Can we just get something with Android ON TV instead of Android TV?

[AlohaOe]

Hi everyone, long time fan first time poster.

 

Here's my rant: I'm sick of dealing with Android TV like I'm sick of all dark patterns of platform X owned by someone else that does only what ~"they"~ want based on their incentives and lobbying, and don't let you do what you want.

 

I want to figure out if we can buy or build some kind of PC to which we can easily install FULL BLOWN HONEST TO GOD TABLET ANDROID, and plug it into the network and into our TV,

and connect it to our NAS,

and do steam in home streaming

and remote desktop and bring up a powerpoint

and plug in a webcam so we can VoIP on our TV on any android VoIP app we want

and run teamviewer on android

and run emulators

and have a proper browser like brave or firefox

and install any app we goddam please, from FDroid if we want to

etc..

 

So what are our options for this box? I've tried and I don't want to deal any more with stuff like buying an Nvidia Shield TV and then doing ADB fastboot brain surgery and reverts and tests of hacked together nightly roms that are full of quirks if the process doesn't soft or hard brick your device in the first place.

 

But like everyone, I do want cheap 4K HDR h.265 etc hardware, like the shield has. Are there any (chinese) boxes for this? Or maybe can we build a PC with an android emulator?

 

There is logically, technically, literally, nothing UX wise you can do on Android TV that you can't do as easily on Full Android (+ a TV launcher if you really like that crippled row layout). Android on TV contains and is better than Android TV.

 

Thank you and good night

[duncannah]

Remix OS, perhaps?

[AlohaOe]

Yeah but what hardware do we put in on? When you buy a proprietary device made for android TV, you have to fight the system to get Remix OS on it. And then maybe stuff won't work. And then you gotta update it. I'm hoping for an easier process, more in the spirit of how you'd install ubuntu on any PC.

 

Or if any vendor would just sell us a box that comes with android Oreo or Pie and a pre-rooted developer switch like cyanogenmod had, then I'd pay $300 for that bad boi easy even if it was worth $150

[Enderman]

Why not just plug a regular windows PC into your TV...?

You know TVs are literally just big monitors right?

[AlohaOe]

9 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Why not just plug a regular windows PC into your TV...?

You know TVs are literally just big monitors right?

Because I want Android because I need an entertainment streaming box and the associated UX, not a workstation. 

Plus also for the same reason why I have a NAS, and a router, and a seedbox, and now I want a PLEX box et al, and not just one single PC for everything.

 

And we all have old hardware that we put to good use. But I'm not sure how to use it for 4K HDR stuff

[circeseye]

44 minutes ago, AlohaOe said:

Because I want Android because I need an entertainment streaming box and the associated UX, not a workstation. 

Plus also for the same reason why I have a NAS, and a router, and a seedbox, and now I want a PLEX box et al, and not just one single PC for everything.

 

And we all have old hardware that we put to good use. But I'm not sure how to use it for 4K HDR stuff

where do you get workstation from using a comp?

i would suggest a htpc style build...you can build them cheaply and use what ever os you want...android/ linux/windows/chrome

and to do 4k hdr 60htz you just need a video card with hdmi 2.0 on it....doesnt even have to be a very powerful/expensive card as long as its just for streaming and such...even some onboard cpu with gpus can do 4k just fine streaming

[AlohaOe]

The choice of videocard needs more research. If you have a very old videocard it might not work, but also new ones apparently might not work: https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread/10219-video-card-for-hevc-265-10bit/

 

About Android on PC: apparently there's this x86 AOSP thing: http://www.android-x86.org/ Need to find out how well it works (ie if all (relevant) features work), if it can use google services and the play store (because AOSP doesn't have it and phone ROMs need to have those integrated and sometimes it's hard afaik).

 

It's also important to note that Arm is more power efficient and more specialized hardware than general x86 PC hardware. That's why the shield TV is more or less king even with its old-ish or unimpressive specs.

 

But I guess if nobody's selling/recommending ARM boxes, then yeah the other option is to find/build nice small PC boxes with android-x86 or something like that.. Just hope there's a way with minimal headaches.