TV Boxes

I'm well familiar with tvfool - check my earlier thread on cord cutting. I also know my way around Kodi - still prefer ShowBox over it.

But this thread is about tv boxes, not what app you use. Specifically, I am concentrating on boxes that will stream Netflix in full HD, and that's a short list.

While checking out the various boxes I found one that includes a tuner, so now I've set my sights even higher, looking for the perfect God box that will steam Netflix in HD and also record OTA.

So far this is ash extremely short list: WeTek Play 2 and Xiaomi Mi Box, running Nougat (7.x) and equipped with a USB ATSC tuner.

The WeTek box appears to have a single tuner (cannot record/watch multiple channels). For the Mi Box the officially supported tuners are the same (one channel at a time). I find a Hauppage tuner that is dual, and it should work. But it's not cheap and I still don't know if tuner support in nougat works with dual tuners.

I finally got a mini keyboard remote after over a year of owning an android box. It's a Rii i8+. This manufacturer has a variety of mini keyboard/remote combos.

All the cool kids are using an air mouse and voice interface, old man.

My "smart TV" has an IR remote and an on screen keyboard. Whenever something happens and I have to re-do the Netflix authentication I seriously want to change my password to aaaaaa.

I want voice command interface with voice recognition for passwords. My password, of course, would be "Edna Mode ... and guest".

I don't know how many of you have Kodi boxes, but I found a fix for mine that let's me run Kodi 17 on android 4.4.1

What's Android 4.4.1? Isn't that, like, older than Marshmallow? Do auto updates stop after a while?

I need a Mi Box 3 for HD Netflix, and Nougat to get support for OTA tuners and LiveChannels DVR features. That would be as close to the God Box as possible. Maybe even find a dual tuner.

wprager wrote:What's Android 4.4.1? Isn't that,  like, older than Marshmallow?  Do auto updates stop after a while?

I need a Mi Box 3 for HD Netflix,  and Nougat to get support for OTA tuners and LiveChannels DVR features.   That would be as close to the God Box as possible.  Maybe even find a dual tuner.

KitKat is what the kids are calling it.

West was the issue? I'm on MIUI 8.x (which is based on Android 6.0) and did not have any issues. Did toy start having issues after upgrading to 4.4.1?

wprager wrote:West was the issue? I'm on MIUI 8.x (which is based on Android 6.0) and did not have any issues. Did toy start having issues after upgrading to 4.4.1?

The issue was going from Kodi 16 to 17 requires Android 5.0 or better.

Ok, got that, but Marshmallow has been out for quite a while. Doesn't your TV box automatically update? Or dues that stop after a while?

wprager wrote:Ok, got that, but Marshmallow has been out for quite a while. Doesn't your TV box automatically update? Or dues that stop after a while?

I'm not all that knowledgeable or interested about the reasons. From what I've read it's the chipset or something like that which is incompatible with newer Android versions.Either way, I'm glad the manufacturer cared enough about their customers to produce this "fork" version of Kodi 17 to keep me current.

I really like the box I have overall so I'm happy about the ability to upgrade somewhat.

The real question is can you eat or at least scratch your back with said "fork"?

Cap'n Clutch wrote:The real question is can you eat or at least scratch your back with said "fork"?

Sadly no. But ooooh how I tried.

I know it probably make little difference for most content, but if I *know* that Netflix is not streaming in HD it will bother me. I've reconciled myself with not having all those pixels on my 5" screen (uses less electricity, besides FHD will pay 1080p in full resolution; I doubt I will ever watch a 4k stream on my phone).

The only Android TV box that Netflix will stream to on HD is the Mi Box 3. Sure, there are other boxes (Roku, Amazon Fire, Nvidia Shield, Apple TV, TiVo, etc.) But most of those are s lot more expensive.

I also will eventually need OTA DVR capability. TiVo Roamio has that, plus the best UX. But there is no Crave TV app and I don't know if it could play web videos from the likes of HGTV.ca (that's another must have, for the wife).

A Mi Box with Nougat had support for OTA and recording. Would need to add a USB hub (only one USB port and need to add storage, antenna, air mouse), USB ATSC tuner, storage. At this point I have no idea of there are dual (or more) tuners, or if Nougat will even support multiple tuners. And I have no idea where the guide data is coming from (will Canada even be supported).

So in the meantime I stay with Rogers. Ugh.

Or I just throw caution to the wind, get myself that Mi Box with antenna and a single tuner and hope that's enough or disk runners are eventually supported/available. Or get the Roamio and web video support is made available (could also access Crave that way).

Tried going back to Kodi because I couldn't find some shows on ShowBox. But the usual instructions for casting is to use LocalCast, and every single video I've tried so far results in either my lg tv saying the file is "invalid" or Chromecast saying the video format it's not supported. With ShowBox I was using All casting which didn't create issues with either the smart TV or Chromecast.

Any advice? What do I put in the playercorefactory.xml file for AllCast? Or is there a setting I can enable in LocalCast?

Some Kodi related sites and hosts closed down abruptly. You may not be able to connect to your usual providers. One of my favourites, Phoenix, pulled the plug.

I know I had issues installing Exodus. Saw a few recent notes in the instructions saying it's recently unavailable.

But the playback issue I had was something different.