Best alternative to the truly appalling software on my Sony TV

by harperthomas

I have android TV on my Sony Bravia and I truly hate it with a passion.

Main problem. I hate Adverts. To remove the giant Disney Plus banner from my home screen I need to uninstall the android TV app updates. To be able to watch ITV hub and All 4 I have to go through this sony selects thing, which means I cant access them from custom launchers. Both ITV and All 4 and sometimes youtube crash and fail to load on a regular basis. This happens both when playing through the app and casting. Ive tried sideloading these apps and i get an error saying my manufacturer dosnt have a license to use these apps. The only solution I can come up with is to spend more money and get a TV box / stick to enable me to watch content on my £600 TV.

Possible options,

Fire Stick - I think still has annoying adds? But otherwise seems like a good option.

Android TV box like Nvidia shield - Back to the giant disney plus banner

Roku - Currently looking like by best option

I would love to hear peoples opinions on my options and any possible solutions that would avoiding spending more money on another device. Thanks

ClearlyNoSTDs

How much time do you spend staring at your home screen? All this hysteria about these "ads" on the home screen is quite bizarre.

pawdog

Apple TV is the only device UI without ads. So it's that or a 3rd party launcher.

Zer0Goblin

I have the same TV. It's an Android TV issue in general. 5 minutes you can be ad free.

  1. Install the Troy Point Rappid App Installer .

  2. Download and install Launcher Manager (Android TV) and FLauncher. The how-to videos are right below the download button if you need help.

  3. Enable ADB debugging in Developer Options

  4. Use the Launcher Manager to set FLauncher as the default launcher.

Bonus: Install SmartTubeNext for YouTube watching. It's amazing.

ooftymcgoofty

Roku has a huge ad that takes up half the homescreen. Also, you will not be able to sideload anything.

maxpower-70

Just use app only mode

Mhkw

Every tv channel has ads while you are paying for cable. Right? I don't see much difference.

extra2AB

I have MiBox4K and have never seen a single ad. I purchased it in 2020 so I don't know about recent models. Also I have Mi TV 55" and even there are no ads.

It's weird cause the whole culture of ads in devices was introduced by Xiaomi.

But seriously why do you want to use anything else, when it is inbuilt into tv ?

Also, just use wireless ADB to remove Ad packages instead of spending money for a LOW-QUALITY device (almost all android boxes apart from Nvidia perform very low and will eventually get laggy) when you can spend a little time researching and just removing the core-ad services.

Not to mention those low-quality devices will have ads as well cause apparently Google TV is pushing these ads not the manufacturers.

[deleted]

I use FTVLaunchX and ATV Launcher Pro on my Android TV device. You can install those two apps, enable the accessibility service for LaunchX (which can be done through Android's device preferences menu) and configure the custom launcher to your liking.

dj4m

I have tried few launchers and the best alternative with a good user experience I had was with the native Android TV Home 2.3.1 (the latest version without ads/banners), I have pushed this downgrade version with ADB to my TV, the only downside is the home channels are not working and I have only the black colour background. Is there any way to have a coloured background?