Mini Client and Kitkat

[bmh]

My wife got a smart projector for Christmas. It's the ZTE Spro 2 running KitKat 4.4. I was excited to try the Android Mini Client but it wasn't showing up in the playstore. I tried downloading older apks and found that the latest supported version is 1.0.10. The app will open and work for a while but then freezes. Is it possible that newer releases will be compatible with KitKat at some point?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bmh

My wife got a smart projector for Christmas. It's the ZTE Spro 2 running KitKat 4.4. I was excited to try the Android Mini Client but it wasn't showing up in the playstore. I tried downloading older apks and found that the latest supported version is 1.0.10. The app will open and work for a while but then freezes. Is it possible that newer releases will be compatible with KitKat at some point?

Sadly, no. Cut-offs have to be made... and supporting older versions of android means having to find work arounds for other APIs. Typically, since it's just me, and I need to drop older versions of android to get access to a new feature, then I do it.

Android 4.4 was release in 2013... I'm really surprised you found a device that is still running it. I thought that by going back to Android 5 (2014) I was doing pretty good.

Are you sure there isn't an update for your projector? Android 4 doesn't even have security updates, and it wasn't an offical "TV" release either. I would contact ZTE.

[bmh]

Unfortunately, the ZTE Spro2 will likely never get an android update. Many people have asked but the developers seem to have moved on (even though its still being sold at stores like Bestbuy). Its a nice projector with a built-in lcd screen. It runs everything else smoothly. I was really hoping to get the SageTV Mini Client working natively but understand the difficulty in maintaining support for older devices. Thanks Stuckless for all your hard work!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bmh

Unfortunately, the ZTE Spro2 will likely never get an android update. Many people have asked but the developers seem to have moved on (even though its still being sold at stores like Bestbuy). Its a nice projector with a built-in lcd screen. It runs everything else smoothly. I was really hoping to get the SageTV Mini Client working natively but understand the difficulty in maintaining support for older devices. Thanks Stuckless for all your hard work!

Yeah, this is why I'm not a fan of Smart TVs and Projectors... TVs and Projectors tend to have a fairly long shelf life, but, things like media players have a short one, so when you combine the two, you get a sense that your "tv" is out of date in 2 years. I've never bought a Smart TV, for the "smartness" of it, and I always buy a separate player and connect it. I get that convergence is a great thing, but when you converge short and long span technologies, the end result is that consumers start to feel their stuff is out of date pretty quickly. The other problem with adding "smart" features to TVs is that to keep the prices low, the hardware is generally pretty sub-par.

I've looked at the ZTE SPro2, and it's a great price... but the fact that it's a "smart" projector was enough to put it on my don my buy list

[bmh]

I definitely agree with your reasoning and try to get the most for my big money purchases. The Spro2 is perfect for my wife as she doesnt have to hook up a separate media player or change any settings. It would be great to get the Mini Client working because my entire family is used to SageTV. Is there anything I can do on the device to make the last supported version more stable?

Update: The android version is 4.4.4

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bmh

I definitely agree with your reasoning and try to get the most for my big money purchases. The Spro2 is perfect for my wife as she doesnt have to hook up a separate media player or change any settings. It would be great to get the Mini Client working because my entire family is used to SageTV. Is there anything I can do on the device to make the last supported version more stable?

Update: The android version is 4.4.4

If you are developer, you can check out the code, set the supported version to kitkat and then fix all the build issues (remove code or find work arounds) and give that a try. Beyond that, there are no quick fixes here. If you are not a developer, then I don't recommend doing this as a learning experience, since it's not trivial to build the miniclient, even for an experienced developer because it contains several native parts as well.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Yeah, this is why I'm not a fan of Smart TVs and Projectors... TVs and Projectors tend to have a fairly long shelf life, but, things like media players have a short one, so when you combine the two, you get a sense that your "tv" is out of date in 2 years. I've never bought a Smart TV, for the "smartness" of it, and I always buy a separate player and connect it.(

I know what you are saying and I agree with you, but I have been considering buying a Sony as my first 4K TV and it seems like most of their TVs have AndroidTV built in. Any idea how your client runs in that? It wouldn't be a key factor in the decision but any mid-high end TV is going to have smart functionality built in. And most of those can also be controlled via IP which can be useful to integrate it into a Home Aut system.

IMHO it is amazing that the SageTV HD200 is still an excellent streaming device despite being over nine years old - it was introduced in Dec 2008.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wayner

I know what you are saying and I agree with you, but I have been considering buying a Sony as my first 4K TV and it seems like most of their TVs have AndroidTV built in. Any idea how your client runs in that? It wouldn't be a key factor in the decision but any mid-high end TV is going to have smart functionality built in. And most of those can also be controlled via IP which can be useful to integrate it into a Home Aut system.

IMHO it is amazing that the SageTV HD200 is still an excellent streaming device despite being over nine years old - it was introduced in Dec 2008.

Given that the only thing that I can find about Android on the Sony TV is that it runs it, with no other specificiations would lead me to think that it's running the lowest end possible Android TV. So on a guess, I'd say it's probably just below the Nexus box.

If it's running Android 5 (and we don't know).. it should at least "run" the MiniClient. how much memory it has (not storage) will determine how good, and what codecs it supports, will determine what media it should be able to play.

The HD200 is a piece of hardware that does 1 thing, and it does it very well. It will never get another update, and we don't care, since it does 1 thing. Android boxes stuffed inside a TV is doing lots of different things, and, at the end of the day, those embedded Android boxes will not get updates, and so, they will become obsolete long before the TV is obsolete. What makes them obsolete is the fact that developers (like myself) will start to drop off older versions and when that happens, you still have a solid Android TV OS running on your TV... you just don't have the apps that you used to have 2 years prior.

[bmh]

Just an update, I did some more testing with the Spro2 and it may have more to do with the device. When using a bluetooth speaker, the Mini Client will freeze and close after a short period of time (15-30 minutes). Without the speaker, it works perfectly. This is only for the Mini Client, as my other apps work fine (Mxplayer, Spectrum).

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bmh

Just an update, I did some more testing with the Spro2 and it may have more to do with the device. When using a bluetooth speaker, the Mini Client will freeze and close after a short period of time (15-30 minutes). Without the speaker, it works perfectly. This is only for the Mini Client, as my other apps work fine (Mxplayer, Spectrum).

That's interesting... not sure why the bluetooth connection would cause an issue, unless it somehow loses connection to audio, even briefly, and it crashes the player.

[bmh]

After more testing, it looks like switching to the Exoplayer improves stability. Its been running great for an hour steaming audiio over bluetooth. Thanks again Stuckless for all your hard work on this app!