We’ve been using our TCL Android TV for maybe a month now, and it’s definitely a different experience from AppleTV or Roku. Did you know Android TV has both a shell and a print spooler? Also, apparently if you enable “quick start” it ignores the last input and drops you to the Android TV home screen. But if you disable quick start, it just takes you to the last input.
Anyway, I always like to be able to connect my phone to my TVs as a remote. Google’s iOS app will not find the TV. Tried it on multiple devices. Turned on that “allow this device to find devices on your local network” setting. No dice. I’ve done some digging online, and I’ve tried resetting the iOS devices, resetting the TV, enabling developer mode, etc. and still no dice.
I’m really suspecting Google’s app is the problem. It wouldn’t be the first time where (a) Google’s first-party app wasn’t great, and (b) the iOS app was very much a “second class citizen” as far as Google is concerned.
Tried a third-party remote app. It required me to turn on the TV’s “developer mode”, then paired properly, but had about a 3-second delay between button presses and those presses being recognized on the TV. Since it wanted me to pay $30/year after a 3-day trial, I cancelled that immediately. But it proves that something can talk to this TV, if nothing else.
Regarding the 3-second delay, I really don’t suspect network problems for that glitchiness, because both Internet access from the TV and Plex on the TV, coming from my home server over Wi-Fi, work well. And when we had a Roku TV in the same spot, with the same network, we didn’t have any issues with phone-based remote apps. Also no issues with the Apple remote apps on our Apple TV in the other room.
Can anybody recommend an iOS app that might actually solve the problem?
I’m half-tempted to just plug in our spare Roku on one of the HDMI inputs and call it good.