Amiko A3 Appstore Early Preview

[T134]

** Note: since this is pre-release some of this might change a bit. **

I think I finally have our A3 Appstore close to the way I want it. Here is an early look and explanation.

First, we have Google Play. Why do we need an A3 Appstore with Android Apps?

Many good reasons for A3 Appstore. Here are the main ones:

1. Even on the best Android devices like HTC One or Nexus7 tablets there are Apps that you cannot get out of Google Play Store. If you want an App that Play won't give you the only option is to get it off the internet and "sideload" on your Android device.....unless you happen to have your own Appstore.

2. In North America many guys are going to be running VPN's to get UK and other European content. Same with guys in EU to get USA content. Even with a VPN Google still knows your account is USA based and won't even show you geo-restricted Apps like BBC IPlayer. Not a problem, Apps like this are in A3 Appstore.

3. We have our own Apps specifically for A3. No reason to put them in the Google Play store or go through all that hassle since they are specifically for Amiko A3. By putting these Apps in A3 Appstore we don’t have to preload them in the box and you aren’t stuck with stuff you don’t want.

4. XBMC 13.1 Gotham. Due to EVERYONE in an earlier poll saying they want this pre-installed it will come on your A3. However XBMC does update their builds and XBMC is not available on Google Play. Previously the only option was to download from the internet and sideload on your Android Device each time. With A3 you can do it from the Appstore with a few clicks.

5. Multiple versions of the same App are available in A3 Appstore. Sometimes a developer updates an App and it totally does not work on your device or is buggy. Sometimes a redesigned App just sucks and you want to use the older version. With Google Play you only get the one version. If you update and you don’t like it you are stuck. A3 Appstore can offer multiple versions of the same App so you can choose. For example right now we have old version netflix (3.5) and the 3.6 version with the new look and feel. You choose.

6. Google Play can be confusing. I’ve been using Android for years and I still go to Play Store looking for “something” but no clue what. If I do find something to try sometimes I have to try several different Apps to find one that does what I want and works well. Google Play isn’t always good at making suggestions or saying for sure whether something will work well for you. A3 Appstore has a much smaller selection of hand picked apps tested on the A3. Much of the selection is tailored toward A3 users: IPTV and VOD based Apps. Think of A3 Appstore as a starter for Android Apps and suggestions.

Google Play and A3 Appstore also work together for the most part. If an App is in our Appstore and also available to A3 from Google Play it will cross link with Play Store. When the developer puts out an update, Google Play will notify you (if you enable notifications) and you can get the new version direct from Play.

A3 Appstore also will check (every 24h by default) and let you know when we update existing Apps. This won’t happen often since most cross link with Play Store for updates.

A3 Appstore is built on the open source F-Droid Client (the app on your A3) and fdroidsever on our back end.

So let’s have a look at the A3 Appstore itself….

Some of the IPTV and VOD App selections

Games

After selecting an App its information screen comes up. Click “install” for the latest version or select another version when more than one is available.

The App downloads and the Spark2 Installer comes up. Press RED key to finalize installation. (This step may be omitted depending on how we package A3 Appstore in the release.)

Push notifications on Amiko A3 from Google Play and A3 Appstore letting you know updates are available.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I do hope this A3 store is not locked down by IP like the A2 is.

I have two ISP's and we do load balancing so for a few moments I may be coming in from one ISP , then it may flip to the other thus changing to the other.

This made the apps on the A2 useless to me. I know however I am not the norm.


Posted Via The FREE SatelliteGuys Reader App!

 

[T134]

No lockdown or restrictions for A3 Appstore, free to use on any Amiko A3 anywhere in the world.

The App content however can and sometimes is restricted by the App developer and/or content provider. That has nothing to do with us. Examples: Crackle to USA only, BBC Iplayer and TVCatchup to UK only. My VPN on the A3 takes care of those restrictions.

To me the idea of Android is open source and App driven. I don't want to do portals or activation or restrictions on our end our for Europe.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Can you guys put PLEX on there too please? I have PLEX running on my Mac and my other computer and this lets me play any media file on any device I own. I’ve got several ancient tablets that I can watch movies with and if I get one of those SiliconDust TV tuners I will be able to watch OTA TV on any device too. I use the heck out of PLEX. Having it on the A3 would be extremely useful.
Thanks!

Edit: Plex tries to get you to sign up and subscribe to some ‘pro’ service. I have no idea what that is about, I’ve found that their free service does everything I could imagine I would ever need it to do except print money. So ignore the pleas from them to send money for a ‘pro’ subscription, just go with the free stuff. It’s excellent.

 

[T134]

Can you guys put PLEX on there too please? I have PLEX running on my Mac and my other computer and this lets me play any media file on any device I own. I’ve got several ancient tablets that I can watch movies with and if I get one of those SiliconDust TV tuners I will be able to watch OTA TV on any device too. I use the heck out of PLEX. Having it on the A3 would be extremely useful.
Thanks!

Edit: Plex tries to get you to sign up and subscribe to some ‘pro’ service. I have no idea what that is about, I’ve found that their free service does everything I could imagine I would ever need it to do except print money. So ignore the pleas from them to send money for a ‘pro’ subscription, just go with the free stuff. It’s excellent.

Yes and no. Someone at my Forum already asked me to check Plex on A3. There are two versions of Plex: one you pay $5 for right away and it is here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.plexapp.android

You can download that one from Google Play within your A3 or even easier once you register your A3 in Play you can click the above link, buy the App and it will be on your A3 in minutes.

The second Plex App is here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.plexapp.plex

That one required "PlexPass" which is a monthly pay subscription thingy. That is the one I tested on A3 but didn't get far since I don't have PlexPass. You can also get that directly from your A3 Google Play App.

As far as our A3 Appstore we obviously can't put someone's paid app in there for legal reasons. The monthly one can be added since the App itself is free. I'd need to hear back some more from customers and Retailers as to if this is what people are interested in using to see if worth adding to our store or not. If everyone wants the one time paid App would be kind of pointless for us to add the pay monthly one.

 

[Dee_Ann]

The plexpass is bogus and is totally un-needed. It’s just fluff that you can totally live without. Using the free app gives you all the features you would ever need.

I do not understand why or how google is selling the app when it’s free from Plex. But then again I am not a google fan and all I know is they are a for profit megacorp.

What about the Plex ~server~ app for android? I would rather have the device be a server. That way any content on it or produced by it should be available as a DLNA service on my LAN.
With the server app running on my two computers (Mac and a windows HTPC) I can view any content on the two machines through my Roku 3 or using generic DLNA clients on my various (ancient) tablets and iPhones.

After struggling for years with trying to view satellite recordings through anything other than the stupid recording app, (MyTheater) I found Plex and that solved sooooooo many problems for me!
It’s ultra simple to set up and maintain. And after I bought a Blu-ray player that does DLNA, I spent a bunch of time researching and learning about this magical method of watching stuff over wires.

So personally, I wouldn’t much be interested in the A3 being a Plex player, but rather it be a Plex server. That would make it very, very useful to me.
BTW, I pre-ordered one so I could get the discount and get rid of the stupid MyTheater pain in my backside stuff..

 

[T134]

Unless I am missing it there is no "free" Plex App. Click here: https://plex.tv/downloads on the Plex site and then the Google Play or Amazon Appstore and it goes right to the $5 App. That isn't Google being a greedy corporation, it is whomever owns Plex. They are the ones that put it in the Appstore and they are the ones who decided to charge for it.

I've never bothered with DLNA since I know how to network any non-apple device just fine. I really don't know anything about it nor do I have any DLNA devices to really try out. I did try setting up a DLNA server on A3 with a free App. Seemed to work but going in my web browser to the port for it just gave a directory listing prohibited message. Since I don't know how to set up clients or really the server end I am pretty worthless for being able to help with that. You'd be able to figure out how to get DLNA server running faster and better than my little brain can.

Something else you might want to research is XBMC 13.1 "Gotham". We are bundling that on the A3's It pretty much finds and talks to all my devices on its own, even my X360 and really is the cat's meow for local, shared and internet media everything. There are fancy words like DLNA and upnp and other cool things I've never heard of in there for networking. You can XBMC on your mac's and perhaps the best thing is that XBMC is 100% free.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Ok thanks. I don’t know anything about XMBC except that once upon a time I tried to make an XBMC machine using an old pc and Ubuntu Linux but found it exceptionally difficult and I gave up without ever having gotten one to work. The Linux worked fine, it was the XBMC that I couldn’t get to work. The directions assumed that you have a Phd in rocket science and work at NASA. Linux people are harsh and unforgiving and don’t like answering requests for help.
Someone stuck me with a PC running MyTheater and it’s been nothing but unhappy days for me and I can’t wait to be rid of it. In the past 5 years I’ve tried every kind of media system I could find to have a single device that does it all. Next month I plan to buy one of those SiliconDust tuners. I have seen people mention that it will work with the A3. Can you give us some idea how it would integrate into the A3?

As it is now, I have two tuner cards in a pc, one (which is deathly ill) that is a DVB-S2 tuner, the other is an ATSC OTA tuner that I use to get local TV from my antenna outside. The app is MyTheater and it treats the two tuner cards as if they are one single device and changing channels between the two sources is seamless. I press channel up and channel down and it goes from satellite to OTA as if they are all part of one big happy family. Well, it worked that way before the satellite card began to puke out. It would be magnificent if the A3 can behave in a similar fashion.

If you could kinda give us a little on how that would work, that would be wonderful..

Thanks!

 

[T134]

Brian @ Titanium knows more about the SiliconDust HDhomerun than I do but I do have one here running on XBMC. There is an Android App which is a couple bucks https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.silicondust.mg.upnp but apparently it is worth it if you have a newer SD than I do. Mine is too old to work with it or I'd have paid the $2.

I did the simplest and free method to get mine working on A3 and XBMC. Basically when you configure it using your computer you tell it XBMC is going to be your player. It then generates a bunch of .strm files. Put those on your internal SATA, the SD card, USB, network share or wherever A3 can read them and add that as a source in XBMC. You then go to it, click a channel and it plays. No real setup involved on the XBMC or A3 side.

There are more fancy ways to do it like I could have labeled the stations for mine or put subchannels into one strm file to start but I am lazy. One guy on my site has a HDhomerun setup with MythTV (I think) backend and he gets guide data VIA net and some other cool stuff.

One think I really love about the HDhomerun vs just a USB tuner is that I can watch it easy on any device. I can move from the A3 to the computer to my tablet very easy.

Oh, as I mentioned somewhere XBMC will already be installed on A3 so it is just a matter of playing with it and learning the basics. Assuming I can integrate it correctly for install in a ROM the good repositories and some other things will already be setup too.

Here are some pics of XBMC on A3 and my HDhomerun setup. Sorry, can't capture the live video to show that part.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Cool beans !

I’m planning on buying the HDHomerun PLUS after the 20th. Amazon has them for $129. Hopefully I’ll have it in around the same time the A3 comes in. Not holding my breath though.
Unless I’m mistaken, it appears to be the most friendly for streaming HDTV to anything on my network.

I looked at the apps for the Homerun stuff and their reviews were exceptionally poor. Plus their apps won’t work at all on my ancient (iOS 5.1.1) iPad. Even if they could run, the reviewers all agree the apps are awful and a rip off.

I saw a discussion somewhere recently about the new HP tablet (I bought one of their $99 tablet, it s**ks.) and people were saying not to waste your money on it, that there are a bunch of sub $100 Android tablets that are much better than the new HP tablet. I just want one to use as a remote control for the A3 and maybe watch some TV on the patio. I don’t care about any other use of one. So I guess I need to figure out where I saw that discussion and start looking for a cheap tablet to control the A3 and maybe the TV tuner as well.

 

[T134]

Look up the Nobis NB09 at walmart.com. It was $99, offered free shipping, came with a free keyboard/case (which I broke) and has the same processor as the A3. I use it to do some of the A3 dev work and I've ran HDhomerun and the Spark2 Android App for the A3 on it. Decent tablet for the $$$ and probably does more than the $800 maxipad.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Cool, thanks !