I really struggle to find a TV box to replace my 3 Apple TVs.
I found a device from Nokia (Finland), but it doesn’t seem to be in stock in Swedish online stores.
There seems to be no home electronics companies owned in Europe. Manufacturing you can forget about without even searching.
Raspberry pi with Android TV?
At least the final assembly is done in UK.
How do you run Android TV on a raspi?
There’s custom images for it that you flash onto the sd card you put into the pi. My experience with it wasn’t very good though to be honest.
UK is not really EU anymore…
At least were sharing a contintal shelf. Ok, that’s true for China and Indonesia as well, might not be the best argument ever made…
Maybe some day again? I mean, the residents already figured out they had it better in the EU…
I was also looking for that. I couldn’t find anything perfect and ended up with a Xiaomi Mi Box (Android TV). I wholeheartedly cannot recommend. What’s the Nokia box?
What’s the issues with the Mi Box? I’ve seen it too on Amazon and considered it
It’s extremely unstable for some reason. Keeps rebooting in regular intervals. I got it because I wanted to the option to sideload apps from F-Droid. Al least that worked.
Man that sounds bad
Strong, I have 2 of their boxes and they are at least as good as the Xiaomi Mi Box S they replaced.
I will edit this later with the models I have.
I have the LEAP S3 and the LEAP S3 Pro, the main difference between the two is that the S3 Pro has 4GB RAM vs 2GB of the S3.
The advantage over the Xiaomi is that both models have 100Mbit/s Ethernet port.
The only issue I had so far is that I use the S3 Pro for TV streaming with my cable operator app, and if it has a pen drive inserted the app keeps freezing every 10s or so for a couple seconds like it would be buffering. No pen, no issues.
Strong is owned by Skyworth, which according to Wikipedia is a Chinese holding company. Just so you know. It’s a safe bet that all their stuff is Chinese as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyworth
In fact, I doubt any European company produces their own routers or TV boxes anymore. I would love to be proved wrong though.
I have never heard of them. Where did you buy them?
I first saw some networking equipment of theirs in a national retailer here in Portugal (Worten). At first I thought they were just another chinese brand but one their equipments caught my attention, was an affordable (55€) 4G LTE desktop-like router that had 2 SIM support, 4-port Eth and a battery, and I investigated the brand. Then found their set-top boxes and I bought the LEAP S3.
If you open their website, choose About Us, Our Partners, you can choose a country and find the local retailers carrying them.
Thanks! They’ve hidden that info well 😅
Raspberry Pi with Android Open Source Project is the best privacy option. It’s quite a bit of work to get tuned, but nice afterward.
To start, what features/specs are you looking for. Are you looking at live TV, IPTV, or just streaming services? Are you wanting 4K, DVR or just playback? What about audio options?
Sorry, if I completely misunderstood your question (disclaimer: I don’t know much about the Apple TV or about TV in general, as we don’t watch it) but here (France) with our Fiber Internet access we also got served an extra tiny box that supposedly gives us access to hundreds of tv channels… provided we connect it to a screen of some sort. It has one HDMI plug and that’s about it.
My point is this: I obviously have no idea what extra features an Apple TV is offering but maybe you can have a similar features with your Internet sub?
What are the details of the “extra tiny box” brand name or whatever ? Yes that does sound like what OP wants
It has no branding beside a label on the bottom with a serial and some random things like that, plus the name of our ISP (the French Bouygues, in my case).
Edit: I just tested it (plugging it onto a monitor through HDMI and to the network, Ethernet) and it seems to be some kind of android thingy which gives access to, well, tv channels. There is also an accompanying remote.
Thanks for checking. Very kind of you. Some sort of android tv device by the sound of it.
I don’t know how it’s charged in France but in other European countries that “tiny box” is often part of a costlier subscription plan. And it’s a device fully controlled by the ISP.
The reason people buy those apple tv/google tv/Nvidia shield and others is to have as many content streamers as they may need in their home, and to have control over what they can display on their tv set.
