Android MiniClient for TV is Released to the Play Store

[RonBoyd]

I have a Blackberry Passport with OS 10 and installed it from Google Play with "Snap." It set up properly and seems to be working as expected. I can use it to start a recorded TV show on my TV (I suspect through the HD300). However, I have no controls through the app. I must control things with the HD300 remote so it is not quite as useful as one would hope... but it does work and that is a big plus.

When I try to watch on device>File Viewer I get a "This file contains an unsupported media format error." This is most likely a setup issue on the phone and should be corrected as soon as I get to it. I could not get the "Browser" option to work but it is quite common to have compatibility problems between Blackberry phones and the internal Browser... so not a concern.

Great work!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

I have a Blackberry Passport with OS 10 and installed it from Google Play with "Snap." It set up properly and seems to be working as expected. I can use it to start a recorded TV show on my TV (I suspect through the HD300). However, I have no controls through the app. I must control things with the HD300 remote so it is not quite as useful as one would hope... but it does work and that is a big plus.

When I try to watch on device>File Viewer I get a "This file contains an unsupported media format error." This is most likely a setup issue on the phone and should be corrected as soon as I get to it. I could not get the "Browser" option to work but it is quite common to have compatibility problems between Blackberry phones and the internal Browser... so not a concern.

Great work!

I'm actually a little confused by this post

This application, when it is running, will behave like an HD300 on your phone (if that's where you installed it). It's not a remote app. Are you sure you installed this app from the play store, or have you installed the old "Phoenix" app. From your comments, it sounds like you are running the old Phoenix app.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I'm actually a little confused by this post

This application, when it is running, will behave like an HD300 on your phone (if that's where you installed it). It's not a remote app. Are you sure you installed this app from the play store, or have you installed the old "Phoenix" app. From your comments, it sounds like you are running the old Phoenix app.

Oh! You are probably correct. I clicked on the Link to SageTV App (Android) at the bottom of your post. That gave me the name and I searched on "SageTV" at Google Play and that led me to Phoenix for SageTV which I assumed was the one I wanted. (There were only three others listed but were obviously not what I was looking for.)

In any event, what you described is exactly what I have been wishing for.

What name does it go by in Google Play?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

Oh! You are probably correct. I clicked on the Link to SageTV App (Android) at the bottom of your post. That gave me the name and I searched on "SageTV" at Google Play and that led me to Phoenix for SageTV which I assumed was the one I wanted. (There were only three others listed but were obviously not what I was looking for.)

In any event, what you described is exactly what I have been wishing for.

What name does it go by in Google Play?

I am still working on getting to the play store.... The first post in this thread has the link to the item in the play store, but, it's not active yet. Also the play store link in this post is for the TV version, and there will be a phone/tablet version posted to the play store later.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I am still working on getting to the play store.... The first post in this thread has the link to the item in the play store, but, it's not active yet. Also the play store link in this post is for the TV version, and there will be a phone/tablet version posted to the play store later.

Got it. Will cool my jets.

[stuckless]

FYI... I posted a new build... We'll see if google approves it, and if so, then it should also include support for more devices.

[harrijay]

It is showing compatible to the nexus 3 now and I have selected to install it. will see how it goes. thanks again

[reggie14]

It's compatible with my Shield, too!

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by stuckless

FYI... I posted a new build... We'll see if google approves it, and if so, then it should also include support for more devices.

Happy to mention that the app is discoverable though a Google Play search directly on the Shield TV. I used my voice to perform the search with no problems.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

So, it appears that my "app" is only compatible with 8 about ~12000 devices This is obviously not correct, but, Google doesn't actually tell me which features, etc, is causing the wide exclusion... so not it's basically up to me to play whack-a-mole with Google Play to see how I can get more devices included. Thanks Google... Job well done.

yeah, that is kinda silly, isn't it? I'm using a Galaxy S5 with TMobile and it's not showing up in a search. However, what's the name I would be searching for?

edit: just saw there isn't a mobile version yet.
waiting with excitement...

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

yeah, that is kinda silly, isn't it? I'm using a Galaxy S5 with TMobile and it's not showing up in a search. However, what's the name I would be searching for?

edit: just saw there isn't a mobile version yet.
waiting with excitement...

I will try to push out a Mobile version this weekend (try).

I did however play a great game of Whack-a-Mole with Google last night and after 4 whacks, I got 18 support devices. I'm sure if I kept playing, I could have gotten that number to go up, but I'm not much into game playing

[stuckless]

Today I spent a couple hours creating an setting up the Phone/Tablet project and building and signing the APK for it, and, then Google sent me a suspension letter because my project is "impersonating" something. In google fashion for these suspensions, resolving it is like playing whack-a-mole with google submissions. I've decided to abandon publishing it on the play store. I'll still publish to Bintray when there are updates and people can side load it, but, when this becomes not fun, and lots of work, then I can't be bothered to play

The "TV" project hasn't been suspended (yet) so, I'll continue to publish updates there.

And, I did submit to the Amazon App Store as well, and I'm waiting for approval there.

[DarkWolf77]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Today I spent a couple hours creating an setting up the Phone/Tablet project and building and signing the APK for it, and, then Google sent me a suspension letter because my project is "impersonating" something. In google fashion for these suspensions, resolving it is like playing whack-a-mole with google submissions. I've decided to abandon publishing it on the play store. I'll still publish to Bintray when there are updates and people can side load it, but, when this becomes not fun, and lots of work, then I can't be bothered to play

The "TV" project hasn't been suspended (yet) so, I'll continue to publish updates there.

And, I did submit to the Amazon App Store as well, and I'm waiting for approval there.

Ugh geez, sorry to hear that. I've got to say, you're a champ for having stayed at it so long. I've heard tons of horror stories from developers dealing with Google's policies... I don't blame you in the least for throwing in the towel. It really is amazing that there are any apps at all on the play store sometimes.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Today I spent a couple hours creating an setting up the Phone/Tablet project and building and signing the APK for it, and, then Google sent me a suspension letter because my project is "impersonating" something. In google fashion for these suspensions, resolving it is like playing whack-a-mole with google submissions. I've decided to abandon publishing it on the play store. I'll still publish to Bintray when there are updates and people can side load it, but, when this becomes not fun, and lots of work, then I can't be bothered to play

The "TV" project hasn't been suspended (yet) so, I'll continue to publish updates there.

And, I did submit to the Amazon App Store as well, and I'm waiting for approval there.

'Impersonating' something?' Bollacks. It wouldn't have anything to do with Google's ownership of Sage, would it? Are they having a crank over the fact the gui looks like an extender? It really bugs me when a company owns something, and then let's it go to rot. Thanks for the hard work, results and development of something new, something which Google hasn't given any Sage owners since their takeover...

[stuckless]

The good news is that the Amazon entry appears to be live. If you do install this on a FireTV, then REMOVE the previous version before installing this one.

[Tiki]

Do they think the phone app is impersonating the tv app?

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by stuckless

The good news is that the Amazon entry appears to be live. If you do install this on a FireTV, then REMOVE the previous version before installing this one.

I removed the old version to install the one in the store, but it says it's not compatible with my Fire TV stick.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Do they think the phone app is impersonating the tv app?

Likely, I think that is the case, and if Google actually provided ANY information about why the suspension happened, other than, "impersonation" and some links to their guidelines, I'd probably try to rectify this... but as it stands, there isn't enough in their email for anyone to really know (which is routine for google suspension emails), and the leave it up the developer to figure it out.... It's much like when you think you kids did something wrong, but you don't really know they did, so you ask "is there anything you'd like to tell me? Are you sure?", in hopes that confess to something you didn't know about

The suspension email could have been...
- We see you are using "SageTV" and you don't own "SageTV" trademark. Could you provide proof that you are allowed to use the SageTV trademark.

or

- We see that your app appears to impersonate, "SageTV MiniCient", also owned by you. We don't feel that you should be submitting two projects that are similar.

or it could be something totally unrelated... and I don't have the time or energy to jump through the hoops that I'd need to go through in order to figure this out.

Eventually, I think I'll just bump the phone to Android version 5, and just have a single APK. I was doing 2 projects because because I wanted to keep the Phone/Tablet version to 4.

Google allows for multiple APKs per project but when I tried that it wanted to nuke the TV version so, I opted for to create a second project.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I removed the old version to install the one in the store, but it says it's not compatible with my Fire TV stick.

Was the previous version RC5? I'm not sure why Amazon would not allow it... gotta love the App Stores... it amazes me that anyone produces apps (at least for fun)

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Was the previous version RC5? I'm not sure why Amazon would not allow it... gotta love the App Stores... it amazes me that anyone produces apps (at least for fun)

I agree. I'm amazed that anyone puts themselves through this hassle for free apps, but I really am grateful that you choose to be a masochist.

I probably should mention that RC2 was the last version that would successfully run on the Fire TV stick. The Fire TV devices are running Fire OS which I don't believe has any Android TV compatibility. Starting with RC3 I have been able to install, but not been able to run the miniclient most likely due to the Android TV requirement. I probably should have said something, but I presumed it was expected behavior.