Why did I create a WTV Android TV app when there’s an official app? Good question, I’m glad you asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2023 I had a good look around and was unable to find any WTV app for Android TV. I started a proof of concept, but because I wanted to do it “properly” with WTV login for accessing on-demand content, I quickly ran into trouble and gave up (and due to time constraints). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few months ago<\/a>, I picked the project up again but lowered the bar by only supporting live stream which is the most important use case for me anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, I made the mistake of not properly scouting the current ecosystem. I did so in 2023, but this time I only checked WTV’s website and the app store. Nothing to be found for Android TV, so I thought everything stayed the same (I figured they wound’t have the budget or something). But later, when I searched the play store for my app on an Android TV itself for testing, I discovered there does exist an official app now! When I check the Play store metadata, it does indeed mention a publication date of Sep 27, 2023. Although, badly advertised, if I may say so 🙊 In March 2025: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nowadays, you can search the play store for a different type of device than the one you are currently operating. That way you can find the TV app more easily, but I forgot to check that and I also guess a lot of people don’t know about this. At the very least, nobody expects that an app that cannot be installed on Android TV, still has a TV sibling app (under a different app id). There is no technical reason (at least not today), so I still think they should at least “merge” the listings. It would boost visibility of the TV app in a huge way while making it much easier to install from a different device (browser or mobile\/tablet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the meantime, I noticed they updated the website to include a “Smart TV” button. On the live stream, they also started to advertise the TV app. So it seems progress is being made. 😊<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given how I already had a working app and found my app a little more snappy, I decided to go ahead anyway. I also like to use it on my tablet. Before, I had good hope that my app would survive as there was no alternative. Given there is already an official app now, I can only hope the RMM (the company behind WTV) will allow my app to exist. If something would be non-compliant, I’m happy to make any required changes though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If anything, it was a fun experiment trying to use flutter on Android TV!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why did I create a WTV Android TV app when there’s an official app? Good question, I’m glad you asked. In 2023 I had a good look around and was unable to find any WTV app for Android TV. I started a proof of concept, but because I wanted to do it “properly” with WTV … Continue reading Official WTV app also available 🙃<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-android","category-focus-wtv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1119,"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions\/1119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattiesworld.gotdns.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n