Features
Watching live TV
The live player is built around one idea: you should be able to see what else is on without stopping what you are watching. Almost every overlay in it exists for that reason.
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Everything in the live player is reachable from the D‑pad without leaving the picture, and the layers are worth knowing by name because the key reference uses them.
The info panel
OK brings up the info panel, which is the bar along the bottom carrying the channel number and name, the current programme with its time and how much is left, and Next: with whatever follows. A LIVE marker sits there while playback is at the live edge, which is how you tell at a glance that you have not drifted back into the stream's buffer.
Where guide data is missing you get No Information in place of the programme title, and a programme that has finished but is still selected shows Ended. Both are statements about the listings rather than the stream.
The same press also opens History, a list of channels you have been through, each with its playlist and group, and a Clear button when it gets long. Before you have watched anything it reads No history.
Two ways to see the channel list
Both are opened from the D‑pad and they exist for different screens.
| Mode | What it looks like | Default key |
|---|---|---|
| Overlay | The list is drawn over the video at full size. Quick glance, keeps the picture. | Left |
| Preview | The video shrinks into a corner and the list gets the rest of the screen. Better for reading a long list. | Long Left |
In either mode, moving the highlight does not change the channel. You browse, then press OK. The three filters along the top are Favorites, All Channels and All Playlists, and an empty list under a filter reads No channels rather than looking broken.
Holding OK on a channel opens the channel menu, which is grouped into three parts: what applies to the programme, what applies to the channel, and what applies to the group. Five rows do something in this build: Search, Settings, Record, Custom recording and Add to favorites. The rest are placed and not yet wired; the guide key reference lists which is which so you are not left pressing a row that highlights and does nothing.
Switching channels
Four ways, and the difference between them is how much you want to see first.
- Up and Down switch immediately to the next and previous channel.
- Pg+(Ch+) and Pg-(Ch-) show the info panel for the next and previous channel without switching, so you can look before you commit.
- Right jumps to the most recent channel — the one you were on before this one, which is what you want during an advertisement break.
- The channel list, for anything further away than a few positions.
The player menu
Long OK or Menu opens the tool strip, a row of icons along the bottom rather than a list of names. Left and Right walk it and wrap around at either end, and it hides itself after five seconds if you leave it alone.
Eight of the tiles go somewhere: Search, TV List, Video track, Audio track, Subtitle track, Aspect ratio, Add to favorites and Settings. The strip also carries Multiview, Recordings, an audio‑delay tile and a reminder tile, and those four are drawn but not connected yet. They are the shape the menu is heading towards rather than four things you are failing to use correctly.
One detail that confuses people at first: the four stateful tiles are labelled with their current value, not with their name. The aspect tile reads Normal or Zoom, the track tiles read the track you are on, and the subtitle tile reads off until you pick one. So the strip tells you the state of the channel at a glance, which is the point, but you learn it by icon rather than by word.
The track selectors are worth knowing about before you need them. Audio track is how you get the second language on a channel that carries one, Subtitle track turns captions on where the stream includes them, and Video track matters on the streams that offer more than one quality. Each choice is remembered against that channel, so a channel you set to its English track opens on it next time.
Aspect ratio, per channel
Some channels arrive with black bars the broadcaster put there, and no player can recover the missing picture, but you can crop to fill the screen. Aspect ratio offers Normal, Full, Zoom, Reduced and Zoom - 2.35:1.
The setting applies to the channel you are on, which is the behaviour you want when one channel in fifty is wrong. Apply to all channels makes it global if the whole playlist has the same problem.
Where the app opens
Turn on last channel on app start, under Settings › General, decides whether launching the app puts you into the channel you were watching or into the list. On a television used mainly for one or two channels, having it on removes a step every evening.
Two neighbouring settings matter on devices that sleep rather than switch off: Auto start app on boot and Auto start app on wake up from sleep mode. On a box dedicated to television use, both on means the app is simply always there.
Seeking on a live stream
Two actions exist for moving around inside a live stream, and neither is on a key by default: Restart current program jumps to the beginning of the buffer, and Go to live stream returns to the live edge. Both are plain seeks, and how far they can actually take you is decided entirely by the stream, not by the app, a stream served with a rolling window lets you move inside it, and a stream served without one has nowhere to go.
That is the honest limit of it. There is no catch‑up or archive browsing in this build: the app cannot request yesterday's programme from a provider, and the Watch from start row you will see in the channel menu is one of the rows that is placed but not yet wired. If your provider offers recorded programming, it does so through its own on‑demand catalogue, which turns up under movies and shows rather than in the guide.
What you can do today, and what most people actually want, is record the programme instead. That works from the guide and does not depend on the stream carrying a buffer.
When something is wrong
A channel that fails while others work, sound with no picture, and a channel that has vanished from the list are all covered in a channel that will not play. A channel that plays but keeps pausing is buffering, which is a different problem with different fixes.