Remote Control / "Play on another device" on Nvidia Shield

[milphios 0]

In the Android TV app (or more specifically for the Nvidia Shield), is there a way to activate the  remote control / "Play on another device" feature that's available on the web client and Android phone app? I understand that seems like a bit of a strange thing to want, as the Shield is usually the final playback device in most chains, so let me describe my use-case:

I have an Oppo 205 setup as an external player for playing BDMVs and the like. Might be worth mentioning it's not through DLNA, but rather managed through a separate client that communicates between the Emby server and the Oppo. I have it set up such that the device is selected from the drop down list, and when the media is selected my TV and receiver switch to the Oppo's input and play the file. Once playback completes, everything switches back to the input they were previously on. I've got this working perfectly through the web client and Android phone app.

I also have a Shield with the Android TV app installed. What I'd like to be able to do is select the Oppo as the playback device through the Shield app, so that I can play media on the Oppo without having to resort to selecting content through a browser or my phone. I thought perhaps it was a limitation of the Android TV app, so I tried sideloading the Android phone app onto the Shield to see if I could accomplish this through that app. The remote control feature does not display on the Shield through the Android phone app either, and it appears there's a device check of sorts as the UI varies substantially from what it looks like on my phone even though it's the same APK.

I'm wondering if there's a way to enable this feature on a Shield that I'm missing, whether through the native Android TV app or through the Android phone app. I do have a lifetime Premiere license if that's applicable, but I didn't see anything in the Premiere feature list that was related to this issue. If it's not currently possible, I'm wondering if the feature can be added, as I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult since the functionality already exists. As a current workaround, I'm able to achieve this by using the web client through a browser on the Shield, but as you can imagine this makes for a less than stellar user experience given the clunkiness of browsers on Android TV.

Any help or insight is much appreciated. Thanks to the work the Emby team has done, I'm very close to my dream media setup, and this is the final nugget I'm trying to figure out.

[ebr 14959]

Hi.  Not currently, no.  As you pointed out, this is quite an unusual request .

[milphios 0]

Thanks for the feedback; I suspected as much given the uniqueness of my use-case.

I ended up unpacking the Android phone apk and poking through it to see if I could enable it myself. My first takeaway was that I was wrong to call it the "phone" app, as it supports quite a few platforms. Anyway, after digging through it and doing a bit of testing, I figured out the remote control function is already enabled on the Shield. The button is just hidden by the !layoutManager.tv check under setRemoteControlVisibility in appheader.js. Removing "!layoutManager.tv&&" makes the button appear, and the functionality works exactly as expected.

I wrote a script that unpacks the apk, makes the edit, and repacks it, and can now use the Android TV app for when I want to watch content directly on the Shield, and the standard Android app for when I want to watch content on the Oppo. As such, you can consider this issue solved for me .

That said, given it's such a simple change and I don't really see a reason to not have the button displayed since the functionality is already there, is there any chance of having this change made in the official (standard Android, not TV) app for those who happen to have it installed on a device like the Shield? Or I suppose adding a toggle for it, though obviously that would be a little more work than just deleting ~20 characters.

Again, not something I need or am asking for since I've taken care of my use-case, but thought it was worth proposing in case someone else out there might benefit from it.

[ebr 14959]

Hi.  Instead of trying to modify the app, I think if you just set the app display mode to something other than "TV" you will probably get that function.  However, it may be difficult to navigate - you'll have to try that out.