser method to extract an URL and use ADB (or any other method) to open the URL with your favorite player, see h11ps://developer.android.com/training/app-links/deep-linking , it should work just fine but is less convenient.

UPDATE: July 1st Version 11 available from Fox with improved 4K live playback! Available for those who donated.

[deleted]

Looked the tv up in the google play dev console and its still running the old Mediatek MT5597 but ships with Android 8.0. Should be interesting to see the UI since this is the first Smart TV with the new Oreo interface.

Cboyd104

The BBC are displaying the world Cup in 4k online. Use a VPN for the UK and it should work.

iamalphak

Does anyone know of a ultra fast vpn or proxy IP to use when streaming from AU to USA? nordvpn is sluggish and keeps buffering on me. (Using a computer)

FacelessGreenseer

In 4K?!! Yes please, stuck here in Australia with 720p and no 50FPS. Hopefully app doesn't require log in or if it does, it isn't region locked.

whatpens

The app is shipped with the system firmware, which not everyone has yet, even though the world cup is starting Thursday.

Also, DirecTV, and Comcast are showing the games in 4K as well.

If you tell me how to do it, I can try to pull it!

EvanVanVan

u/whatpens or someone else with a Hisense TV, any chance your TV is rooted? I'm wondering if we change the build.prop on our Android TVs to match Hisense's settings if the APK would work...

Would need someone with a Hisense to check these two fields.. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techgainer.com/change-fake-android-device-model-number-and-brand-name/amp/

Could probably guess the manufacturer is Hisense and Model is H9E?

whatpens

Version 6 was released today, if anybody wants it for reverse engineering, please let me know.

EvanVanVan

Success! With much effort and inconvenience (rooting the shield kind of sucked), I was finally able to get the Fox Sports Hisense World Cup app working on the Shield TV... https://image.ibb.co/dKDQzd/IMG_20180616_120020.jpg

Long story short I had to root the shield TV ( https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidTV/comments/7frjru/rooting_the_shield_and_using_remote_play_tutorial/ ) and then edit the build.prop to match Hisense's settings... Making it appear to the app that it is in fact a Hisense TV. On the plus side the apk sideloads normally without patching...

stevan6

Was able to get the regular Croatia Vs. Nigeria stream going through VLC on my computer. Was anyone able to get the Cable Cam version to work though? When I try that url it only gives me the audio.

shinjincai

So I went to this link on my phone after setting the user agent to true: h11ps://api.foxsports.com/prd-hbs-wcfox-tal/?isandroidtv=true

It showed the FIFA world cup fox app home screen with "road to FIFA world cup" on the left and "phenoms" on the right with the fox logo in the middle with an enter button. I tried hitting enter but nothing happened and upon refresh, all it says now is "you are not allowed to view this recourse". What is happening?

Edit: proof

http://imgur.com/gallery/k7pNP8d

bxbomber

This would be awesome, I'll be able to stream thy games in 4K. Please someone or this happen

BoltSLAMMER

I am wondering if anyone has been able to gain access to the app yet? I am interested and grabbing one of these for the World Cup, but I won't be watching anything live, so if they app will be soliciting scores everywhere, I won't be interested and will forego 4k

stinky777

So has anyone been able to stream a game in 4k through the Hisense app yet?

spear789

Getting playback failed for the football matches.. Tested with v7 on sony x750d. Any work around?