Trying to play from external hardrive on android device to TV. Most browsers have too many options, and most media players have their own player (and they all suck btw). VLC works fine on this android box but struggling to find a simple browser to launch to it. This is something I am setting up for non-tech people. This is offline and isolated. Power in, external drive to android box, HDMI out. No router, no internet, no wifi.

I have tried:

• kodi (too much setup, too many options to get lost clicking shit, local browsing actually looks no diff to a filebrowser except more confusing to reach)
• Archos Video (finally worked after tracking down codecs but the player must be heavy because it chugs like a mofo)
• Plex (server won't run on device therefore cannot use local media, this is not a situation where I can setup a media stremaing service over router)
• File Browser Widget (this android box doesn't widget unfortunately)
• X-plore File manager (zero strip down options, too complicated)
• FX File Browser (Best so far as it actually has the options to strip back things to click on)
• VLC Player (half the browser doesn't have a focus, wtf, massive oversight, but this runs movies the best so launchi8ng into VLC works hence the file browser option)

So far FX Filebrowser was 99% options stripped out is ok, launched into VLC. It's not bad, not quite good either.

Honestly either a lightweight media browser or a file manager with strip down options that will launch to VLC. It's truly amazing that this doesn't seem to exist after some weeks of casual searching.

Think old school DVD player external drive menu, if anyone remembers those. Super simple. Nothing confusing to accidentally click on.

I did try to make one myself but I could not work out how to implement leanback support into what I had built and without focus for the remote TV apps are kinda useless.