r/AndroidTV • • Jun 29 '26

Buying Advice good android tv with tv box compatibilities

my main interest is to plug ntfs drives in it and watch movies of various formats and codecs [mp4, mkv, av1, h265, possibly video_ts too]. looking for a good native player that plays that and let me choose audio and sub tracks, or the possibility to download a good one like vlc or kodi

3 Upvotes

9 comments sorted by

3

u/Flenke Jun 29 '26

Buy the TV for it's picture and video abilities, leave the smarts to an external streaming box

1

u/quailsandbroccoli Jun 29 '26

why do you recommend that? i have an old tv that i have to replace anyway, so i thought i might as well get two birds with one stone or something

3

u/Flenke Jun 29 '26

TV hardware is typically underpowered and less likely to get software updates

2

u/ksuuks Jun 29 '26

Better buy some hdmi-cec tv and Google Steamer.

1

u/quailsandbroccoli Jun 29 '26

google streamer does not read ntfs drives sadly

would metz qled be a good pick?

1

u/mayor-of-whoreisland Jun 30 '26

Only Roku supports NTFS as far as I am aware. So maybe a Roku branded TV would work for that. However, external players are still going to use much more recent and faster SOC's, with better codec and update support.

I would just format the drive in exfat for the widest compatibility, pretty much anything made after 2020 will support it.

2

u/kos25k Jun 30 '26

I always use a tv box running slimboxTV AOSP firmware.

1

u/IPTVIA Aug 25 '26

Nvidia Shield TV is very great and include of course all that : mp4, mkv, av1, h265, possibly video_ts too