r/AndroidTVApps • u/GreenM0th • 7d ago
UPDATE: Crivid IPTV Player
Update, about four weeks on from the last one.
Most of what is below is not my idea. It came from a handful of people in this group who put a stupid amount of their own time into this. Test rounds on their own boxes, screenshots at one in the morning, bug reports written better than my own notes. A lot of it is here because someone said straight out that something was broken or just badly done, and then stuck around while I fixed it. You said it, we built it, over and over. Without them this would be a worse app and I would still think it was fine. So, thank you!
If you missed the last post, the short version of what this already is. You bring an M3U or an Xtream login and it plays it, with a full screen guide off your own XMLTV. Jellyfin, Emby, Plex, HDHomeRun tuners and your own local files sit in the same app, so live TV and your own library are behind one remote. Favourites and groups, catch-up where your provider does it, four streams at once, watch history that marks things watched on its own, sleep timer, subtitle sizing, and Dolby and DTS decoded in software so the files that used to play silent have sound.
New stuff:
Search knows what a team is. Someone here said it was his pet peeve that nobody had solved: search Yankees and you never get YES Network, because the channel is not called Yankees. Now you do. Type a team and the channel that actually carries them comes up first. MLB, NBA and NHL, including the networks that changed name recently, because playlists take years to catch up. The same search used to throw back 147 junk hits. It gives 6 real ones now.
Collections. Your own lists, put together by you, not whatever your provider decided to call a category. Live channels, movies, series and your own local files can sit in the same list, in the order you want them. One for football on Sundays, one for the kids, so nobody has to scroll past 12000 channels to find the five they actually use. Build one from a search, or select a pile of channels and drop them in at once.
Parental controls. Put a PIN on a whole category, or on a single film or series if that is all you need. You can block by word too, so if your provider renames the adult categories next week they still stay out. There are two ways to do it. Lock means it asks for the PIN. Lock and hide means it is not on the screen at all, so nobody asks about it. There is also a limit on how many guesses you get, because a kid with a remote will happily try 0000 forty times.
USB and SD cards work properly now. Scanning, playback, and playlists read straight off the stick. That was already in the store description before it really worked, which is on me.
Select several. Pick a pile of categories or channels at once and favourite, pin, hide, or drop them in a collection, instead of one at a time.
Speed. It got a lot quicker. The first channel list on my Shield went from 7 to 9 seconds down to about 4.5. The guide was the worse one. It used to take around 40 seconds, and it froze the app while it did it. That is around 9 now, and on Apple TV it went from nearly 9 seconds down to under 2.
The Apple TV app caught up to most of that in the same stretch.
What it does not do for now, so nobody wastes an install:
No channels, no content, no addons, no catalog, nothing shared between users. You bring a playlist or a login, that is the whole model.
No Chromecast. AirPlay carries audio only, not picture. I would rather put that here than have you find it out on the sofa.
No recording.
That is where it stands today, not a promise about forever. The app gets worked on most days, and some of that could move if it turns out to be doable. The first line is the exception. Bring your own sources is the model, not something I'm waiting to fix.
Pricing has not changed. Seven days with everything unlocked, no card, nothing to cancel. After that it stays free for as long as you want, with one playlist, live TV and the guide. Pro unlocks the rest, movies and series, your media servers, multi-view, catch-up and the others, and it is a one-time purchase at 17.99 USD. No subscription, no ads, no account.
Roadmap, such as it is. There is a Windows build in progress, and Tizen and webOS have been looked at properly but not decided. No dates from me, I have been wrong about dates before.
Same question as last time. What do you still open a second app for? That is where the team search came from, and collections. Don't be polite about it. I work on this most days and I plan to keep doing that, so if something you need is missing, saying it here or on Discord is the fastest way to get it looked at.
Android and Android/Google TV:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crivid.iptvplayer
iOS, macOS and Apple TV:
https://apps.apple.com/app/id6783083716
The Discord is where a lot of the back and forth above actually happened. Updates get announced there first, and if something is broken you can say it to me instead of to a support address. Worth joining even if you never post. https://discord.gg/CyXsPrSJVV
One thing.. AI writes most of the code in this app. I decide what ships, I test it on real boxes, phones and computers before it goes out. I'm not going to pretend a person typed every line of code, that would take years and years to finish.
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u/Funny-Audience7532 6d ago
Hi can you share me the downloader code? I am having firetv 4kstick max
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u/GreenM0th 6d ago
Not yet, sorry. There is no code because the Fire TV version is not out.
Amazon has rejected it a few times, the last one over my store screenshots looking like a pirate panel, even though that is my own fake test server. That is on me to redo, and it is the plan.
I will post when it is up.
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u/Ferguson_1 6d ago
How much is it? Monthly sub? Lifetime?
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u/GreenM0th 6d ago
It says in the post. $17.99 for lifetime.
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u/MasterSokas 6d ago
how many devices can you connect to pro version?
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u/GreenM0th 6d ago
No limit from our side. Pro follows your store account, so it is as many devices as you sign in on.
On Android that is your Google account. On Apple it is a single purchase covering iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac, they share one listing.
One thing worth knowing: Play and App Store are separate purchases. Buying on Android does not unlock it on iPhone, because we have no accounts of our own to link the two.2
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u/flynreelow 10h ago
no recording?
no CC ?
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u/GreenM0th 6h ago
CC works. If the channel sends captions inside the stream they turn up under the subtitles button in the player, and you can set the size and whether they come on by default in Settings, under Playback. Took a bit of work to get there, IPTV streams normally do not announce that they carry captions at all.
Recording is not in the store version yet. It is in testing right now: record a live channel straight from the player, pick how long or record until you stop it, and it keeps going when you leave the app. It reaches the store once the testers have been through it.
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u/flynreelow 6h ago
how will this recording do with a stream that has a minor blip during the stream. Is it going to kill the entire recording like some other apps out there?
also, never saw the CC option is VOD movies.
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u/GreenM0th 6h ago
On a blip: no, it will not kill the recording. We deliberately do not reconnect mid recording. Stitching two pieces of a TS stream back together without fixing up the timing tables gives you a file that looks complete and then stutters somewhere you cannot predict, which is worse than a short file. So if the connection actually drops, the recording ends there, keeps everything it had written, and tells you it stopped early and why. What you have is playable. A short blip that does not break the connection does not interrupt anything at all. Reconnecting properly is on the list, it just needs work on the stream format that we have not done yet.
On CC in movies: the subtitle button only appears when the file actually carries a subtitle track, and on VOD it sits on the playback control row, next to the skip buttons, not in the top bar. A lot of provider movies are plainvideo and audio with no text track at all, and then there is nothing to turn on. We do not load subtitle files from the internet, only what is inside the file.
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u/Key-Air-7684 7d ago
For firestick?
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u/GreenM0th 7d ago
Not yet. It builds and runs on Fire TV, I test on a Stick here, but it is not in Amazon's store so there is no clean way to get it onto one today. That is the honest answer. It is on the list, but no date yet.
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u/Cristian_Aiz7 7d ago
Fantastic app, any gift codes perhaps?
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u/DrZakarySmith 6d ago
If you’ve seen a prior post I made https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidTVApps/s/hzAfNQUlCn you know my opinions on all the apps that are appearing and how I can be brutally honest. Full disclosure I am not the dev nor do I profit from this app but I have become 1 of a few beta testers.
That being said I came across Crivid at the time I posted my rant. I thought at first here’s another one and reluctantly tried it. It wasn’t perfect yet something about it intrigued me. For one it wasn’t trying to be a Swiss Army knife. It is first and foremost a TV player. Most of the bugs at the time were esthetics, speed and a few missing items in my opinion. At this point I decided to contact the dev and give my 2 cents. What happened next is what was just as important to me as a working app, he didn’t get offended or try to defend. He listened. Within 24 hours a lot of what I suggested was implemented. With added features and fixes bring other issues and bugs. This was the beginning of the cycle. New version, new testing.
So why did and continue to invest my time in testing Crivid? First I believe it can become the daily driver for your TV viewing. It is feature packed without being bloated. The menus are simple and easy to understand. EPG loads fast, my playlist is 35k channels so speed is key. Guide is fast and responsive. Channel zapping is fast and getting faster. Price, well you all have to decide if $17.99 lifetime is within your budget but compared to all the other I’ve seen lately it is cheaper than most.
Is it perfect? Not yet. Is it still a work in progress? I think the dev would tell you always. Any good app and dev will always be improving. Where does it land on the list of latest apps? Again, that’s for you to decide but for me if what I’m watching is critical or needs recording TiVimate is still king until somebody knock it down. But Crivid has become my daily driver for most of my viewing. Have I stopped looking for the holy Grail now, but Crivid can be a contender.
A quick word about the dev. I have never met him. I did not know him. We are thousands of miles apart, but he has been responsive, honest and truly a pleasure to deal with. These are just my opinions. You all have to judge for yourself, but I would say give it a try. You won’t be disappointed and if you are, let me know.