I’ve had the best success with the Onn devices for low cost android devices.
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another vote for the onn streamer (not the stick) i don't like the firestick interface and i think the onn has the best remote among the android devices. and it's only $20.
I'm very happy with the Chrome Cast with Google TV at a cost of about $50 for the older 4K version. There is a new version that costs about $30 for HD (1080).
I tried the Amazon Fire Stick and found the favoritism to Prime Video as well as the limits of what Android apps can be loaded very annoying and returned it.
Eric one of the developers said he has had great success with the Onn so I would go with his recommendation.
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The TiVo Stream 4k Android TV device is nice because it has a number pad. If you use channel numbers to change channels, it's worth considering. Its a pretty good device for basic streaming.
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We had mostly Roku and it worked great. Also had an Apple TV, but hated the remote.
Have now switch all TVs to Firestick - mostly the Max.
Love Channels with it.
We have the VERY SAME REMOTE on every tv. No picking source. No figuring out which remote.
HAPPY WIFE - HAPPY LIFE.
I have a TiVo stream. It worked fine for awhile, but now the streaming stick constantly crashes when using the channels DVR. I may just suck it up and buy another Apple TV. As others have said it’s far superior to any other streamer.
Chromecasts have worked well for us. Wait for Google's new product announcements Oct 6.
I like my Onn's also BUT it lacks Volume Leveling and Speech Enhancement.
My Firestick 4K's have both of these.
And IF you use Channels DVR's m3u capability to feed Tivimate for Multi-View during football season,
that Volume Leveling is almost a must as the volume level varies quite a bit on Networks.
Thanks to the developers for that m3u capability.
Avoid the TiVo Stream at all costs. We thought they looked great on paper, but they are a train wreck. Horrible interface. Yes, you can also use the main Android interface, but the TiVo interface keeps coming back even after you disable it. And we used to be able to sync more than one of their remotes to it, but that quit working. Tech support is virtually nonexistent, and TiVo is rumored to be abandoning this product. We ended up switching to Fire TV Sticks, and we haven't looked back.
TBH, we are weighing whether to keep our Channels DVR server, as Fire TV has a good Live TV interface that works with services like Sling, Hulu + Live TV, and YouTube TV. So the experience is somewhat similar without needing a separate server.
I've heard good things about the ONN streaming devices too, they have an Android streaming box for like $20. It's a loss leader for them in hopes you buy content from Vudu or whoever.
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This has not been my experience.
That's a shame. The Fire line of devices are simply poor underpowered devices used to shove Amazon content down your experience ...
The "Live" experience with Fire (and Google) devices is based upon a corporate-held whitelist. Regardless of whether an app/ecosystem properly registers with the TIF, the platform can still exclude compliant apps.
While they may have advocates, I have personal qualms with Walmart devices in my home.
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Ive used ONN Box, TIVO Stream, ATV4K and a couple different Firesticks and TVs. Of the android boxes the ONN Box is my favorite with the Tivo being second. Neither approaches the ATV4K but if I hadn't received it as a present, I wouldn't have paid that much extra for it. I hate the Firesticks, other people on here must know how to get more out of it than I can because it seems to have some real support on here. My wife liked the TIVO stream because of the numeric keypad on the remote. I've always had some minor issues with the android boxes, doesn't usually bother me much...
The Onn does a few things that GoogleTV and Firestick doesn’t. The voice search will return results from your Channels DVR Library. It shows a line of live Channels DVR TV shows from the Home Screen. It will also power up to the Channels DVR App, meaning you can turn your TV off at night and it will power up to that same channel in the morning like a traditional TV.
Android has PIP and most of the features you post above for Apple TV .. The developers have done a great job supporting Android based devices (FireTV and AndroidTV) ... The OP did say cost-effective.
I thought it would be helpful to share. I bought Google TV/Chromecast, Onn, and Firestick, trying to find the best functionality for my usage. Maybe the next guy won’t have to buy 3 or 4 devices to learn what each does. In the end the ATV was the best for my needs. That won’t be the case for everyone.
I’m curious about the PIP for Android. I read an article saying Android was working on PIP for the near future, but it wasn’t available yet.
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PIP is available for android I use it on my FireTV devices ... also a great feature they worked on and made excellent progress is being able to use HLS for low storage devices where you can set on the server a 4 hour buffer.
It's good to know the PIP works on Android. I had to try it. The Google TV/Chromecast was my only device that didn't support it. That functionality really does make the Onn a great streamer at that price.
Are you talking about chaning the home streaming quality off of "original quality" to force the stream to the sever?
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You need the latest BETA
Under Settings-DEBUG-Always use HLS turn to on.
Then on the web-interface ...
That's a great feature, and doesn't tax the server with decoding. Before deciding to go with ATV units, I spent $50 adding memory to a Google TV device. It worked, but it introduced a small delay/pause occasionally.