Android TV Device Comparisons

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Dargason

I installed firestarter. I haven't been using it rigorously, but it seems to be very simple to install and use. And you can double-click the home button to get back to the 'stock' home screen when you need to.

yeah, the firestarter app seems like a must have app if you use FireTV regularly.

[thatdude90210]

The FireTV home screen looks busy, probably to give the impression that it has more content. In my case, it does have more content than my Nexus player because I have Prime, plus the Xfinity Go app works very well on the FireTV (& iffy to not at all on the Nexus). I find myself using the Xfinity go app often because it doesn't require my Sage server PC to be on.

[TechBill]

Last night my fire stick went bad and started to restart on it own repeatedly even when there no apps loaded on it.

I contact Amazon support and they determined it to be defective that it need replacing. They that said sorry warranty on it expired so they offered to credit me 20 dollar so I can buy another one if I add another 20 on top of it.

I told them no thanks because if they said it was defective then they should honor it and replace it free of charge instead of offering me to buy another one at half price.

I paid 19.95 promo price when it was announced several months before the release date and I waited on it until it finally was released so I am guessing either it a 90 days warranty or they count the day that I paid but I didn't get it until several months later. I did not ask since I ended the conversation after they tried to get me to buy another one.

I also have a Nexus Player and I like it much better than the fire stick so I probably get me another Nexus Player. I used them for my security camera monitor, the nexus on my living room tv and fire stick was on my office tv which I probably will replace it with a nexus now.

Bill

[trk2]

Originally Posted by TechBill

I contact Amazon support and they determined it to be defective that it need replacing. They that said sorry warranty on it expired so they offered to credit me 20 dollar so I can buy another one if I add another 20 on top of it.

Did you buy it on a credit card? Most credit cards extend the warranty 1 year.

[Dargason]

I just tried the latest beta .06 on my Samsung Galaxy S4 and it worked great... arguably better than the FireTV, though the UI isn't really well-designed for touch.

[gexi]

Originally Posted by stuckless

let us know how you make out with FLIRC. I have a flirc, and I haven't been able to get it to work well, yet. The FLIRC part works fine... I just can't get it send the keystrokes that I think it should be sending.

I use flirc with both my gen 1 and gen 2 firetvs. So far it has been great even though I cheated a bit. Since FLIRC can learn any IR signal, I just had it learn my Roku remote signals that I had already encoded in my learning remote.
Originally I did this because I thought I would be switching back and forth between my firetv and roku but have never looked back. For some reason the roku signals work much better than any other keys I have tried.

Also highly recommend firestarter, it cuts down on the "noise" of amazon's interface.

[gexi]

Originally Posted by trk2

Did you buy it on a credit card? Most credit cards extend the warranty 1 year.

^ This. But also I would try amazon again, sometimes it is the luck of the draw of which agent you get. They generally have been very good about returns for me.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by gexi

I use flirc with both my gen 1 and gen 2 firetvs. So far it has been great even though I cheated a bit. Since FLIRC can learn any IR signal, I just had it learn my Roku remote signals that I had already encoded in my learning remote.
Originally I did this because I thought I would be switching back and forth between my firetv and roku but have never looked back. For some reason the roku signals work much better than any other keys I have tried.

Also highly recommend firestarter, it cuts down on the "noise" of amazon's interface.

I think my problem is that I need to find the right "remote" to train it with. Originally I was going to use the HD300 remote keys, but, since I have a HD300 and Shield in the same space, I didn't want to get them crossed. So I've tried a number of other remotes, but nothing seems to work "great". And now, I'm pretty much used to the Shield remote

[gexi]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I think my problem is that I need to find the right "remote" to train it with. Originally I was going to use the HD300 remote keys, but, since I have a HD300 and Shield in the same space, I didn't want to get them crossed. So I've tried a number of other remotes, but nothing seems to work "great". And now, I'm pretty much used to the Shield remote

Heh, I could see how that could be the case. I also tried the Sage ones at first and stopped for the same reason in case I sometimes need my HD200. The Roku codes came the closest to working best but I still keep my voice remote around so I can use the alexa features and let the FireTV work like an Amazon Echo.

FYI for anyone wanting to get a FLIRC to use with FireTVs, the creator runs a sale about once a month heavily discounting them.

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by trk2

Did you buy it on a credit card? Most credit cards extend the warranty 1 year.

No I don't believe in credits so I used a debt card to purchase it.


Bill

[panteragstk]

Big fan of the Shield TV. Using steam to stream games from my main gaming pc is awesome.

Beta 6 works great. Only issue I have is the same as everyone with mpeg 2 720p files. Considering an HDHR, I guess I should grab one that encodes to mpeg4.

I like the nexus player for a $50 device, but it just seemed OK. The Shield is everything Android TV should be. I'm excited to see what the next generation will have to offer. Not sure who will be making those though. I do know a lot more tvs will be coming with android tv built in. Pretty cool.

If only I could get Amazon Instant video it'd be a complete device.

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Big fan of the Shield TV. Using steam to stream games from my main gaming pc is awesome.

Beta 6 works great. Only issue I have is the same as everyone with mpeg 2 720p files. Considering an HDHR, I guess I should grab one that encodes to mpeg4.

I like the nexus player for a $50 device, but it just seemed OK. The Shield is everything Android TV should be. I'm excited to see what the next generation will have to offer. Not sure who will be making those though. I do know a lot more tvs will be coming with android tv built in. Pretty cool.

If only I could get Amazon Instant video it'd be a complete device.

The HDHR that encodes to mpeg4 I believe it called HomeRun Extend, I have a regular HDHR myself and I wondered about the Extend if SageTV will detect and support it.

Anyone here own the HDHR Extend and can tell us if this client playback the mpeg4 file good or have issues still?

Bill

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by TechBill

The HDHR that encodes to mpeg4 I believe it called HomeRun Extend, I have a regular HDHR myself and I wondered about the Extend if SageTV will detect and support it.

Anyone here own the HDHR Extend and can tell us if this client playback the mpeg4 file good or have issues still?

Bill

The extend, when used with sage, doesn't transcode, it still pulls the broadcast stream untouched. I'm not sure if using something like OpenDCT allows access to the hardware transcoded stream or not though.

[stuckless]

FYI... Just saw this... Nexus Player for $50US at BestBuy... that's a good deal.

http://androidandme.com/2016/01/news...st-buy-for-50/

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

FYI... Just saw this... Nexus Player for $50US at BestBuy... that's a good deal.

http://androidandme.com/2016/01/news...st-buy-for-50/

Is that Best Buy Canada? Here's the U.S. link today:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/google-n...&skuId=2445015

Sorry - didn't realize your link was a Monday only special

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

Is that Best Buy Canada? Here's the U.S. link today:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/google-n...&skuId=2445015

Sorry - didn't realize your link was a Monday only special

I didn't realize it was a single day special either, sorry

[reggie14]

I have a question about using IR remotes with the ShieldTV and other Android devices. I've seen this discussed in various places in other threads, but I can't seem to find a clear explanation of what works now, and what could plausibly be supported in the future.

Basically, I don't want to use the ShieldTV remote. I want to use my Harmony remote, both because it controls my other AV components, and because I'd like to use dedicated buttons for FF/RW, options, info, etc.

What current works with IR remotes? From what I've gathered from other threads, I think the Harmony remote will send IR commands that map to the buttons on the Shield remote. The ShieldTV will accept those commands, and only those commands, on its built-in receiver. Is that right?

I've seen other reports online (mainly things related to Kodi) suggesting that NVIDIA may update the firmware to be able to handle other IR commands. Does anyone know if that is right? If they do that, could that be used in Sage, or would there likely be other major stumbling blocks?

To what extent would FLIRC provide an alternative? The last thing I saw from stuckless seemed to say he couldn't get it working on his Shield. But others did seem to get it working, although I was unclear on exactly what commands worked.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by reggie14

What current works with IR remotes? From what I've gathered from other threads, I think the Harmony remote will send IR commands that map to the buttons on the Shield remote. The ShieldTV will accept those commands, and only those commands, on its built-in receiver. Is that right?

I think the bluetooth harmony remotes will do this, but I don't think the older one will. At least mine don't work out of the box. But people have said that they've loaded the newer ones with Shield remote, and it will send ONLY those commands. So still not very useful.

I've seen other reports online (mainly things related to Kodi) suggesting that NVIDIA may update the firmware to be able to handle other IR commands. Does anyone know if that is right? If they do that, could that be used in Sage, or would there likely be other major stumbling blocks?

I think if this were to happen, it would be somewhat transparent to the Android MiniClient. ie, IR codes would be mapped to Anroid Key Events and the applications would simply listen for key events. (as it does now, so nothing changes)

To what extent would FLIRC provide an alternative? The last thing I saw from stuckless seemed to say he couldn't get it working on his Shield. But others did seem to get it working, although I was unclear on exactly what commands worked.

Flirc basically does what I said above... it listens for IR commands and translates them into Key Events and passes them onto the Android KeyBoard subsystem. ie, Flirc emulates a keyboard. But, it means that you have to configure the flirc unit and map remote keypresses to events. I'm sure it all works well, but I just need to find the right remote to emulate on my Harmony remote, and then configure the flirc using it. I just haven't spent much time on it to find the right configuration.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Flirc basically does what I said above... it listens for IR commands and translates them into Key Events and passes them onto the Android KeyBoard subsystem. ie, Flirc emulates a keyboard. But, it means that you have to configure the flirc unit and map remote keypresses to events. I'm sure it all works well, but I just need to find the right remote to emulate on my Harmony remote, and then configure the flirc using it. I just haven't spent much time on it to find the right configuration.

Harmony already has a profile for the FLIRC for Fire TV. Just search FLIRC in the brand, and it'll be there. I had done that with my mother's Harmony before I even got the FLIRC delivered, and when I did, plugged it in and it worked great right away (the FLIRC comes pre-configured for the Fire TV). My guess is the key events it sends are pretty 'standard', so that any android TV device would function from them in a similar way to the Fire TV.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Harmony already has a profile for the FLIRC for Fire TV. Just search FLIRC in the brand, and it'll be there. I had done that with my mother's Harmony before I even got the FLIRC delivered, and when I did, plugged it in and it worked great right away (the FLIRC comes pre-configured for the Fire TV). My guess is the key events it sends are pretty 'standard', so that any android TV device would function from them in a similar way to the Fire TV.

I'll give it shot and see what happens. I've wiped my flirc so many times now, not sure if it has a "default" state after a wipe.