New Toy Arrives

The weather continues to be absolutely perfect with tops around 25° each day.  Overnight it gets down to 11° or thereabouts so the doona has gone into summer hiding and we now sleep under a sheet and a quilt.

The meeting went off well on Monday night but as usual this meant a busy time for me that night running the show and a busy next morning putting a comprehensive report on the website.  But all of that was done satisfactorily.

Then it was to reformat Brian's old desktop computer for a mate who does the BeCA Newsletter.  That was all completed around midday on Tuesday and I headed home to relax.  With such a busy morning I gave the bike ride a big miss.

So I rocked home before 1pm ready for lunch and there was my Android TV Box delivered from China.  It had taken almost 7 weeks to be shipped and delivered.

I copied many of the settings from the Kodi version on my desktop over to the new Android TV Box.  This didn't work as well as I had hoped it would with around 90% of the features working OK but the remaining 10% not working full stop! That took care of Tuesday!

So after a bike ride this morning (Weds) I decided to go back to square 1 and do the setup all over again.  Around 2 hours later with several hiccups everything on the Android TV box seems to be running OK.  I am 90% happy with it, but for $70 it was a great deal.

There are a few idiosyncrasies to come to grips with but I think all will be fine in the long run.

The photo above shows the setup.  The unit itself is the small black box on the left just under the TV Screen.  Beside it is an add on drive with a few movies etc on it.  I don't think I am going to need that in the long run.

Then there is a wireless mouse which can be used to control the box or you can use the small wireless keyboard with a built in mouse pad to control the on screen pointer just as you have on your computer. This keyboard works perfectly.

At this stage I reckon I have done pretty well with it.  It has been heavy work sorting it out though.

The idiosyncrasies include the box finds video files better on hard drives attached to other devices than the hard drive attached to it.  The attached hard drive does not show on my PC as a 'network' drive, therefore is inaccessible from any other device on the network.

You need to manually press a button at the back of the box to start it up.  Sometimes (depending on what order you do things) there isn't any sound through the speakers or our headphones.  But this is easily overcome.

If I turn the Android box and everything off using my all in one remote control, the TV turns off then turns back on again!  But if I turn the box off first using the 'icon button' on the screen, then turn everything else off with the remote control, all closes down perfectly!

It plays all my Movie and TV Show files.  There is one newer format of file I avoid but this little gadget plays those files fine!

All in all I am very pleased!