A few questions about using the Nexus player as a cable box - Nexus Player Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi all,
Since the price of the Nexus player has dropped considerably, I'm thinking I may get one + a HD Homerun prime for my father for Christmas, but I have a few questions. I already have a Nvidia Shield TV, so I know how Android TV works and it's limitations. The only thing I haven't done is use the live TV apps for watching TV on it.
Is watching TV on it using a HD Homerun prime pretty painless once configured? I should note that we live in Oregon and the cable provider here is Comcast. In terms of channels, he really doesn't watch much (mostly Fox News, ESPN, HBO, and local channels). The big one that is a MUST though is Pac-12 network - my sister plays softball for the University of Washington and Pac-12 network is necessary to watch all the games we can't make it to. My understanding is that DRM channels won't work with the live TV app - is there any other way to view them on the device? I should also note that DVR functionality isn't a must have feature if it's a pain to get it working.
I'm not worried about it being too tech heavy for my dad to use - he's already got Ethernet running throughout the house (this device would be connected via Ethernet) and has done OTA TV before using Windows Media Center & my Xbox 360. However, if it isn't more seamless to browse and watch TV on than his cablebox, I'm not sure he'll actually want to make the change.

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Any one use orb to stream live tv

If so can you change channels. I can watch the last channel I was watching in media center but it doesn't change to the channel I select in the program guide on orb? Is there another software like orb that will stream the live tv to my 8525 or do I need to wait till I have the cash for a sling box.
Personally I use slingbox, and its frekin awesome! I have it coneected to my tivo, and slingplayer mobile allows for full control of your tivo with my 8525. I havent used orb, but when I was in your position researching it seemed like the video quality is about the same. AV quality is VERY good with wifi, good with 3g, and choppy with edge.
chrisryn said:
If so can you change channels. I can watch the last channel I was watching in media center but it doesn't change to the channel I select in the program guide on orb? Is there another software like orb that will stream the live tv to my 8525 or do I need to wait till I have the cash for a sling box.
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Although i currently don't have it set up at the moment due to rom upgrades, i did have this working previously and it changed channels no problem.
As long as you have the channels setup correctly in orb configuration this will work as you want.
Slingbox does a better job so far.
I just started with Orb streaming my media and pictures off of my server, but I haven't set up TV yet because I have a weak link in my cable so that when I split it to hook up my TV Tuner card, I lose about half my speed with my cable modem. Video from the PC has come across great with 2.0, I hope the same with the TV.
yes, it rocks
i've had it working for a few months. I use xp- not media center addition- just plain xp.
ati all in wonder radeon 8500dv
orb 2.0_latest release
I use the file browser to get gps maps, etc down to my 8525. play mp3, video, even look at my webcam, and watch tv (or listen to it while I'm driving). works on 3g and edge, even with an old pentium3 pc!
never tried a $lingbox, but my orb pc is free. sits there with no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, just cable tv and lan.

TV streamed to phone?

Hey folks so I am trying to do something that I am not entirely sure I can do. I will try my best to explain it clearly and I hope one of you may be able to direct me in the right direction as I am having little luck on google.
Basically I have IPTV through my phone company. I have the option for a second box and am looking for a way to stream that feed through my computer. From my computer I would like encode the feed into a mobile feesable compression and feed it to my phone through.
Is anyone aware of anything like this that will work or something capable of doing this??
If someone even knows of a service provider that works directly with TV feeds over the internet for mobile I would be even happy with something like that. But of course ideally it would be better to be able to use my own services that I already pay for.
On a last note. My cell phone provider DOES offer tv for mobile but NOT for pdas. LOL and the TV service itself is lousy.
I think the solution is on this web-site orb.com
I'm using it successfuly all the time.
Thanks I am gonna check out that software whenI get home.
On further research while here at work. I came across the Slingbox media option. I was curious if anyone has tried this for there home system yet? The website states that it can be connected to your satellite or digital cable boxes but I have to admit I am confused with the interaction of the two. Mainly the remote control portion.
If you have a Sling box which is acting like a "tv" but actually defering that signal to a remote location like a laptop or phone how does this box change the channel if it's just receiving signal? Does the slingbox itself act like a uber remote control and has to be placed directly infront of the digital box to act like a remote to relay the information back to the remote device?
I apologize if this seems on the border of being off topic but the goal is to stream live TV to my PDA which I suspect one of you techy people may have tryed such a solution!
I have used the Slingbox mobile player extensively with my Mogul over the Sprint EVDO network...I LOVE IT!!! Occasionally it's a memory hog and I may have to reset the phone...but all in all the Slingbox will do what you are asking about.
I have loaded and been running orb now for the past week and have to admit I am extremely happy with this application. It is fantastic so far and the intereface is great and easy to use!!
However after continuing research I will definetly be investing into a sling box as I have a second digital box collecting dust and would love to be able to channel surf lol!! Will just have to run both I suppose. Orb for movies and audio and Slingbox for tv surfing!!
Thank you for your input everyone!
mrkawphy said:
... how does this box change the channel ... ?
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The Sling hardware has an IR transmitter dongle, (or two), that you point at the decoder boxes IR reciever. The Sling client app, (both mobile and PC), have a software controller counterpart that can even actually looks like the remote control, (PC version). All IR functions work great from the mobile and the PC clients!
I love the slingbox and use it fine on my titan, although have had issues on other HTC Smartphones. It basically captures any video signal and sends it over the internet for remote viewing. whbell is right, it has a IR blaster that you put on the front of the device you want to control remotely and it sends your remote control codes to the box. You don't need a seperate set top box as long as the people at home are ok with watching whatever you are watching. I have mine hooked up to my pvr and can pull up all my recorded movies, or more importantly, setup a recording remotely if I forgot to do it at home.
Definitely a must have.
mrkawphy said:
I have loaded and been running orb now for the past week and have to admit I am extremely happy with this application. It is fantastic so far and the intereface is great and easy to use!!
However after continuing research I will definetly be investing into a sling box as I have a second digital box collecting dust and would love to be able to channel surf lol!! Will just have to run both I suppose. Orb for movies and audio and Slingbox for tv surfing!!
Thank you for your input everyone!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ORB is great for TV, just install a TV tuner / capture card in your PC. Sling box is okay for people without PC's, but if you already have one setup with ORB, there is no need for Sling box.
BTW, if you use Windows Media Center,you could also check out WebGuide.

Tips on how to get around Kindles small memory

Just thought I would throw out there some methods my family uses to keep our kids Kindles active despite its very small memory. We have children 12 and 4, and they love their Kindles.
First our Kindles are rooted and run cm7 w/ ics theme.
We don't use Amazon anything because of root, but we have everything already in place to cover that. We have a Netflix account for video (My 4 year old son loves the plethora of cartoons available) and we use Google's FREE streaming music application.
Now this is pretty basic stuff, and works great where you have WIFI. However what do you do when you are on the road? Our solution is based around our mobile smartphones. My wife and I both have them, and luckily are grandfathered into unlimited data plans. Which is important if you are going to be using them to also support Kindles.
While in the car my wife will support one kindle, and I will support another. Are phones are also rooted and we use two Apps to do this Wifi Tether and Wifi File Explorer. If you are not familiar Wifi Tether will allow your phone to be a mobile hotspot without paying for the extra plan fees. Wifi File Explorer simply allows your device to explored by another device. You also can put this app on the Kindle.
We use the Wifi Tether app to provide internet service to the Kindles allowing them to function fully. Kids can download apps, surf web, netflix, stream music etc.
We use the Wifi File Explorer to take advantage of our phones larger and changeable memory. You can store anything on your phone such as movies not available on netflix, and your kids can then watch them on their kindle. You can buy a large memory card to support this, or even use multiple smaller ones. You would just have to switch them out like you would a cd or dvd.
You of course can place your own movies on a file streaming service. However Wifi File Explorer, and using phones memory doesn't require a signal to work. So if your somewhere where is cell service is weak you may have problems streaming.
I am sure others may have some thoughts or tips for what they do. I just thought I would share ours. Also a verizon 3g signal will support two kindles watching netflix, but it gets pretty choppy. That's why we try to use one kindle per phone. Plus while drive the wife and I are usually using Google Music for ourselves.
I have a HTPC with 16TB of storage. I use Emit to stream video to my Android devices (including 3 Kindle Fire's). It works pretty well with video up to 720p, my wireless infrastructure is 802.11g though.
I use Emit to also stream outside of my local network, my Kindle Fire's while tethered (using ZT-180 Adhoc Switcher & WiFi Tether) to the 4G LTE connection of one of our phones stream video pretty well.
I use File Expert to access SMB shares on my HTPC over WiFi. It works great. I can copy files to/from my HTPC. I can install .apk files over WiFi. I pretty much only use the internal storage of my Kindle File for apps and books. I even copy my ROM backups to my HTPC using File Expert, no reason to keep them on the KF since I can copy them back over if I need to during recovery.
On the road though I have an 80GB iPod Classic connected to the AUX port of the built in DVD player in my truck. It has pretty close to 80GB of childrens content in .mp4 - more than my kids will watch during a single ride anyway.
I'm not a big fan streaming services like Netflix. I rarely use the Amazon instant streaming service on my Kindle Fire (unroot with OTA Rootkeeper) or on the Roku 2 I bought just to stream video from Amazon since it's include with Prime.
I love the Popcorn Hour and Squeezebox remote apps that I side loaded on my KF. The Roku 2 one that I bought (Roku Remote 2.16) is alright, the keyboard is pretty meh and kind of ruins it for me. I guess I'm just not a fan of the Roku 2.

Nvidia Shield TV Console & Router settings?

I got my Shield tv console delivered yesterday, (late as possible damn ups) and love it so far, haven't had enough time to play more, but after work today I will. I have an asus rtac68w, which according to nvidia is a held ready router, but I need to know what and how to set up my router to optimally perform for my shield tv and streaming.
Any help people?
The Shield is like any tablet or smartphone. There is nothing "special" to set up in the router for it
It's just highly recommended to use a wired connection for the Shield but have wifi configured too because they're known bugs with current firmware when the network isn't wifi. So sometimes you need to switch to wifi to do some stuff then back to wired for optimal performance. They'll fix this later I guess.
ps: go there : https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/159/ instead of XDA, you'll find official NVidia reps. XDA is ignoring the Shield Android TV so let's us leave.
Basically, to set it up best; Connect it to ethernet that goes straight into the router. That said, You want to make sure it connects to your 5GHz network, that your 5GHz network does not have legacy support enabled (AC only if possible with no N or A support). WMM and BeamForming is helpful sometimes. Those are the basics.
So, whatever you would do to optimize your WiFi for GameStream or GRID on the Shield Tablet or Shield Portable, you could do the same things here, plus the option of straight gigabit ethernet.
I hadn't heard of the issues with the Wired ethernet personally, hopefully they fix that pretty quickly. It may be specific to certain environments or other issues. Also, I know that the controllers use WiFi-Direct (rather than BT), however anything with that causing part of the networking fails would be pure speculation on my part.
I haven't had any issues with Ethernet
ryocoon said:
Also, I know that the controllers use WiFi-Direct (rather than BT), however anything with that causing part of the networking fails would be pure speculation on my part.
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Click to collapse
Actually it's the wired connection that 'might' mess with the initial controler pairing:
from a NVidia rep:
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/836884/?comment=4546797
If you are unable to pair your SHIELD Wireless Controller during initial setup and your SHIELD Android TV is connected to your network over ethernet, try temporarily disconnecting your ethernet cable to go into WiFi mode and check if pairing issue is fixed.
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Click to collapse
I haven't had problems either hardworking the console or using the Shield Tablet in console mode and using a Micro USB ethernet connector to hardwire the tablet. I must say that I get less lag streaming games in 4K from my PC using the console vs the tablet. I just wish I could sideload Amazon Prime Instant Video and M-Go so I could stream whatever 4K video content they offer besides only Netflix and YouTube video in 4K. No studdering, no buffering, just good quality 4K video from this thing. I must say, this console could have a major impact over how games could be delivered in the future. No latency at all except 1st person shooters being streamed via Grid. This is the best device I've bought in a long time.
I had some issues with DHCP when first setting up my unit on a wired connection. It kept disconnecting from the internet even when showing a connection. I set up my IP manually and updated to 1.2 and have had no issues since...it is super fast but may still setup wifi as you said just incase.
Rolldog said:
I haven't had problems either hardworking the console or using the Shield Tablet in console mode and using a Micro USB ethernet connector to hardwire the tablet. I must say that I get less lag streaming games in 4K from my PC using the console vs the tablet. I just wish I could sideload Amazon Prime Instant Video and M-Go so I could stream whatever 4K video content they offer besides only Netflix and YouTube video in 4K. No studdering, no buffering, just good quality 4K video from this thing. I must say, this console could have a major impact over how games could be delivered in the future. No latency at all except 1st person shooters being streamed via Grid. This is the best device I've bought in a long time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What happens when you side load Amazon video and M-Go? I was able to side load a bunch of apps (including M-go but didn't run it yet) from my rooted samsung Note 2014 by backing up my apps with Titanium to the micro sd. I then moved the micro sd to the Shield TV and used ES File Explorer to auto open some of the zips that contained the APK and installed from there. From my memory, since I'm not at home to check what else I side loaded, I have the following working so far:
Chrome Browser
Dolphin Browser
Dropbox
Google Drive
Popcorn
Showbox
Helium
Facebook
Hulu Plus
Photo Circle
Speedtest
Ppsspp
And jut tested m-go
I'll add that when I first set up the Pro yesterday on a wired connection, it had all sorts of problems -- including not being able to download the update. Had to go wireless to get the update, but by that point it was acting so strange I did a full factory reset right after. (1.0 seemed quite buggy, but 1.2 feels fantastic so far. HUGE strides!). Haven't had problems since.
kgersen said:
The Shield is like any tablet or smartphone. There is nothing "special" to set up in the router for it
It's just highly recommended to use a wired connection for the Shield but have wifi configured too because they're known bugs with current firmware when the network isn't wifi. So sometimes you need to switch to wifi to do some stuff then back to wired for optimal performance. They'll fix this later I guess.
ps: go there : https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/159/ instead of XDA, you'll find official NVidia reps. XDA is ignoring the Shield Android TV so let's us leave.
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Click to collapse
The only problem I have with the GeForce forum is there is no way to be notified if you get a reply from anyone. Is there any work around for this?
lartomar2002 said:
The only problem I have with the GeForce forum is there is no way to be notified if you get a reply from anyone. Is there any work around for this?
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Click to collapse
not that I know of. The NVidia forum software is very old and bad, everyone agree on that.
I use Feedly and a RSS subscription to monitor the GeForce forum, it's a bit easier.
I have Amazon Prime Video sideloaded, and it works great. Unfortunately, I think a different version utilizes UHD video because I haven't been able to find any 4K content. Netflix and YouTube have some 4K content, and I've been able to stream some games in 4K, but until the UHD content providers start releasing their content to more devices instead of them signing exclusivity contracts (Samsung) to help them offset the royalties on the H.265 content, which is quadruple what H.264 was, I think most people will be limited on 4K content. Sucks.....

what you think about your shield?

just bought 50 inch 4k lcd tv, brand is tcl
it plays anything i tried so far (with exception of dts audio, but this is easy to convert with avidemux)
the thing is - smart tv functions is pure [email protected]
around 1 minute to start, 10 seconds to open youtube, and 30 seconds of buffering
what is most annoying is just 360-480p video with no settings to change that
so i need to buy some android box that will:
play all 1080p media smoothly
play 1080p youtube videos
run skype with external camera
allow me to run some games etc.
there is plenty of solutions but shield seems to combine decent specs, good design and reasonable price
can anyone confirm that it will work ok with external webcam (both video and microphone?)
PLEASE DELETE THIS POST... I believe the OP was complaining about the functionality in his TV.. Not the Shield
I have no issues whatsoever playing any 1080p videos from the net or from my home network.
I'm guessing you are running wireless and / or have a slow internet connection. Try putting a 1080p video on a usb stick or memory card and playing it from there.
I'm running wired gigabit and have a 100Mbs Internet speed and this box really shines, even with 1080p Game streaming through their service.
my only issues with the Shield TV are:
* It only comes with a North America-spec power adapter, with a proprietary device-side connector. I think you can change the power pins, but it only comes with an american one in the box (not really an issue if you live in north america)
* The controller is a bit rubbish
It's very fast, and it plays all the media I throw at it through Plex, although with some of the high bitrate stuff, it complains about low connection over wireless - it doesn't seem to connect via 802.11ac all the time.
The games are just your standard Android fare. Games & apps can be installed from the Play Store website if they don't show up on the built-in one. Be aware though; some of them say that they work on AndroidTV but don't actually do any such thing.
I love mine, I got it to replace an old acer revo which was running openelec.
The apps I use the most are Kodi (all in one media streaming app), Retroarch (an app which allows you to play various emulators), Youtube, Twitch, iPlayer, and Gamestream. I havent tried the subscription based game stream option that Nvidia offer as I have the majority of the games which they offer. I do use the option which allows me to stream games from my pc. This runs superbly at 1080p over homeplugs.
The device is very quiet and very fast. I also like having a headphone socket on the remote and joypad.
I would like to see some more UK based media apps on the store (4OD, 5 on demand, Sky), my Xbox One is better for this. Kodi does have addons to get around the lack of this.
The google play store does seem a bit limited for android tv at the moment.
I did have to root mine to enable me to write to the sdcard (for Retroarch).
I would highly recommend one if you want to use Kodi or Emulators.
DrSeahorse said:
I would highly recommend one if you want to use [...] Emulators.
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I agree with this. In fact, I now remember this was my major reason for buying it. It emulates pretty much anything up to and including the Sega Dreamcast, but once again.. it has a pretty rubbish controller. However, it does support the XBox 360 pad if you have the wireless adapter for it, so that's an improvement, and I'm pretty sure it'll natively support any controller that Linux does - so all your USB adapters for your NES or PSX or whatever controller will work.
Gotta throw my opinion in since I've only had it for about 2 weeks now...
Its fast, and I must much better interface than what i was expecting. I bought it for primarily playing PC games from my computer and it does so without any problems at all. It even will pass through full surround sound from the games (which I was NOT expecting).
I also use KODI more than anything and it works great. I do have some sound sync issues here and there and it can be annoying to remedy. But, if you put the time in and use KODI's audio delay correctly you can fix it. (the Wiki will say to use the Shield's built in HDMI-Audio Sync feature, but it doesn't have an overlay for when you are setting the delay. So you basically have to base it entirely off the bouncing ball which doesn't help at all when you are trying to sync voices to the actors mouths. Plus, I found that 0ms works great for all audio syncing through shield (netflix, youtube, etc) and the KODI sync lets me sync JUST KODI.
I only paid $150 for mine since I got in on the controller bundle and they never sent me the controller so I got the $50 refunded. I still would recommend it at $200 though. Once the MM update comes out it will be much better for customizing the start screen.
DO IT is my short answer.
As a media player, about the only thing it lacks is Amazon Prime, though there is a workaround and rumors of official support later. I've been able to play high bitrate rips, Hi10p video, a 1440p VHS 10-bit rip, and everything else with no issues over 802.11ac. It's by far the best player I've seen for SlingTV, also.
Anything that doesn't work natively, you can just cast it to the Shield TV and you're in business (HBO Go, specifically, because Comcast is stupid).
Games work well enough as long as they have controller support. Most of the higher-end and big developer games do. There's Nvidia game stream you can test for 3 months, but I don't have any use for it, honestly. I think you can also stream games from a PC with an nVidia GPU, but I have AMD.
Basically they've built the best video player on the market, hands down. The next best thing is a full-blown HTPC, but the price and lack of a simplified UI (IMO) puts the Shield on top, again.

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