Miniclient+OTA - firestick looks better than Nvidia Shield?

[Telecore]

After a few weeks of testing the Amazon Fire Stick 4K (cost = $25 on Prime Day), I am coming to the conclusion that for TV viewing with SageTV and streaming of Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, that it is my preferred all-in-on extender/streaming device vs. the Nvidia Shield. While both are not 100% perfect compared to the HD300, the fire stick does not appear to have some of the issues such as a-v syncing while using the Miniclient+Exoplayer. Also the picture quality viewed on 4K LG OLED appears better than the Nvidia Shield and WiFi performance is so good that it negates the Shield's advantage of wired gigabit (I should mention that I have a good WiFi setup in my house). The remote even works well with TV's and receivers and the price, which is often discounted from it's normal $50 to $25 is way cheaper. At this point I am seriously considering retiring my HD300's, and possibly the Nvidia Shields in favor of using a Fire Stick 4K at each location. Has anyone else tried an HD300, Nvidia Shield and Fire Stick 4K and noticed this also?

[technazz]

Originally Posted by Telecore

After a few weeks of testing the Amazon Fire Stick 4K (cost = $25 on Prime Day), I am coming to the conclusion that for TV viewing with SageTV and streaming of Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, that it is my preferred all-in-on extender/streaming device vs. the Nvidia Shield. While both are not 100% perfect compared to the HD300, the fire stick does not appear to have some of the issues such as a-v syncing while using the Miniclient+Exoplayer. Also the picture quality viewed on 4K LG OLED appears better than the Nvidia Shield and WiFi performance is so good that it negates the Shield's advantage of wired gigabit (I should mention that I have a good WiFi setup in my house). The remote even works well with TV's and receivers and the price, which is often discounted from it's normal $50 to $25 is way cheaper. At this point I am seriously considering retiring my HD300's, and possibly the Nvidia Shields in favor of using a Fire Stick 4K at each location. Has anyone else tried an HD300, Nvidia Shield and Fire Stick 4K and noticed this also?

I have replaced all my HD200 and HD300's with wired shields a few years ago. I think the wired is the key. Plus it is AndroidTV which is a plus over any other 'Android' Box. As of now the Shields seem to be the best option.

Chris

[wayner]

I haven't tried a Shield but I still prefer the SageTV extenders due to more reliability for MPEG-2 files. I always had issues getting MPEG-2 files to playback on a MiBox. Perhaps that is only an issue with MiBoxes but there seems to be regular problems with folks with MPEG-2 files and the Android TV client.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by wayner

I haven't tried a Shield but I still prefer the SageTV extenders due to more reliability for MPEG-2 files. I always had issues getting MPEG-2 files to playback on a MiBox. Perhaps that is only an issue with MiBoxes but there seems to be regular problems with folks with MPEG-2 files and the Android TV client.

Agree. My family still records a lot of OTA via HDHRs and I need to be able to play native MPEG-2 well. The Fire stick can play them but it's a little glitchy and on some of my TVs (only some of them), oddly adds black bars at the top and bottom, squeezing the picture down. I'm not tech-savvy enough to track down the reasons and try to remedy it, so I'm sticking with HD300s.

[Telecore]

I had MPEG-2 issues too until I switched to using a HDHR quatro via OpenDCT, (not through the native HDHR drivers). With OpenDCT and the FFMPEG consumer (no transcoding) the OTA streams get "cleaned" so that they play well with Android TV. If you already have an HDHR tuner, you can modify your SageTV setup to use OpenDCT to get this benefit. It is actually very easy and low risk, but I definitely understand not wanting to change things up.

[phelme]

I've been trying out the MiniClient on my Firestick 4K and it generally works well. But I have problems with FF & RR: when FF-ing, it'll go forward and then often jump back by itself the same amount, so I'm playing like a hop scotch game with the remote buttons trying to get the skipped amount to "stick." I have the same problem when trying to use the MiniClient on my Sony (Android) TV. I'm not entirely sure, but it may be related to the content type, i.e. MPEG, TS or MKV.

Also, the text graphics seem to be glitchy and sometimes have a shimmering effect.

( but I really appreciate all the work stuckless went to to create this!! )

[rhfdc]

I've got a basic Firestick and have a Firestick 4k on order. I'd appreciate a little more detail.
How do you get SageTV onto your Firestick? Will it work on the basic model?
How do you handle the need for more storage on either model?
Has anyone tried hooking up an external HD or SSD to either model?
Has anyone tried hooking up an external (wireless) keyboard to either model?

I'll probably try hooking the current Firestick up through a USB bridge with a Logitech wireless dongle and either a big honking thumbdrive or an external HD.
I'll report back on any success.

Thanks for any advice.

[Telecore]

Originally Posted by rhfdc

I've got a basic Firestick and have a Firestick 4k on order. I'd appreciate a little more detail.
How do you get SageTV onto your Firestick? Will it work on the basic model?
How do you handle the need for more storage on either model?
Has anyone tried hooking up an external HD or SSD to either model?
Has anyone tried hooking up an external (wireless) keyboard to either model?

The SageTV miniclient is available through the app store - you can search for it and download it - should work on the basic model but I only have 4K fire sticks
Have not attached anything to the Firestick except a Flirc IR receiver, briefly
The Firestick should have enough memory to run the client app - to be clear, the client app requires a server on the network, usually a PC with Windows or Linux, running SageTV as a server with OTA or CATV tuners

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by rhfdc

I've got a basic Firestick and have a Firestick 4k on order. I'd appreciate a little more detail.
How do you get SageTV onto your Firestick? Will it work on the basic model?
How do you handle the need for more storage on either model?
Has anyone tried hooking up an external HD or SSD to either model?
Has anyone tried hooking up an external (wireless) keyboard to either model?

I'll probably try hooking the current Firestick up through a USB bridge with a Logitech wireless dongle and either a big honking thumbdrive or an external HD.
I'll report back on any success.

Thanks for any advice.

What would you do with external storage connected to the firetv stock? I don’t think the Sage MiniClients would be able to do anything with external storage - they just talk to a Sage server running on a separate PC, nothing else.

[wayner]

Agreed - I don't know why you would try to hook up an external storage device to a FireTV stick. You might want to attach a USB OTG cable to attach an ethernet to USB device if you want a wired connection.

For a keyboard you can use the FireTV phone app - but that is normally just needed when doing initial setup and entering passwords.

[VCRUser]

Originally Posted by wayner

For a keyboard you can use the FireTV phone app - but that is normally just needed when doing initial setup and entering passwords.

I use a bluetooth keyboard for keyboard navigation, which works better than the firestick emote for selecting, pausing, resuming, etc. My firestick works ok via wifi so long as have a strong signal: we used a switch to add another wireless router we had lying around in order to get a better signal to some parts of the house. Before then, I had problems with the firestick (not just with Miniclient but with other firestick apps), but none after that.