Things that I like:
-The quality of the picture. It is noticably better than either the ONN or the FS 4K devices to my eye. My artistic wife said WOW. (If the 4k Max shows a similar improvement over the 4k, I understand why Miki is a FS 4K Max apologist.)
-Kodi seems to work more seemlessly with this stock system than it does with the Fire 6 or Android 10TV OS’s.
-Stremio works well, too, though my preference is Kodi for reasons that I won’t expound upon now.
-It was a revelation to me about how nice it is having 4 GB of RAM & 64 GB of ROM in a device.
-I prefer using this launcher to the FireTV launcher. Basically the apps are located exactly where I’d look for them, unlike Fire which switches depending on what was used last. There is one thing that I really don’t like with the home screen, which I’ll mention later.
-The mini keyboard…it’s more useful than I had thought it’s be. In fact, I don’t think this stock OS box would be very useable without it.
-The included file manager is easy to learn to use. It’s not very feature-laden, but it’s good for easily moving files from the internal memory to a USB stick or micro SD cards.
Stuff which I don’t like:
-The launcher has a huge “Smart TV” square for a IPTVSmarters fork which if activated, points to a free IPTV trial. I can’t figure out a way of deleting this short cut.
-I was not able to add adoptable storage on a micro-SD card. Neither the quick nor the ‘troublesome device’ procedures worked. (With 64 GB of memory, this is only a minor thing for me, because there’s plenty of room to record and then move the files to a stick…which leads to
-This device doesn’t seem to easily recognize files generated by Tivimate. I tried using ‘Send Files to TV’ to transfer my settings from an ONN (Android TV OS). It was indicated on the ONN that the transfer was successful, but the file was invisible on the Stock OS box, regardless of how I looked.
I haven’t found a way to point my recordings to a USB stick. Neither using the browse feature or typing in a path works.
-The Google Play Store shortcut is a prominent feature on the home page. However, the installation of most of the official apps that I wanted/needed are blocked on this device. Fortunately, I found what I needed on APKMirror or Aurora.
-The GUI for IPVanish doesn’t work properly. It’s accessible, but inconvenient. ProtonVPN works perfectly.
Obvious stuff when using something similar to this vs cheap sticks or small boxes:
-It’s really nice having Ethernet, USB & micro SD ports without the OTG work-arounds.
-I have this box sitting on an edge. It barely gets warm.
-I wouldn’t recommend that someone new to this hobby start with a stock OS. That said, it is a step or two up from the Firesticks and ONN boxes that I’ve used prior to getting this.
Once you learn your way around stock android you will like it more and more unless you are looking for certified apps to play nice, they wont however stock and iptv are made for each other, As with other things to check is permissions…check, double check as this is usually a stumbling block with apps working together etc. Enjoy your new toy
Glad to hear you love the Box with Stock. I have 2 T95Z Plus Android Boxes running strong for over 5 years now. Think I’m on android 7ish? but not an issue. Never shut em off, no problems other than the occaisional reboot which seems to fix everything! Yeah the Home screen GUI is a bit clunky but I don’t care. I use the Box for multiple KODI Builds/Forks and tivimate. Having the extra storage on a box is great. I don’t think I’ve ever deleted any files on it and Stock is the Bomb unless you care about Stuff like running Netflix in HD. But that sort of defeats the whole purpose of this anyway right. What is on Netflix that I can’t get on KODI or Tivimate?
I find it less clunky than the Fire TV’s stock launcher.
I had a very bad experience with the Wolf Launcher and Launch Manager with a Fire 4k, so I’m very reluctant about installling any sort custom launcher on any device.
Its very possible that my issues with the buzztv x5 box was using different launchers??? Not really sure but at this point it the only thing that makes sense, however ive never had a launcher issue with a stock box. My favorite launcher is projectivy but with stock boxes I tend to use a regular mouse and find launcher3 to work best…
I didn’t see this post until after I had posted a similar question: “I honestly don’t understand, and with all due respect to the many Netflix subscribers here - with all the alternative information available on this forum, what does Netflix offer that attracts so many subscribers? Thanks.”
Yup @elginherd nailed it! also some people don’t like change and can’t deal with their content looking different than Netflix. For you old time KODI’s remember when Exodus went to crap? Geez people were absolutely freaking out
I love the idea of moving to an android box. However, please be sure it is not running any Amazon nor ONN/google TV OS systems. Both are blocking the USB port from recording. You can have an external drive and put apps on it, but you cannot record to it As soon as Tivimate tries to record something, the operating system automatically shuts down the USB port and then the system says drive not connected. Also, TIVIMATE cannot even direct itself to record to the external drive
If anyone knows a workaround, I would love to hear it
if you can get an android box with os 9 or lower it will let tivimate record to external hd no prob…i have several and they work great for recording …i think android 10 and above is when they locked those permissions…you can still find them brand new but they’re getting scarce as people have started to fiqure this out
Yes, 9 and below makes it easier. Larry, I am not sure what your box is, but I have recorded to external drives on a variety of android boxes.
Last night I recorded the Bears-Vikings game on my Rupa box. The Tivimate recording quit after 17 minutes, but the Sparkle recording got the whole game. Recording IPTV can be hit and miss if there is glitch in the signal. The Rupa is Android 11 (not TV) and I have the stick drive formatted to Exfat.
There are many combinations of boxes, OS’s, recording software, and external drive formats so experiment to see what works.
I had similar problem with trying to install and use other launchers on my BuzzTV XRS4500 and ended up selling it due to this and other restricted access issues. I wonder if it has anything to do with the Android TV operating system BuzzTV uses. No such issues or problems on my stock android (Ugoos) devices.
very well could be. Ugoos tends to be more open(stock) and they generally make the boxes easy to modify…or simply put they could care less what you do with it. Others like buzz and formuler are more locked down but most can be modified but not with the ease of ugoos.
I have an Amazon cube second generation and ONN 4K pro. This just started happening recently. I would say the last month or half. Both of my devices stop letting me record through tivimate. I assume it was some update to the operating System.
This really scares me what you said about Buzz TV I just recently called them. they told me they do not restrict the ports. actually they allow you to pick which port you want to use for recordings
Thanks for the info about the android nine. I guess I will be looking for android boxes that run android nine
If anyone finds a work around, please let me know. Myself and several of my friends use the Amazon cube.
Thanks, everyone
