VLC is among the most popular cross-platform media players due to its robust playback engine that can handle pretty much anything. Its Android app just received some notable updates to the beta. Picture-in-picture is the most user-facing change on Android TV. Users will be able to now continue watching their content while they navigate the […]
Twitch is launching a new part of their streaming service as a beta: Twitch Communities. Its purpose is to offer a different way of discovering content based around the type of content instead of the game itself. Perhaps I’m interested in speedrunning, but care less about which game. I can check out the Speedrunning Community. […]
Each week NVIDIA aims to keep gamers happy with a new game on Geforce Now or the Android platform and usually it’s exclusive to the SHIELD platform. This week they’ve take an old-school hack-and-slash dungeon crawler and merge it with an art treatment reminiscent of Tron. Called Brut@l I’d watch the trailer below to learn […]
USB tuners on Android TV allow users to watch over-the-air channels and even record them locally to watch them later. The feature should be included in the firmware for Android TVs running version 7.0 and up, but when the NVIDIA Shield TV received the update last month USB tuner support was notably not available yet. […]
With the release of the TIF companion library, developers interesting in building TV channels can use a base to make development much simpler. In building it, I spent some time thinking of good examples and uses for this technology. I have been working on a new demo. There is a lot of content that can […]
A spokesperson from Google has recently confirmed that 30-second preroll ads, those that appear before you actually start watching the video, will be removed from the platform next year. Google is a company known for experimentation. The spokesperson said they are looking for ad types that are more effective for both the user and the […]
YouTube Kids launched two years ago, an age that seems surprising given how new the service still seems. The goal of the app was to provide families with a collection of content for kids, filtering out content less suitable. The service launched with some criticism as the company tried to improve its filtering. Since then, […]
Two months ago a bug appeared in the Google Play Store on TVs, where selecting some categories would cause the entire app to crash. It was a pretty critical bug, and one that could lose consumer confidence as they turned on their new holiday gifts for the first time. You can see an example of […]
You may have gotten a notification on your Shield TV recently about another software update. This would be to Shield Experience 5.1, not to be confused with the Android operating system version 7.0. This is a minor update that brings some of the promises NVIDIA made at their CES keynote. SHIELD Experience Upgrade 5.1 for […]
Apple Music, their premium music streaming service, will soon be getting some extra value in the form of video. There are two new original shows that will be premiering on the platform, acting as Apple’s first foray into this industry. Although it’s their first video series, they do have plenty of experience with the iTunes […]
Google’s Live Channels app has allowed users to stream from a variety of networked sources, although users are probably more excited about the DVR feature. As the name implies, third-party channel apps can respond to user requests for recording and playing back of media. At this moment, the app needs to support it, limiting the […]
Android TV is based on Android, meaning you can use common workarounds such as sideloading apps and using a keyboard and mouse to turn your streaming device into a real productivity device. You can even root your device and dual boot it with a stock mobile version of Android. However, this does require workarounds that […]
Google Cast has slowly been making its way into more features such as speakers and Google Home. With Google Cast speakers, users can quickly start playing music on different devices in their home. Brookstone announced new speakers two weeks ago that let you connect using Bluetooth or Google Cast to stream music or other types […]
Since the NVIDIA Shield TV received its 5.0 update, there have been a lot of new tweaks and features that have come to light. We were able to find most of them, but some individuals on Reddit and XDA Developers found one that may be useful to hardcore gamers. Users will now be able to […]
The Linaro Digital Home Group has released a sample build of Android TV that is compatible with 96Boards. This uses the open source version of Android TV, without requiring Google services. Linaro, a working group of companies who build software for ARM processors, has continued to forward the advances and possibilities of applications on those […]
TvHeadend, “a TV streaming server and recorder for Linux, FreeBSD and Android”, is a way for you to stream various video sources to this software and then to your other devices. It is similar to the HDHomeRun in some ways, giving you access to various types of media tuners. With a recently published app on […]
If you’ve used Chrome, you’re probably familiar with the minigame that shows up when you can’t connect to the Internet. The dinosaur mascot will start running. You need to evade other dinosaurs and cacti until your Internet reconnects. This game has now been ported to Android TV inside of a WebView. It loads the game […]
It’s was Tuesday…but now it’s Thursday so you know what that means, NVIDIA bringing another game to the SHIELD TV and this one is a big name console title. Courtesy of the great developers at Square Enix SHIELD TV & Geforce Now members will be able to play as Adam Jensen in Deus Ex: Human […]
Since Facebook debuted live video on their social media platform, it has been adopted by a number of groups for a variety of reasons. It has been used to capture significant events without the classic need for journalists or television crews. From the Democrats sitting-in while C-SPAN cameras aren’t broadcasting, to activists protesting the Dakota […]
Last week we discussed the music visualization app projectM, which just released an app optimized for Android TV. Some comments noted their unenthusiasm about the default styles that are included in the app and asked how to use their own. This is a brief guide on how to download and use visualizations that you can […]
When you first load the game Epic Heroes, War, you are quickly pushed through a prologue to the story. It gives an outline of the world and your motivations for getting involved. It’s easy to brush aside this opening because the game itself doesn’t require any prior knowledge. The game is a side-scrolling fighter game […]
Users in the Android Beta Program may be seeing a message on their Nexus Players to update their software. Users will be instructed to update to Android 7.1.2. This is a small update, not even getting a bump up to the API version. It “is an incremental maintenance release focused on refinements”, so there isn’t anything […]
Users of Xiaomi’s Mi Box seem to have found a software update waiting. The patch, 500 MB in size, seems to omit any sort of helpful changelog. Some Redditors have found only a single change. Once updated, users will receive a dialog that invites them to a very brief free trial of Sling TV, a […]
Last week was when NVIDIA rolled out their much-awaited operating system update. The Shield Experience 5.0 is based on Android Nougat, 7.0. A lot of the new features were covered in our original first look last year, but NVIDIA has added a number of small tweaks as well. In our dedication to Android TV, we’re […]
As many of you know NVIDIA graced us with the Geforce Experience 5.0 update that brought a ton of changes and improvements for even the most hardcore cord cutters, yes those with a 10.1 setup, they care. Well they also gave us a new toy to play with, some of it new some of it stuff […]
Dolphin is a popular mobile and desktop emulator for GameCube games, and has had support for Android TV for a while. Version 4 had this handy feature that allowed you to customize the key bindings. My NVIDIA Shield gamepad is not the same as GameCube controller, and I am able to point certain buttons to […]
A Quick PSA for Shield 2015 owners. According to the Shield Experience 5.0.2 upgrade thread, Manuel Guzman from Nvidia has informed everyone that if you get an Installation Error with a BugDroid Logo during the install, that you should do the following: a) Unplug your SHIELD, wait 5 seconds, and plug power back. b) After […]
Android TV is all about media, and there are several ways to mix browsing and watching to optimize your viewing experience as much as possible. Picture-in-picture puts a video in a corner of the screen and lets another activity run behind it, a sort of multiwindow for TVs. Some video apps will continue to play […]
THIS IS A SIGN is a new app from the developer of PuppetMaster.TV and #SIDELOADTAG. As the name implies, it turns your TV into a digital sign, making it easy to do digital signage for free with a simple interface. There is a small in-app purchase to make it more suitable for permanent installations. We […]
If you have an Android phone or tablet, you may be familiar with the music visualizer tool projectM. It works with pretty much any music source you can think of to present a trippy visual experience in the foreground. Now there’s an Android TV version of the app which provides the same fascinating experience. The […]