[deleted]
[deleted]
Last week I picked up a free AirTV Player through Sling TV, by pre-paying $25 for 1 month of Sling service (sling blue, for those wondering). Considering the AirTV sells for $120+ new, I think it was a good deal. Note AirTV (the company) is owned by Dish, which also owns Sling. The AirTV Player is a true Android TV device, and it has 2 USB ports, Optical audio out, HDMI (supports 4K, but no HDR), Ethernet, and WiFi, for those wondering about its I/O ports. The remote has voice search. OTA channels can be DVR recorded, using the Sling TV app and a flash drive or external hard drive. Haven't set this up yet, so no comment from me on how well it works.
Never having used Android TV before, it seems like an good device overall. It's fast, and has most of the apps I use. Sling's interface is emphasized more than Google's, but it isn't bad like Amazon's Fire TV devices. Unlike a Fire device, you really aren't forced to use the Sling interface, unless you obviously want to watch Sling, or use the OTA antenna/cable adapter (included in the Sling deal BTW). One of the buttons on the remote is the home button for Android TV, so you can choose to only use the Android TV home screen if you want. Since I use other streaming apps (Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, Crunchyroll), I was happy to see that. The only app I couldn't download, was Prime Video from Amazon, but I blame Amazon for that.
Quick digress: One thing I noticed was the Crunchyroll app seemed a lot nicer than the app on Roku and Fire TV, so I was really happy to see that. For me it loaded quicker, and I like the app layout more than on the other devices I have!
Think there are really only 2 box's people recommend at the moment
I think most people recommend against the Nexus player (EOS and too slow) and the razr one (EOS and no updates?)
On this sub people generally don't recommend any generic Android boxes found on AliExpress or Gearbest. Only official Shield and MiBox.
I've used one 40$ Chinese midrange box for 2 years until it died (required factory reset about once a week). Was pretty happy with it. But I only watched FHD on it and didn't try to watch 4K HDR content with it (it probably wouldn't be able to handle it anyway).
Now I'm on Sony ATV and am pretty content. Netflix HDR and USB stored HDR content plays smoothly. LAN and streaming HDR - not so much. Picture quality is superb even on FHD, so I'm not complaining :)
Google will release a soundbar with android tv built in this year. Wait for that.
If only Android TV had all the discovery networks. History channel and A&E would be nice too. I get tired of side loading.
Depends upon your needs. All I can comment on with personal experience is Xiaomi's MiBox 3. It's a neat little device and the two I have appear to work well. No Amazon Prime Video, because of Amazon's and Google's ongoing tiff with one another. It may eventually appear. It may not. Some people have had success side-loading the Prime apk. Others not so much. I'm considering dropping Prime, anyway, so I don't particularly care much. No DD/DTS/5.1 passthrough on the S/PDIF connection. That is a show-stopper for me on my home theater system. (Xiaomi is allegedly going to upgrade the MiBox 3 to Android 8.0 [Oreo]. As of Android TV 7.0 [Nougat] DD/DTS passthrough is allegedly supported. I won't believe either until I see them with mine own eyes.) Since there's no surround we've only watched one movie on it on Netflix, for a test. It worked flawlessly. We're mainly using them to stream from our Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Connect Quatro OTA TV network tuner, in which role they're working well (other than the 5.1 sound thing.)
Bottom line with me, re: The MiBox 3: I'm looking for something better.
As for the Nvidia Shield: No S/PDIF output, so that's no good for me. But, from all I've heard, it's otherwise currently the Android TV box to beat. It does have Amazon Prime Video, btw. (Separate arrangement with Netflix, one presumes.)
The Channel Master Stream+ is having a very rocky start. Personally, I cannot recommend that device at this time. There's a short thread on it, here, and there's an extensive "Official Channel Master Stream+" thread over on AVS Forum. Read them both and avoid developing false expectations would be my advice.
Can't speak to Sony TVs. We've a top-end Sony BD player and its streaming support sucks majorly, thus Sony would not be my first choice.
I can't make a lick of sense out of the stuff being talked about on xda-developers, re: Buy this-or-that-box and load this-or-that package developed by somebody working out of their bedroom or basement or what-have-you, so I'm not real inclined in those directions.
That's all I got. Good luck.
(Personally, I'd have gone with an Apple TV, by this time, if it had the S/PDIF output. Unfortunately, for me, they dropped that in the latest version.)
What happened to Mi Box 4 International version?
So "what is the second best ATV box?"