Android TV Device Comparisons

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

found this on ebay - anyone heard of it / use it / think it may work for Miniclient?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/252092081971...&ul_noapp=true

I don't think I'd even think of spending $40 on an android 4.4 box when I can get the Android TV 6 Mi Box for $70. The Android TV experience is really worth it.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I don't think I'd even think of spending $40 on an android 4.4 box when I can get the Android TV 6 Mi Box for $70. The Android TV experience is really worth it.

+1

I bought a nexbox A95X for around the same price, to test on... I was ready to throw it across the room after 5 minutes of using it. Basically the miniclient might work on it... but the usability of the box, accessing play store, etc, really, really sucks. As fuzzy said, spend the extra $30 and get the Mi Box from Walmart.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

+1

I bought a nexbox A95X for around the same price, to test on... I was ready to throw it across the room after 5 minutes of using it. Basically the miniclient might work on it... but the usability of the box, accessing play store, etc, really, really sucks. As fuzzy said, spend the extra $30 and get the Mi Box from Walmart.

okay, good advice. but i'll have to wait until someone other than Walmart sells it. Personal hatred for that place

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

okay, good advice. but i'll have to wait until someone other than Walmart sells it. Personal hatred for that place

I think if I had to not buy from a company because of personal hatred... I think I'd be living off the grid in the wilderness somewhere

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I think if I had to not buy from a company because of personal hatred... I think I'd be living off the grid in the wilderness somewhere

I had to cross Carl's Jr. off the list this week over their massive support for Trumpy. Don't worry, there are lots of places to get a shi$&y burger

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

okay, good advice. but i'll have to wait until someone other than Walmart sells it. Personal hatred for that place

Here ya go.

Will it matter if that person bought it at walmart?

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Here ya go.

Will it matter if that person bought it at walmart?

it might.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

it might.

Aww come on.

It really is a nice device though.

[samgreco]

I'm with you tvmaster2. I haven't set foot in a Walmart in 10 years.

But I'm ][ this close.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by samgreco

I'm with you tvmaster2. I haven't set foot in a Walmart in 10 years.

But I'm ][ this close.

Funny thing is I'm the same way, but this little android box got me in there. Worth it.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by samgreco

I'm with you tvmaster2. I haven't set foot in a Walmart in 10 years.

But I'm ][ this close.

maybe I'll ask for one for xmas, then i'm not responsible (?)

[samgreco]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

maybe I'll ask for one for xmas, then i'm not responsible (?)

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I don't think I'd even think of spending $40 on an android 4.4 box when I can get the Android TV 6 Mi Box for $70. The Android TV experience is really worth it.

Ok I went and used gift cards at Walmart, to get this sucka. Going to try it out tonight!

[mikejaner]

Alright. I hooked up the Mi and played with it for over an hour last night, and here's my initial impressions.
This little box is impressive. The GUI is responsive, way better to navigate than the $30 boxes (they probably have a 5% WAF). The voice remote found SageTV in the google store for me, so that was pretty cool. The wireless connection to my router seemed to be plenty for playing back my HDHR Prime MPEG2 based recordings with no issues.

All this being said, the Mi Box is great. The minimalist remote buttons took a little while to figure out with the SageTV MiniClient. I appreciate the work put in by Stuckless, awesome job! I have two things that seem to eat at me a a little bit.

I got used to having a lot of buttons with the SageTV remote, so it's a little adjustment with the Mi's remote, but you did well mapping double presses, and long presses to the "d-pad/d-ring". The long press for bringing up the osd based buttons is definitely needed, but could we maybe have an option during playback at least, to have a slim horizontally arranged button set ala kodi, where there is only the basic controls, like (Rew2, rew, stop,play, pause, ff, ff2, options, home"?

The video playback is very stable from what I can see. The start of video playback and anytime after seeking the video introduces a kind of shuddering where the playback is catching up to match the audio. I am sure Stuckless, you are well aware of that. My question for that, is there any hope of that can be minimized?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

I got used to having a lot of buttons with the SageTV remote, so it's a little adjustment with the Mi's remote, but you did well mapping double presses, and long presses to the "d-pad/d-ring". The long press for bringing up the osd based buttons is definitely needed, but could we maybe have an option during playback at least, to have a slim horizontally arranged button set ala kodi, where there is only the basic controls, like (Rew2, rew, stop,play, pause, ff, ff2, options, home"?

The video playback is very stable from what I can see. The start of video playback and anytime after seeking the video introduces a kind of shuddering where the playback is catching up to match the audio. I am sure Stuckless, you are well aware of that. My question for that, is there any hope of that can be minimized?

To be honest, the on screen buttons, is meant to be used as a last resort... The only time I actually go into the on screen buttons, myself, is to test something, or, to fully exit the client... other than that, I never use it.

The 5-6 key remote (along with changes to sagetv v9) allow for the most common interactions without an OSD.

In menu mode, up/down/left/right do what you want. Long press up/down will page up/down. Select will "select". If your remote has a voice button, that button will bring up options. Back is back.

If you are running v9 of sagetv... then the MiniClient can detect when video is playing and the remote changes to video playback.
Select is pause/play. Right/Left becomes skip fwd/back. Long press right/left sends right left (useful for skipping commerical block).

With the above functions mapped and the miniclient/v9 being somewhat intelligent... I rarely find the need to use the android OSD, and the OSD is just there for the rare case that I need to do something like change aspect, etc.

I don't see much development/evolution happening in the OSD part.

As for the video stuttering... I haven't seen it myself, but I use h264 recordings... sometimes when I start a new video I will see it... but I never see it after a seek. This is likely fixable... but not by me... Not that I wouldn't like to fix it... but I'm not much of a video person... I'm amazed that I have what I have in terms of getting video playback to work I'm hopeful that at some point we'll get some help with things like your issue (and other issues that people have found).

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by stuckless

...If you are running v9 of sagetv... then the MiniClient can detect when video is playing and the remote changes to video playback.
Select is pause/play. Right/Left becomes skip fwd/back. Long press right/left sends right left (useful for skipping commerical block).....

Makes sense, thanks. For some reason it seemed that I had to double click for FF REW, and long press up/down was the FF2, REW2. I will go back and play tonight. Also I didn't know I was allowed to press the voice button for options, which is cool.

Originally Posted by stuckless

..As for the video stuttering... I haven't seen it myself, but I use h264 recordings... sometimes when I start a new video I will see it... but I never see it after a seek......

This is only a minor annoyance, but it is noticeable for a few seconds until it syncs to the audio.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Makes sense, thanks. For some reason it seemed that I had to double click for FF REW, and long press up/down was the FF2, REW2. I will go back and play tonight. Also I didn't know I was allowed to press the voice button for options, which is cool.

Those key strokes don't seem familiar... but also keep in mind, that, if you are NOT running SageTV v9 the experience will differ, since, there is code in V9 to help the miniclient try to be smarter about how to interpret remote commands. You'll want to ensure that "smart remote" is enabled in the MiniClient preferences.

All of this is really just a hack until STVs are updated to work better with mini remotes. ie, the job of showing an OSD for playback navigation, or interpeting remote commands like using select for pause/play, is really something that the STV should be doing. The problem is that the STVs were designed for full remotes, but in the world of "dumb remotes", we need an updated STV (or a plugin) that can better manage the playback experience. Until that happens the miniclient will try to compensate, but, anything it does, is really just a hack

[mikejaner]

I see my confusion. I am running v9 on windows, but it must be an earlier build than what supported your simple remote layouts. Once I connected to a recent build of SageTV on a Linux vm, I was able to see the proper video playback button presses.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

I see my confusion. I am running v9 on windows, but it must be an earlier build than what supported your simple remote layouts. Once I connected to a recent build of SageTV on a Linux vm, I was able to see the proper video playback button presses.

IIRC the windows installers are updated to reflect the same version as the Linux builds. One of the devs can confirm though.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

IIRC the windows installers are updated to reflect the same version as the Linux builds. One of the devs can confirm though.

Probably, but I rarely touch my Windows server, and it's probably at a build from last year.