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 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|b-cdn\.net|now\.amagi\.tv|huan\.tv|rttv\.com|kaltura\.com|cloudfront\.net|plex\.tv|otteravision\.com|ads\.ottera\.tv|sofast\.tv|akamaized\.net|jwplayer\.com|fuelmedia\.io|molotov\.tv|mcncdndigital\.com|evrideo\.tv|aniview\.com|partytymestreaming\.com)$

  • muhyb@programming.devOP
    1·
    13 hours ago

    I would install LineageOS if it was possible, there are no ROMs. I’m not even sure if the bootloader is unlockable.

    • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org
      2·
      1 hour ago

      I was able to unlock the bootloader and root my Hisense Android TV just fine. I think you can also root TCLs, but I’d check xda first.

      I didn’t even need to enable OEM unlocking first to unlock the bootloader. Dumping the boot.img was a different story. Someone did it for me for my model, since my model’s UBoot firmware is missing a lot of functionality. You may have better luck dumping through UBoot using the UART interface, or maybe there’s an alternative. If your TV is a GKI device and you can boot a generic kernel, yhen you can use KernelSU without needing to first dump the stock boot.img (or init_boot.img), then you might be able to upgrade and dump the stock one from the other partition before rebooting

      I couldn’t figure out how to get into BROM mode on my TV.

      Make sure there is a reliable way to reflash the firmware in case of a brick. Hisense provides firmware packages that can be flashed from the bootloader without needing to boot an OS.

      • muhyb@programming.devOP
        1·
        1 hour ago

        That’s the initial thing I wanted to do but there seems to be no ROM for this TV yet. I really prefer this to replace the default app.

        I just hope there is some work from some developer but currently I don’t know any.

        • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org
          2·
          53 minutes ago

          Mine doesn’t have a custom ROM either because Hisense refuses to release the kernel source for my device. Didn’t stop me from rooting anyway. Magisk/KernelSU modules can also do a lot of heavy lifting for replacing things.

          • muhyb@programming.devOP
            1·
            32 minutes ago

            Sounds nice. What can I do with rooting though? Since there isn’t a replacement for the default TV app. I know I can remove the TCL stuff, but besides that? Also, now I wonder if shizuku would work too.

    • uxellodunum@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      8 hours ago

      This is why I recommended a Shield for which there is an actively maintained LineageOS. Yes, it’s an investment, but well worth it nowadays.