TVH Client for Android/Google TV

Jane

Hi everyone,

I’m curious whether there are people here who would actually use or be interested in a dedicated TVH client with a proper UI for Android TV / Google TV.

Most existing solutions work, but the UI is often clearly designed for phones or tablets, not for a 10-foot TV experience with a remote. I’m thinking about a TV-first client: clean interface, D-pad navigation, EPG that makes sense on a big screen, and overall something that feels native on Android TV / Google TV.

Before going too far, I’d like to know:

Would you personally use something like this?

Are there specific features or pain points with current clients?

Would anyone be interested in testing, giving feedback, or even contributing ideas?

I’m mainly looking for interested users and feedback, not promoting anything finished (yet).
If this sounds interesting to you, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.

Thanks! 👋

DeltaMikeCharlie

Have you tried Kodi?

https://kodi.tv/about/
https://kodi.tv/download/android/

It's not a 'dedicated TVH client' but it can connect to TVH and has an interface designed for navigating on large screens at a distance.

Jane

Thank you for the recommendation — I know Kodi very well and it’s a great media center.
However, running a system inside a system just for a single service feels quite unpleasant to me.

Personally, I’m using Vero 4K for TVHeadend and a Google TV Streamer for everything else. But since the best days of Vero seem to be behind it, the idea came up to get rid of one set-top box and find a native solution for Google TV — ideally with native HTSP protocol support.

Because I’m a developer, I went ahead and created a small proof of concept that fully meets my needs. If there are more people thinking about the same thing, I’d be happy to share it and potentially polish it further — maybe even publish it on Google Play so it’s available to everyone.

Of course, that would involve proper testing and validation, so I wanted to ask first:
Would this kind of application be interesting for other users as well?

DeltaMikeCharlie

Jane ideally with native HTSP protocol support.

The native HTSP protocol is not as full-featured as the JSON API, however, you can get access to the entire JSON API using the HTSP api method.

https://docs.tvheadend.org/documentation/development/htsp/client-to-server-rpc-methods#api
https://docs.tvheadend.org/documentation/development/htsp/http-proxy-examples
https://docs.tvheadend.org/documentation/development/json-api

Alternately, you could just use the JSON API directly via HTTP instead and bypass HTSP altogether. You can establish a websocket connection to TVH that will also send you asynchronous object updates just like HTSP does.

Jane I’d be happy to share it and potentially polish it further — maybe even publish it on Google Play so it’s available to everyone.

My opinion is that you should at least share a few screenshots and/or make your work available to the community, even if it is clearly as a development/alpha/beta version for now. If you get more interest, then maybe publish it on Google Play.

Also see if there is any overlap with your plans and the following:
http://tvhclient.com/
https://tvheadend.org/d/8903-introducing-tvhplayer-a-free-cross-platform-client-for-tvheadend
mfat/tvhplayer

Jane

Everything is already available on GitHub, including screenshots, source code, and current development versions.
You can check it out here: Preclikos/tvhstream

Feel free to try it, explore the code, and share any feedback or suggestions