AndroidTV options in general & SonicLair
Cambionn
Member
Looking for clients for my TV that are less troublesome that my previous try on Kodi I found SonicLair today. The catch: it's not updated in 2 years and seems abandoned.
It does however on first look seems to work quite decently on TV, and even scrobbles to last.fm quite nicely. The 2 downsides I found are:
- Loading times before tracks are quite long.
- It doesn't display any album art.
As similar issues, at least to the album art, have been there before. Any chance you could tell me if these are solvable on your side or issues on their side?
At the same time, I'm curious if you or any other community members know of better AndroidTV alternatives.
Edit: SonicLair also seems go have stability issues, which make it much more unusable. So don't waste time on that 😉. I am still curious for other AndroidTV options.
Edit2: Decided to check regular android apps on TV. Tempo can't boot. The official Astiga app does. However, I can't seem to get a keyboard on the email field (as shown on the picture). I do get one on the password field. I know it's not really supported, but since it's probably somewhat minor: @gravelld any idea why and if it's fixable so I can test how well it works with a TV remote? It looks like it'll use tablet proportions so depending on how input works it may be a decent option.
Comments
No idea about AndroidTV but very interested to hear from others!
I'm not sure about the email field. This suggests it was supported at some point. I'll have to test this myself.
@Cambionn Do you know much about your AndroidTV setup - version number, device/model, resolution?
It´s a Chromecast with GoogleTV, bought right after release, but without Google account logged in. I update apps manually using Termux (Linux terminal) on my phone using ADB commands. OS system seems to update itself even without a Google account looking at it changing sometimes, but I would have to double check the version. TV is 1080p, but the Chromecast can go up to 4K.
I don´t have a Bluetooth keyboard laying around (everything here got cables), but I grabbed myself a Bluetooth Remote app from F-Droid. I wanna see if I can input the email with that later and then see how the rest of the app works.
So is it this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(operating_system) ? You can check the firmware version like this I think: https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/7124014?hl=en#zippy=%2Ccheck-the-firmware-version-of-your-streaming-device
Let us know about the Bluetooth remote app, it's a useful extra angle.
So is it this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(operating_system) ?
No it's not. How handy, Google is reusing name again it seems 😑. The Chromecast with GoogleTV runs regular AndroidTV with a extra Google wrap on it which they called "GoogleTV". It's the last model of the Chromecast, and comes with an OS and remote instead of only casting functionality. It's the last model Chromecast before they now switch to making mediaboxes instead.
Let us know about the Bluetooth remote app, it's a useful extra angle.
It works, as in it can fully do what you'd expect. It does need a mouse-type remote sadly. While some things work perfectly fine with the Chromecast remote, other things don't because it's impossible to get the selector on the right button, or is very annoying to do. But an app on a phone can overcome that, I'm using this one. The interface clearly isn't optimised for TV, but it does work.
There are a few other noticeable things. For one, it actually shows up on the menu. Often enough, phone apps have to be started from alternative launchers or from the installed apps list in settings. So that's a nice surprise. All it's lacking is a TV compatible icon picture.
It also perfectly supports playing in the background, so you can turn the TV to ambient mode while listening.
So outside of the clumsy interface and the need for a mouse or remote app on your phone, it works perfect like how you'd want.
As for the version of my Android TV, it has indeed been updating itself without a Google account. It runs on Android TV OS version 12, Android TV OS build STTL.240812.006.12286094, Kernel version 4.9.269 (from late August) and has the latest security patches.
Edit: One more thing to note. The cache of the app is recognised by AndroidTV as storage and not cache. If the AndroidTV device has limited storage, be aware to remove cache in-app and not trough the settings menu (and set the max cache size lower in the app while your at it). By default it's set to 2GB and the Chromecast will act like Astiga as an app is that big.
Thanks for this. I don't think it sounds like a lot of work to create a proper AndroidTV version.
How did you install Astiga? It doesn't show as an AndroidTV app does it?
As mentioned before, I install and update all my apps by pushing it over ADB as I don't use a Google account. So I just took the apk files from the phone app (as can be downloaded from many sites) and pushed them to the TV.
I's think most work would be in proper remote controls, especially for buttons that are impossible to reach now without a mouse, app or similar device. Other than that it seems all pretty minor.
Sorry - I did read that about sideloading, I'd forgotten.