topic Re: Finally took the plunge a few questions in Android TV

Finally took the plunge a few questions

gap300789 — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 15:07:58 GMT

Hi all newbie here

Well finally pulled the trigger and ordered a KD55X8509CBU and wiaiting on delivery

Being a Sony fanboy and avid Android user i am trying to research now on various topics

Can the tv be rooted and is there any benefit to this? ie removing unwanted apps

Can SD maid, greenify be used and will they harm anything? (no xposed i know)

I have heard about HAL launcher over on XDA, is this preferred over stock launcher?

What is the best option out of the box - factory reset then upgrade?

Do it help to used the advancedsettings.xml file with Kodi?

Has there ever been talk of custom roms/kernels etc?

Really looking forward to messing around with this tv

Re: Finally took the plunge a few questions

xx4L0Mxx — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 20:53:32 GMT

Root - Can it be rooted? More than likely as it has a mediatek processor and they are generally easy to root, has anyone tried? Not yet as far as I'm aware.

Rooting the TV would give you the ability to freeze or uninstall unwanted apps or add dual shock 3 support etc, but you will lose the ability to receive OTA updates.

The non root version of greenify will possibly work I haven't tried it yet.

Stock Launcher is currently mandatory, you CAN run Halauncher as an app, but the latest Leanback Launcher update disables Hallauncher to be chosen as the TV's stock launcher.

Out of the box and upgrades? A lot of people here will tell you to Factory reset for the smallest of problems, but as I'm also a heavy android user / modder, I have owned my TV for 3 and a half months and have NEVER factory reset it due to understanding that android generally gets quicker the more you use it and build up caches etc.

I have had to unplug the TV from the mains about 6 times in this period when android has frozen, but thats it, not perfect but not too much of a big deal.

I have upgraded my firmware over the air 3 times and NEVER factory reset once. My TV, apart from the above mentioned freezes has worked flawlessly since i have had it.........Looking at these forums, I appear to be the luckiest person on these forums in that regard.

I have installed stacks of addons into Kodi via the TV's Kodi app, and they seem to all work very well, I have not edited the advanced settings, so can't advise on that front.

As far as I'm aware, there are no custom roms for the TV yet, a working TWRP or equivalent would be the first step toward making custom roms, but I haven't looked into porting TWRP to the TV.

Hope you enjoy your purchase !

Re: Finally took the plunge a few questions

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 22:28:44 GMT

Hi there

Welcome to the Sony Community.

In addition to the above reply - people have tried rooting the TV, unsucsessfully though. Best you can do for the moment is put it in developers mode.

In regards to launchers - TV Sideload Launcher - Android TV works well for sideloading apps.

Cheers

Re: Finally took the plunge a few questions

gap300789 — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 09:16:48 GMT

Hi thanks for the replies

When watching 1080p streams on my M8S I keep getting the cache full message with buffering

My sons redmi note 2 has a mediatek processor so I am quite familiar with it

Will keep you updated

Thanks again