Android TV & smart stu
Android TV is an increasingly attractive option as a smart TV interface, not only easy and clear, but bringing your TV into the rapidly expanding Chromecast ecosystem. You can throw video or audio from Android devices easily, from Chrome castenabled apps on iOS devices, from a Chrome browser on computer, or as mentioned, using a Google Home.
As with the Sony TV in this issue, TCL has prepopulated the home screen with obvious candidates such as Netflix, YouTube, Spotify and Yupp TV, which offers primarily Indian subcontinent programming. while the Google Play store offers endless others; we downloaded Stan (above) and a few media players to try — VLC, Archos and Plex.
TwinPeaks from Stan looked absolutely stunning streaming direct to the TCL, though the information key doesn’t work in this mode, so there’s no way to check exactly what was coming through.
TCL’s C2 Series is enabled for voice search — and YouTube seems to expect it, but the voice remote control is only optional (it’s standard on the X series), so we found YouTube most easily browsed using a laptop and throwing it to the TCL — YouTube then takes over the stream direct from the internet, with control available from computer or TV remote.
The Android home screen also points towards TCL’s own international offering of GoLiveTV, which brings together a wealth of foreign-language content — Chinese, Hindi, Taiwan and more, and just a little English in there too from our browsing, including Deutsche-Weller International. There are many packages or on-demand TV shows and movies, again it seems Chinese dominated; an ‘Australia Special Plan’ section includes $3.99 for movies, or 0.99c per movie, and $3.99 monthly for TV — some first episodes are free, so we could confirm that the Chinese shows have English subtitles.
Netflix has a dedicated button on the remote, as does ‘T’ — though this latter seems to be more a repository for your past viewing than access to new stuff. When we asked ‘T’ for sport, it just took us to YouTube, and when we tried to go back up the menus, it left us at the YouTube Home Menu (though since we were logged in with our gmail account, this recommended us a marvellous documentary on Monty Python, which was awful in resolution but wonderfully distracting nevertheless).
There is Freeview Plus catch-up when you’re using the TCL’s own tuners, and it can even record if you give it capacious USB storage, though its single tuner makes recording operations limited.