this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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I basically gave up on finding a custom ROM for this TV so I'm looking for alternative TV apps to at least change the default app. Do you know if there is an app like this exist? It should work with satellite, I'm not looking for IPTV or streaming services, just something that supports plain satellite TV.

Edit: Currently experimenting with KODI, no luck yet though. If you also have suggestions regarding to it, I'm all ears.

Edit 2: KODI (and so Jellyfin, Plex etc.) needs a backend server for Live TV so add-ons alone won't work. According to KODI Wiki, currently there are no backends that work on Android. I also tried Google's older app called Live Channels but Google doesn't let you to run it because it's old ~~more useful~~.

Edit 3: I at least blocked ~~all~~ many of those ad streaming domains on pi-hole. Here is the regex I added to my blacklist. Maybe it will be useful for another poor soul who bought TCL TV.

^(.*\.)?(leiniao\.com|kedo-tclrestream\.b-cdn\.net|now\.amagi\.tv|huan\.tv|rttv\.com|kaltura\.com|plex\.tv|otteravision\.com|ads\.ottera\.tv|sofast\.tv|jwplayer\.com|fuelmedia\.io|molotov\.tv|mcncdndigital\.com|evrideo\.tv|aniview\.com|partytymestreaming\.com|playmoviesdfe-pa\.googleapis\.com|ov-static\.ottera\.tv|ottera\.tv)$

There are also some cloudfront domains however they use hash, so it's not possible to block the future hashes by now and they will appear again.

Edit 4: After some hiatus, I have one more update to add here. I decided to go uninstalling apps via adb, since it's always possible to factory reset. However it didn't go as planned at first.

After enabling developer options on TV, I connected to it with adb connect 192.168.X.XX. You'll need android-platform-tools package on your PC to do this (it basically provides adb and fasboot). Anyway, after connected to it, I deleted apps with adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 app.name.here. I went medieval at first and deleted everything that has TCL in it. And that broke everything. I couldn't even factory reset. Apparently TCL swapped some system apps with theirs. After some adrenaline, I realized that I can create another user, so that would bring all the apps I deleted.

I created user via adb with:

adb shell

pm create-user "NewUser"

and switched to that user via

am switch-user userID. To see users command pm list users. In my case the user ID was 10. After this, I was able to factory reset.

These are the apps I deleted to remove bloatware:

com.netflix.ninja
com.tcl.tv.tclhome_passive
com.tcl.dashboard
com.tcl.partnercustomizer
com.tcl.t_solo
au.com.stan.and
tv.wuaki.apptv
com.tcl.suspension
com.amazon.amazonvideo.livingroom
com.tcl.ui_mediaCenter
com.tcl.MultiScreenInteraction_TV
com.tcl.hotelmenu
com.tcl.guard
com.tcl.channelplus
com.tcl.miracast
com.tcl.inputmethod.international
com.tcl.waterfall.overseas
com.tcl.ttvs
com.tcl.useragreement
com.tcl.keyhelp

And these are the one I didn't delete:

com.tcl.initsetup
com.tcl.factory.view
com.tcl.system.server
com.tvos
com.tcl.providers.config
com.tcl.autopair
com.tcl.android.webview

Since there is no Google account login this time, I had to install some apps via adb as well.

I did it with this command: adb install app_name.apk

I installed Projectivity Launcher for a better default launcher experience.

I also played with Shizuku and Canta and it's great to be able to use those too.

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[–] kieron115@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I've never used the tuner/TV part of my sony x900f, only HDMI inputs and apps. Is google pushing ads to live tv now?

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Not exactly like that but there are 20K+ ad TVs in the same list with the satellite ones which has only 400 channels. It is possible to switch to satellite only list but it always reverts so you have to do this every time. So I need either a separate app or the modified version of this current one. However it's possible that TV producers most likely don't open their SDKs so no one can create an app without reverse engineering.

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh wow, that sounds highly inconvenient. I wish it was as easy to re-flash android TVs as it is to re-flash android phones. Best of luck, and keep us updated if you find a solution!

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, it is. To be honest, I lost hope for all-in-one solution. Currently the cheapest option seems to be get an HDMI satellite tuner and plug it in one the of the HDMI ports and use that as a TV source instead of the built-in one.

Thank you! If I find an app solution instead of this, I'll edit my post. I can also try installing a backend for DVB-S on the network and connect the TV and use KODI but apparently that also requires a separate tuner, so the previous one seems easier.