Considering Andoid TV, some questions.

by disdisd

I'm getting a new TV and am considering getting AndroidTV to work as a hub for music and tv and have a couple of questions. I also have a turntable and vinyl so want to use the TV to play digital music into the same amp and speaker setup. But I'm also considering whether it would just be easier to use a tablet and cast to the TV or bluetooth into the amp directly.

  1. One limitation seems to be the availablility of apps in the different app structure of TV. If I want to listen to NTS radio, for example, and there is no Android TV app how feasible is it to listen to it through their website, including finding specific programs etc? TV browsers tend to be pretty clunky and horrible to use in my previous experience.
  2. For music, what is the best audio out to have/use to feed into an amp and speakers both in terms of sound quality and ease of use?
IAMFLYGUY

Disagree with Huffer, it's great and essentially a giant phone and you can do a lot with all the apps. Side load apps too that are not in your region. It's a TV first though before anything else.

tampa36

I use Apple TV 4K for doing anything just because it more responsive, gets better updates, and features. I picked up a Sony 65" X950h just last month for the living room that has android but find Apple TV so much better and easy to use than what's on the TV. I use Plex Media Server for everything media related, and can see it's possible to import NTS playlists to Plex. You should check out Plex, because its great for music, and videos seamlessly across all of your devices and acts as a perfect media hub. I am currently pushing around 4000 lossless music albums on my plex and it doesn't skip a beat, along with my movie and TV show collection approaching 20 Terabytes.

Mappy42

I can't speak to music consideration. But if you're downsizing. The shield pro and a usb HDD is remarkable. I got boxes of; dvd, box sets, games, games consoles, audiobooks and CDs as well as all streaming services and OTA TV onto two boxes that can fit into a glovebox of most cars

raptir1

Don't rely on your TV's built-in OS, whether it's Android TV, Fire TV OS or Roku. The TVs never get great support and generally have mediocre processors leading to a mediocre experience. Android TV is a fine OS choice for it, but you'd want to pick up something like an Nvidia Shield rather than buying a TV around it.

That said... if a service you want doesn't support streaming TV devices, you probably shouldn't get one to use for it. You could sideload the Android phone app, but results are not guaranteed. The specific problem is whether the app works well with the remote - and there's really no way to tell that without trying it. It might work and allow you to navigate without a problem, but it might not work at all. If you do try an Android TV device, you would just want to feed HDMI into your receiver.

A tablet would work as well. If your tablet supports USB audio out you could use an external DAC or USB in to your receiver (if it supports that). If not, just a 3.5mm cable into the receiver would be your best bet.

disdisd

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I realise that what I want to do probably isn't feasible with Android TV (or other TV OS's). I'm now looking at either Sonos or an Intel Compute Stick (or possibly a combination of both) but I appreciate that that's not really the remit of this sub.

Huffer13

Don't make the tv OS the center of your setup. android tv is clunky, not as responsive as a Roku, Fire stick, Apple Tv etc.