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matburzy

*GUIDE* How to make ATV585 SOMEWHAT usable

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*GUIDE* How to make ATV585 SOMEWHAT usable

For starters, I really hate this device. It's really badly built and the firmware is really sluggish. From the day of purchase to this day I regret not getting a refund. As you may or may know, I recently got a bricked device, a punishment on trying to make the device somewhat usable - and I got a new one - not a refund. This means I'm stuck with this device.

Because the unit I've got from store is brand new - I also had to re-configure it again.  It literally drove me nuts, and from what I'm reading on this forum - most of you probably have given up on the device altogether.

Since this forum lack any guide to make ATV585 SOMEWHAT USABLE, I've decided to make a little guide for people who are unfortunately stuck with this junk of a device.

 

STEPS FOR THE BEST ATV585 EXPERIENCE:

1. Install new Lollipop update (beta), but beware - the update process is a nightmare. I tried to do this from the "upgrade app" and with USB pendrive and I was forced to power cycle the device at least a dozen of times, so prepare at least 1/4 of whole day for this process - and better do it with the "pin" with the device flipped option - like you would if you want factory reset.

The Lollipop has it ups and downs, it's a beta. It works like garbage, like the whole device, so it isn't any different - though the video is quite smoother on this firmware. But garbage is garbage so don't expect miracles.

2. Immediately UNINSTALL KODI 17.3. Yes - you read that right. Delete the app from the system and never use it again. If you absolutely, for any reason at all, must use Kodi (and not it's fork - mentioned below) - use Kodi 16.1 at max. Unless you want a headache and rage quits for a few days and broken nerves as I have - I regret even trying this piece of garbage.

I declare Kodi 17.3 on this firmware and on every Kodi box that isn't Xiaomi Mi Box / Nvidia Shield TV utter garbage. To MyGica defense - it isn't their fault - the Krypton is literally the most CPU/GPU/RAM hogging edition of all time. On ATV585 every video IS UNWATCHABLE and it doesn't matter if it's from local storage or streaming. Every video is 10-15 FPS AT BEST - even at standard  definition - the playback is really choppy, pan-shots in movies looks like the camera is teleporting every seconds, same with walking characters. It is literally absolutely unwatchable. And I don't mean BUFFERING PROBLEMS. Buffering is OK. The rendering of video itself IS NOT. 

Changing every single option, enabling/disabling hardware rendering didn't do anything. I even tried different builds - meant for FireStick TV - everything runs like a turtle.

There is "Kodi 17" craze at the moment, but the point is - you don't need it! With a little time, proper addons you can make Kodi 16.1 / various forks run the same content as Kodi 17 - even with HTTPS. I repeat - you don't need Kodi 17 - or Lollipop for that matter - but read on.

3.  After you removed the Kodi 17, go to Play Store and type "SPMC". Download and install SPMC. In other words - SPMC is just a "fork" - custom version of Kodi - it looks the same, it supports the same addons - it even supports HTTPS links but it runs LIKE A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER than Kodi 17, and even Kodi 16.1 for that matter.

4. After you boot up SPMC for the first time, prepare for a slowdown. What? It doesn't run better? You lied to us! No. I didn't - you just need to follow a few steps:

a. change skin from Re-Touched (Re-Touched is default skin to SPMC) to Mimic - download it and keep the skin to Mimic - it's the fastest skin for ATV585 from what I tried, it's even faster than the Confluence - seriously - it may not look hot, but believe me - do you need a thousand pictures of women and marijuana sign plastered on it to slow your ALREADY SLUGGISH DEVICE to a crawl? Yeah, me neither.

b. DISABLE DISPLAYING RSS IN OPTIONS. Do it now. The SPMC will run at least 50% better without those exciting RSS news.

c. Don't install builds (i.e. Ares) or something other - instead, choose a subtitle addon (OpenSubtitles is the absolute best and sufficient - and well, it works. As opposed to a thousand other addons that are advertised but only OpenSubtitles work...), a few video addons and that's it - don't do it redneck/douchebag/sports jock style with thousand addons and every icon is a piece of girl's ass with marijuana sign. Every single build will slow your device to a crawl - I tried every build I got my hands on and they all SUCK. Well maybe they don't. On a frickin' NVIDIA SHIELD TV THAT IS.

d. Try to disable thumbnails if you can, but it isn't absolutely necessary.

e. If you can, try to avoid "Bubbles" addon. It's really good addon, it has great links but boy is it slow. Waiting for something to load is like an hour..., "Covenant" and "Specto ... fork" performance was pretty good.

 

Mimic is a good, really snappy, miminalistic theme and you can customize it any way you want. If you want shortcut to favourites on your homescreen, you can't just add it with the skin editor. You must type "ActivateWindow(Favourites)" (without parentheses of course) - and you have Favourites on homescreen - voila.

BEWARE THAT AFTER UNINSTALLING KODI AND INSTALLING SPMC YOU CAN'T RUN KODI WITH GREEN "KODI" BUTTON ON REMOTE. That is because the remote is designed to launch the Kodi app and ... well your Kodi is now SPMC. But it probably isn't a big deal at all.

For controlling the SPMC I recommend the free app "Yatse" for smartphone - it runs on SPMC too, since it's basically Kodi. You have to enable "Enable control of this device by other devices" or something like that to work and type the IP of your SPMC in the Yatse app manually (if you're on Ethernet - that is - if you're on Wi-Fi it should find it on it's own).

5. Use Ethernet on ATV585. Wi-Fi is not the worst Wi-Fi I have seen, but it isn't great either. The funniest thing that it's literally touching the router... so imagine if it was in another room :-P.

6. Clean SPMC cache regularly.

7. Don't install OpenELEC distribution. It's fast - sure - even blazingly fast - but only limited to 720p output (I tried every combination on the planet and couldn't force it to run to 1080p) and the installation... well let's say, if you didn't got insta-brick, you may consider yourself lucky.

 

And for the YouTube. You have a few options:

1. Use SPMC (Kodi) addon - you can Cast videos from YouTube app on your smartphone + Yatse to YouTube addon on SPMC but it's really twisted (you have to use "Share" option in YouTube app on smartphone and then choose Play using Yatse - so it's annoying as hell) and when you are having party at your house, you seriously don't want to tutorial everyone in the house how to play a damn videos on TV, lol.

2. Use YouTube app - pre-built in ATV585 - YouTube runs... remarkably well. A thousand times better than it ran on KitKat - I give them that. But you can't cast anything, unless you are on the same Wi-Fi with smartphone and ATV585 which contradicts the point 5. of tutorial.

3. Use either YouTube in browser (slow and annoying) or better yet - Smart YouTube TV app - it isn't available on PlayStore anymore (damn Google) but you can d/load apk itself and use it just like YouTube on smart TVs - means you can use Cast! Finally. For security, install both beta and regular version, just in case this piece of garbage starts malfunctioning again.

4. The YouTube TV for Android TV apks are loading, but cannot play any videos - they just load and load and load and hang our friend, piece of garbage ATV585 so don't go there - I tried.

 

And finally - don't install more than a few apps on ATV585 - it only has a whooping 1gig of RAM, though I sometimes wonder if it's not 1 KILOBYTE of RAM given how "smoothly" it runs. SPMC, YouTube / Smart YouTube TV, maybe some Spotify and you're set. And of course - one app at a time can be run. If you run browser + YouTube it will probably level your entire house.

 

I am very dissatisfied customer willing to help another comrades in battle. If you have any questions, fire them in. If someone asks is it worth writing this stuff, then I say - probably it's easier to just dump the thing in garbage bin and forget about it.

PS.

Sorry MyGica. I know you work hard, but the device is just severely outdated by now.

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On 7/26/2017 at 8:33 AM, matburzy said:

*GUIDE* How to make ATV585 SOMEWHAT usable

For starters, I really hate this device. It's really badly built and the firmware is really sluggish. From the day of purchase to this day I regret not getting a refund. As you may or may know, I recently got a bricked device, a punishment on trying to make the device somewhat usable - and I got a new one - not a refund. This means I'm stuck with this device.

Because the unit I've got from store is brand new - I also had to re-configure it again.  It literally drove me nuts, and from what I'm reading on this forum - most of you probably have given up on the device altogether.

Since this forum lack any guide to make ATV585 SOMEWHAT USABLE, I've decided to make a little guide for people who are unfortunately stuck with this junk of a device.

 

STEPS FOR THE BEST ATV585 EXPERIENCE:

1. Install new Lollipop update (beta), but beware - the update process is a nightmare. I tried to do this from the "upgrade app" and with USB pendrive and I was forced to power cycle the device at least a dozen of times, so prepare at least 1/4 of whole day for this process - and better do it with the "pin" with the device flipped option - like you would if you want factory reset.

The Lollipop has it ups and downs, it's a beta. It works like garbage, like the whole device, so it isn't any different - though the video is quite smoother on this firmware. But garbage is garbage so don't expect miracles.

2. Immediately UNINSTALL KODI 17.3. Yes - you read that right. Delete the app from the system and never use it again. If you absolutely, for any reason at all, must use Kodi (and not it's fork - mentioned below) - use Kodi 16.1 at max. Unless you want a headache and rage quits for a few days and broken nerves as I have - I regret even trying this piece of garbage.

I declare Kodi 17.3 on this firmware and on every Kodi box that isn't Xiaomi Mi Box / Nvidia Shield TV utter garbage. To MyGica defense - it isn't their fault - the Krypton is literally the most CPU/GPU/RAM hogging edition of all time. On ATV585 every video IS UNWATCHABLE and it doesn't matter if it's from local storage or streaming. Every video is 10-15 FPS AT BEST - even at standard  definition - the playback is really choppy, pan-shots in movies looks like the camera is teleporting every seconds, same with walking characters. It is literally absolutely unwatchable. And I don't mean BUFFERING PROBLEMS. Buffering is OK. The rendering of video itself IS NOT. 

Changing every single option, enabling/disabling hardware rendering didn't do anything. I even tried different builds - meant for FireStick TV - everything runs like a turtle.

There is "Kodi 17" craze at the moment, but the point is - you don't need it! With a little time, proper addons you can make Kodi 16.1 / various forks run the same content as Kodi 17 - even with HTTPS. I repeat - you don't need Kodi 17 - or Lollipop for that matter - but read on.

3.  After you removed the Kodi 17, go to Play Store and type "SPMC". Download and install SPMC. In other words - SPMC is just a "fork" - custom version of Kodi - it looks the same, it supports the same addons - it even supports HTTPS links but it runs LIKE A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER than Kodi 17, and even Kodi 16.1 for that matter.

4. After you boot up SPMC for the first time, prepare for a slowdown. What? It doesn't run better? You lied to us! No. I didn't - you just need to follow a few steps:

a. change skin from Re-Touched (Re-Touched is default skin to SPMC) to Mimic - download it and keep the skin to Mimic - it's the fastest skin for ATV585 from what I tried, it's even faster than the Confluence - seriously - it may not look hot, but believe me - do you need a thousand pictures of women and marijuana sign plastered on it to slow your ALREADY SLUGGISH DEVICE to a crawl? Yeah, me neither.

b. DISABLE DISPLAYING RSS IN OPTIONS. Do it now. The SPMC will run at least 50% better without those exciting RSS news.

c. Don't install builds (i.e. Ares) or something other - instead, choose a subtitle addon (OpenSubtitles is the absolute best and sufficient - and well, it works. As opposed to a thousand other addons that are advertised but only OpenSubtitles work...), a few video addons and that's it - don't do it redneck/douchebag/sports jock style with thousand addons and every icon is a piece of girl's ass with marijuana sign. Every single build will slow your device to a crawl - I tried every build I got my hands on and they all SUCK. Well maybe they don't. On a frickin' NVIDIA SHIELD TV THAT IS.

d. Try to disable thumbnails if you can, but it isn't absolutely necessary.

e. If you can, try to avoid "Bubbles" addon. It's really good addon, it has great links but boy is it slow. Waiting for something to load is like an hour..., "Covenant" and "Specto ... fork" performance was pretty good.

 

Mimic is a good, really snappy, miminalistic theme and you can customize it any way you want. If you want shortcut to favourites on your homescreen, you can't just add it with the skin editor. You must type "ActivateWindow(Favourites)" (without parentheses of course) - and you have Favourites on homescreen - voila.

BEWARE THAT AFTER UNINSTALLING KODI AND INSTALLING SPMC YOU CAN'T RUN KODI WITH GREEN "KODI" BUTTON ON REMOTE. That is because the remote is designed to launch the Kodi app and ... well your Kodi is now SPMC. But it probably isn't a big deal at all.

For controlling the SPMC I recommend the free app "Yatse" for smartphone - it runs on SPMC too, since it's basically Kodi. You have to enable "Enable control of this device by other devices" or something like that to work and type the IP of your SPMC in the Yatse app manually (if you're on Ethernet - that is - if you're on Wi-Fi it should find it on it's own).

5. Use Ethernet on ATV585. Wi-Fi is not the worst Wi-Fi I have seen, but it isn't great either. The funniest thing that it's literally touching the router... so imagine if it was in another room :-P.

6. Clean SPMC cache regularly.

7. Don't install OpenELEC distribution. It's fast - sure - even blazingly fast - but only limited to 720p output (I tried every combination on the planet and couldn't force it to run to 1080p) and the installation... well let's say, if you didn't got insta-brick, you may consider yourself lucky.

 

And for the YouTube. You have a few options:

1. Use SPMC (Kodi) addon - you can Cast videos from YouTube app on your smartphone + Yatse to YouTube addon on SPMC but it's really twisted (you have to use "Share" option in YouTube app on smartphone and then choose Play using Yatse - so it's annoying as hell) and when you are having party at your house, you seriously don't want to tutorial everyone in the house how to play a damn videos on TV, lol.

2. Use YouTube app - pre-built in ATV585 - YouTube runs... remarkably well. A thousand times better than it ran on KitKat - I give them that. But you can't cast anything, unless you are on the same Wi-Fi with smartphone and ATV585 which contradicts the point 5. of tutorial.

3. Use either YouTube in browser (slow and annoying) or better yet - Smart YouTube TV app - it isn't available on PlayStore anymore (damn Google) but you can d/load apk itself and use it just like YouTube on smart TVs - means you can use Cast! Finally. For security, install both beta and regular version, just in case this piece of garbage starts malfunctioning again.

4. The YouTube TV for Android TV apks are loading, but cannot play any videos - they just load and load and load and hang our friend, piece of garbage ATV585 so don't go there - I tried.

 

And finally - don't install more than a few apps on ATV585 - it only has a whooping 1gig of RAM, though I sometimes wonder if it's not 1 KILOBYTE of RAM given how "smoothly" it runs. SPMC, YouTube / Smart YouTube TV, maybe some Spotify and you're set. And of course - one app at a time can be run. If you run browser + YouTube it will probably level your entire house.

 

I am very dissatisfied customer willing to help another comrades in battle. If you have any questions, fire them in. If someone asks is it worth writing this stuff, then I say - probably it's easier to just dump the thing in garbage bin and forget about it.

PS.

Sorry MyGica. I know you work hard, but the device is just severely outdated by now.

I have read your entire post, and I really appreciate the feedback and the suggestions you give to everyone else.

Sorry that you are not satisfied with your 585, but the version of 5.1 provided to us from Amlogic is all that we can work with really for the 585/600.

They have not updated it in almost 2 years, and have no plans to either.

The slowness of the box and running apps, I think is because of the OS itself and the low 1GB of ram.

 

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