Emporium

CEC is the only way as far as I know. So if sound bar supports CEC, it should be able to be controlled. Otherwise, you will need to continue to use the remote of the sound bar for sound bar specific. You can either use CEC to control it. Or you can ignore the CEC stuff, and you can set the sound bar to some mid level, and then use the variable audio from the box itself. I have a small sound bar on my TV in my bedroom, and I just leave it at roughly mid volume, and just use the regular volume control on my box.

This is the U5 section... Not complicated, create a thread under your box model. The U5 and the xrs4900 don't even run the same OS.

There is nothing illegal about the buzzTV box itself. It is just a media player, just like their Amazon Fire Stick, Fire Cube, FireTV, AppleTV, etc... Unless however "your" ad specifies that it comes with some included IPTV service. They did crack down on many who were advertising included services with other IPTV boxes.

CHANGE batteries... When batteries are getting low, the IR functions will continue to work and BT functions will take a back seat.

That usually means it is NOT paired with BT. You are probably just using the IR functions of the remote. Manual can be found here: https://buzztv.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/BT400-300_manual_WEB_v6_Compress.pdf I'd probably go into remote/accessory menu, unpair the remote, then do a factory reset on the remote (see manual above), and then go into menu and add new remote and put remote into pairing mode to re-pair the unit.

When you formatted the SSD, you were given an option probably to format as portable storage or internal storage. I always recommend to people to use it as portable storage. But that is personal choice. If you format as internal storage, the Android OS will "adopt" the filesystem nd treat it as an extension of it's internal storage. Advantages are that "some" (not all) apps can install onto the ssd, keeping some more free space on the onboard. But the negatives are, that it can ONLY be ready on this box, and if the SSD ever fails, you will probably have no choice but to do a factory reset, since the OS would be missing a lot of files which were installed to the SSD and it would misbehave. Formatting it as portable, it is used only for file transfers, PVR recording, downloads, etc.. And the drive can be removed, and you can easily connect the drive to a PC to transfer files to/from the drive.

Well, maybe for you.. I went all the way to payment screen and put in my Canadian address and it still remained in USD. Anyhow, whatever.. Just something to keep an eye out for. At least I like the fact that it CLEARLY tells you it is in USD so there are no surprises.

oops double post

My bad. I didn't check your link, read it quickly and assumed it was a link to the "spec/brochure" But it is available on the US shopping page, but not on the Canadian one. Guess you can always shop on the US site and ship to Canada (if you are in Canada). Just keep in mind prices are in USD for Canadian shoppers.

If you can find it, since I am pretty sure it has been discontinued. Hence why the second recommendation was the BT250 (by nbs above) if you can live without the backlight.

I agree. This is by far my favorite Buzz remote (came with my xrs4900 units), but it is not that easy to buy any more. One touch control for backlight (and super simple to activate, even in the dark) like du mentioned, and instead of playing with CEC to control TV, it has 4 IR learning buttons (TV Power, TV Input toggle, and TV Volume up and down). The only thing it doesn't have, which was added to the BT250 is the airmouse feature (which is a very nice feature, but for my usage style on a buzz, I don't really don't use that too much anyhow).

That's probably the only way. assuming your TV supports it. The remote was never advertised as having "learn IR" features.

The ARQ200 does not have any "learning" mode. It is designed for the newer 5 series of BuzzTV boxes. And those have a menu, where you can program shirtcuts to the colored buttons. The rest are already hardcoded to BuzzTV code. The only learning is to be able to pair it with the USB dongle (should it not be pre-paired. The quick install guide can be found here: https://buzztv.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/BuzzTV-ARQ-200s-Remote-Manual-v3.pdf It is very similar to the generic MX3 type remotes, but the colored buttons are not IR learning. They work within the BuzzTV software, and can be programmed for program shortcuts when in anything else (on a 5 series Buzz box).

Turn it off, exit buzztv app, and restart and it should get rid of the messages. The way some services stream is not very "timeshift" friendly.

Have you tried playing something locally (off usb stick or something) with VLC ? If you use the internal players on Buzztv (instead of external/VLC), does your VOD play fine ?

Just a small addition... on some services you may need to change the stream type to HLS for catchup to work properly. Can be changed from "Menu->Settings->Configuration" from LiveTV, and should be the last option on that menu. Keep in mind your server needs to support/offer Catchup, and it is typically not on all channel (some servers offer more catchup than others)

When you say "downloader", what downloader app are you referring to ? To sideload, I prefer to download the apk files to my PC and then copy them to a USB stick. Once on USB stick, I just insert into the box, and start the appinstaller which scans the USB stick and presents me the available APKs to be installled. That way, if I ever need to reset my box, all the apps I like to install are on a common USB stick, so reinstalling them takes minutes.

I personally prefer SSD drives. A decent quality, name brand SSD in my opinion is the way to go. Quicker to access. require less power, and generate a lot less heat than some mechanical drives. Prices have dropped quite a bit. Even a Crucial MX500 series 1TB SSD, or even a Sandisk 1TB Ultra can be had for under CDN$80 on amazon canada.

The one for the multiple favorites groups is presently in beta. I do not control and have no idea how long it will be before it is released to general public. It will include many other nice features like being able to backup your server info, favorites, etc.. also. Since it includes many new features, it won't be released tomorrow however. But for now, if you don't use favorites (considering you want to hide channels in other categories), you can use it as I describe in the second half of my 2nd paragraph above. That option has been there for some time now.

I agree with dishuser. Not the site to discuss shortcomings on 3rd party app. No clue why you'd buy a buzz box to run 3rd party iptv app. Check the tivimate forums for support on the app. And who designs software today and uses the "Huawei Mobile Services" core. Never seen that message.

Are you using the Regular Android Version of Prime Video, or or the Android TV one ? What is the App version number ? The 4900 is regular Android 9, but the U5 is using AndroidTV 11. Some apps (like Windscribe VPN, and I believe Prime Video) have Android TV specific apps. The Android versions "should" work, but the UI is far from optimal for TV. But maybe for Prime there is also something else. I don't have prime myself, but I believe the regular android version is at version 3.0.xxx ,but the Android TV version is at 6.10.xxx

No one said it can't be done. Everything can be done, it is just software. But keep in mind that there are often less than 100 categories, so pretty simple.. But there are services with 10000+ channels. Keeping a separate list of all these channels (9000 of which probably most will never watch), and having to flag each one as visible or not, is a little overkill. Not to mention that every time you load your LiveTV it would have to parse this list to then build a channel list of what is visible and what is not. Having the option to create more than one favorites group will allow you to create custom lists with as many custom categories as you want.. "My Networks, My Sports, My Movies, My P0Rn, etc.". Also, if you don't care or use favorites "groups", you can just flag all the channels you care for, and want visible, as favorites. Then when you are in the categories you choose (channel list or EPG), you can choose the green button to "sort", and then select "favorites" from the sort option. That way, if it is not a favorite channel, it will not be visible But seriously, blank channels ? That is not normal. having a few channels that are not streaming is perfectly fine. But blank channels, and a bunch of them.. Hmmm. I personally am browsing my "favorites" category 90% of the time, unless I am looking for some premium sports, or PPV events. Oh ya, or just channel surfing some of the Premium movie channels. Either way, I am not even going through channel list. I bring up the EPG, and then scroll up or down one page at a time to see if there is anything remotely interesting. Best thing buzz did on the remote was add the CH+ and CH- button to scroll up or down one page at a time. Much more convenient than using the arrows at the bottom left/right. And if paired with a decent service, the 5 Series of Buzz boxes are pretty damn quick at loading the EPG.

Bottom line, it depends on the server stream encoding. Since the server change on the service I had done my testing on, I have not encountered any streams that exhibit this behaviour any longer. It used to happen quite often, that out of habit, every time I use catch-up, I always use ffw and rew as I start to watch, just to see if it works normally (not to find out after first commercial, that I need to restart). But have not seen it with the new servers.

Actually, I have seen this on one of my main services. And after a lot of testing, it is the original stream from the service itself which has an issue. I was lucky enough to have it on a channel that also had catchup, and that is where I had first encountered the issue. Try to skip commercials and always restarting. Most other channels and streams were not an issue. Have you tried other channels ? I had tried it, using at least 3 different apps with various players and they all exhibited the exact same issue (at least on the catchup). I suspect it has something to do with the way the encoding embeds the video stream key frames. I had tried recording to see if it was just a catchup issue, but all recording of the affected channels was doing the exact same thing. Since the testing, the service I use had a major issue and completely redid all the servers and upgraded the whole service backend and panel (many here will know what service I am referring to). Since the server change, most of the channels streams that had these issues seem to have been corrected (can't reproduce). There was the odd one still, but they are not channels I typically use, so never bothered. The only thing I don't recall if I tested was switching stream type (HLS / TS etc..). Have you tried switching stream types ? IF server has the option it would be the last option on the bottom of the settings->configuration menu, You will have to restart the app for the change to take effect I believe.

eARC/ARC is completely irrelevant to what the box downloads and displays for EPG on the buzzTV5. That is a coincidence. ARC is "Audio Return Channel" and it is used to allow to transmit audio back from the TV for use with Receivers and Soundbars (compared to basic HDMI which is only 1 way audio). It has no bearing on the EPG. I suspect that your service was having issues with their EPG, and they have now fixed it. The EPG you had in your other app was probably previously cached data.