Chromecast Support

by D1V5H4L

This is more of a rant. Any idea why is there such poor and terrible androidtv optimised apps? ATV is running android V9 and behaving it still is on gingerbread ecosystem. This crap is driving me nuts.

For one, it is such a crappy headache to stream something from a mobile device to the android tv box (I have a mibox 3). Does not connect without a couple of restarts. Clearing data or cache does not help. This is some hardcore level crap that is happening.

Then comes the part where there is no bloody web browser that works. This is really really lame. Video cannot be streamed at all on any sideloaded apps (TV Bro, Chrome, Firefox) but it can on a shitty interfaced browser on my hisense tv. What the hell is happening? The specs on this device is something else and the output is merely a joke of it.

I can move to a new device like the shield tv or the google tv but will it make a difference?

reichel101

100% with you on this. Also using a mibox 3 for around 4 years now. At this stage I'm waiting for it to die so I can justify a new purchase but wouldn't know what to replace it with.

I'm not sure if it's because not a lot of companies develop/improve their apps for ATv because Google themselves are pretty much ignoring this platform.

Mavamaarten

From a developer that specializes in apps for video including Android TV, Chromecast fucking sucks to develop for. All we can do is set up a remote media session from the app to the Chromecast and pray that whatever we send to the Chromecast gets played. During development this all works fine, and it does for 90% of users too. But for some people it sucks ass and just doesn't work at all. And all we can see (in our logs and the Chromecast debug view) is that "the connection failed".

All I can say is, get a good router. Not the crappy router you got from your ISP, disable that and use a good separate router. That's usually the problem, Chromecast uses a lot of features that a lot of routers don't handle very well (multicast DNS etc). Oh, and connect your mibox through cable, your wifi can be great but if you place it behind a big metal panel (a TV) your reception can be pretty poor.

And webbrowsers not being able to play video is afaik just an artificial limitation, they often look at your user agent and see android and just try point you to the app. I don't see why a webbrowser on Android tv wouldn't be able to play widevine protected video.

pawdog

There is a reason there is no good browser for Android TV. Browsers suck on TV always have and that doesn't seem to be changable. What is your use case that can ony be done with a browser.

wewewi

Let's say the Chromecast Built-in app has always been extremely flakey, yes. I do a lot in the Shield TV communities, and people just refuse to believe me when I say that; they want to blame Nvidia, the counter argument always being "but my regular Chromecast always works just fine". They just can't wrap their heads around the fact that an app and an entire device built to do only one thing are widely different.

This is like saying "why can't I perform a clinical surgery with a swiss knife? A scalpel does it just fine, and both were designed to cut things"

The Chromecast app is just as bad on every Android TV device.

inquirer

I've never had issues. Usually means your WiFi sucks or you need a better device

I've been using only Chromecast Ultras for 4 years now and a CC WGTV now