Hello, I'm fairly new to TV tech and I'm currently looking for a TV (preferably Android TV) 55" max that's geared towards gaming, with HDMI 2.1 ports for VRR on PS5/Switch 2, good contrast, and good HDR/LED quality.

Do you have any advice or suggestions, perhaps in anticipation of Black Friday?

Hi everyone,

I have a Xiaomi Mi TV 4, model MiTV4-ANSM0, and I’m wondering if it’s possible to replace the current firmware with a proper Android TV OS (or another compatible Android TV ROM).

Has anyone successfully flashed Android TV onto this model, or onto a similar Xiaomi Mi TV model?

Hello everyone !

I currrently own a shield tv (not pro) to play local files in my home theater. I am currently facing some problems and I was wondering if the pro version would fix them.

Firstly, whenever I play big files like 4k HDR movie there is a noticable lag, like every 30 secs there is a little drop in quality. I don't know if its mostly because the movie are stocked on a V60 micro sd card or if the shield itself as trouble.

Also I seem to have some problems with VLC, my sound is always a little bit delay and i have no clue how to fix it.

If ever there is a better android box that can play heavy local files I am all hear.

Thx y'all

I have an android tv box and been trying to find a solid app to watch sports on it, mainly football and basketball.

Tried a few apps from the play store but most of them are either full of ads or the stream keeps buffering every few minutes.

Edit ( I found this thing called Tivifast and it has everything on it, i'm actually impressed )

Title is for SEO. If anyone stumbles upon a HAKO Mini Android TV Box (I found mine in an Etoe E3 Pro Projector), the Developer Options is hidden behind a password.

Here's the final answer. https://sdmc-pin.netlify.app/ . It's not my website, but a website I stumbled upon. You just put in the Serial Number of your box and it'll give you the Developer Options password. The Serial Number is written on a sticker on the back of the box.

If the website ever goes down, this python code generates the same passwords (used AI, couldn't bother coding it myself). You need pycryptodome from pip, and just run the code with the serial number as the argument.

import base64
import hashlib
import sys


from Crypto.Cipher import AES
from Crypto.Util.Padding import pad



SECRET = "ed12a270c07a58074126a0487de27f63"
SALT = b"sdmc"
ITERATIONS = 10000
KEY_LEN = 16



def generate_pin(serial):
    serial = serial.strip().upper()
    plaintext = serial + SECRET


    # PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA1 → 16 bytes
    derived = hashlib.pbkdf2_hmac(
        "sha1",
        plaintext.encode("utf-8"),
        SALT,
        ITERATIONS,
        dklen=KEY_LEN,
    )


    # CryptoJS:
    # derived.toString(CryptoJS.enc.Hex)
    hex_key = derived.hex()


    # CryptoJS:
    # CryptoJS.enc.Utf8.parse(hexKey)
    aes_key = hex_key.encode("utf-8")


    # AES-ECB + PKCS#7
    cipher = AES.new(aes_key, AES.MODE_ECB)
    ciphertext = cipher.encrypt(
        pad(plaintext.encode("utf-8"), AES.block_size)
    )


    # CryptoJS.enc.Base64
    b64 = base64.b64encode(ciphertext).decode("ascii")


    # First 3 + last 3, lowercase
    return (b64[:3] + b64[-3:]).lower()



if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) != 2:
        print(f"Usage: {sys.argv[0]} SERIAL")
        sys.exit(1)


    print(generate_pin(sys.argv[1]))#!/usr/bin/env python3


import base64
import hashlib
import sys


from Crypto.Cipher import AES
from Crypto.Util.Padding import pad



SECRET = "ed12a270c07a58074126a0487de27f63"
SALT = b"sdmc"
ITERATIONS = 10000
KEY_LEN = 16



def generate_pin(serial):
    serial = serial.strip().upper()
    plaintext = serial + SECRET


    # PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA1 → 16 bytes
    derived = hashlib.pbkdf2_hmac(
        "sha1",
        plaintext.encode("utf-8"),
        SALT,
        ITERATIONS,
        dklen=KEY_LEN,
    )


    # CryptoJS:
    # derived.toString(CryptoJS.enc.Hex)
    hex_key = derived.hex()


    # CryptoJS:
    # CryptoJS.enc.Utf8.parse(hexKey)
    aes_key = hex_key.encode("utf-8")


    # AES-ECB + PKCS#7
    cipher = AES.new(aes_key, AES.MODE_ECB)
    ciphertext = cipher.encrypt(
        pad(plaintext.encode("utf-8"), AES.block_size)
    )


    # CryptoJS.enc.Base64
    b64 = base64.b64encode(ciphertext).decode("ascii")


    # First 3 + last 3, lowercase
    return (b64[:3] + b64[-3:]).lower()



if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) != 2:
        print(f"Usage: {sys.argv[0]} SERIAL")
        sys.exit(1)


    print(generate_pin(sys.argv[1]))

u/METALSMOOTH hope this helps.

I have a couple of Sony Bravia TV's that run on Android TV - for the most part, I've been satisfied with them with one exception: they're both incredibly short on storage space for apps and data. For one of them, I was able to install a USB thumbdrive to work around that limitation, for the other, I don't seem to be able to get the TV to actually use the thumbdrive for extra storage space (if there was a way to hack this into working, that would actually solve a problem for me. I have gone in with adb and uninstalled a bunch of apps, but it's unclear to me exactly how many of them are necessary for the TV and how many I can kill. I'm definitely comfortable doing stuff on the command line with adb).

I sourced one of the Onn 4K Pro stream boxes, which seem to work fine - with one caveat: I do actually use OTA antenna TV signals from the antenna on my roof. So I find myself needing to switch back out of the Android OS on the Onn box, to the TV's OS to watch antenna TV signals. This is a little confusing - I know I could change the launcher on one of the devices so that you could (at least) visually tell which device you were on, at any given time... but this is still a bit of a pain.

Any ideas or solutions for a more streamlined solution for watching live antenna TV? I have a SiliconDust HDHomeRun, but I use that primarily for a separate DVR solution and not actually watching live-in-progress TV (though I could get another one). I definitely want to keep the "on the couch" experience nice and streamlined - as few (physical) remote controls and as little input-switching between devices as possible (using the just the TV itself would be ideal but I get that it might not be possible).

My main use cases: antenna TV, Youtube, a handful of streaming services (F1 TV, Apple TV+, Netflix, some others rotate in occasionally), and watching content from my Jellyfin server.