What apps do you personally use on your android box? I use a racked version of spotify for adfree streaming, and stremio with some plugins for all tvshows. I used Kodi in the past but it tended to crap out on the box (its a mibox 4K). I would love to get some more apps for pirating content. Local content is usually a hard find.
Not necessarily a “piracy” app, but SmartTube is the first app I sideload on an Android TV. It’s a generally better YouTube app, but it’s ad/sponsorship/intro skipping is 💯!
And I swear it’s updated every other day.
Kodi 100% but I am running it on a RaspPi 4 and on an orange pi 5.
Kodi on my Android TV box, I couldn’t use extensions on stremio for some reason (or I didn’t try hard enough). It’s still there and when I try to find a stream for any movie, it just returns blank.
You need to setup the addons on your phone first. Then when logged into the same account on the TV app, click sync addons.
I don’t really care about pirating live TV, so Plex (because it’s built into my Nvidia Shield TV) and Kodi (because some videos just play better in Kodi) with an attached 12TB drive that I load up from my computer with Radarr, Sonarr, and SABnzbd. I have an antenna for local content recording with Plex on my Nvidia Shield TV via an hdhomerun.
I used to use Radarr, Sonarr, NZB 360, and Jellyfin from my PC. But I recently completely replaced it with a 4k Chromecast w/ Google TV, with Stremio + Torrentio + Real Debrid and I haven’t looked back. Especially with the amount of electricity I’ve saved from not having my desktop PC on all the time. I think the RD subscription works out cheaper than my old electric bill anyway 😁
You can put CloudStream 3 on your box, with some tweaks. I also use S-Tube for Youtube
Stremio + Torrentio + RealDebrid.
Do you use a VPN on the Android box or does your router handle that?
Yes I do to be extra careful and i have the vpn already, but I’ve heard you don’t really need one if you use Real Debrid. Plus a VPN is an extra cost.
I’d never thought of having an “android box”. My HTPC (the device plugged in to the big tv) just runs ubuntu.
We use VLC to play media from my home server via upnp.
We use a browser to watch youtube stuff from an indivious instance running on my home server.
I’ll admit the wife approval factor on this is rock bottom, but from my end it was just the easiest solution but has continued to “just work” for a long time now.
I used to run OSMC and had Kodi and everything on there but honestly it was more trouble than it was worth. Kodi and it’s piracy addons are pretty buggy in most cases and fail to work reliably for very long. Since then I’ve switched back to using Plex but soon I may have to switch again to Jellyfin.
I use the Plex client apps for pretty much everything, streamed from a NAS.