Amazon Prime Video on Demand on Android TV Devices

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KingNothing81

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Oct 30, 2016
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The Amazon Video App that comes to the Shield TV will support 4K HDR. This was announced by Nvidia (but I doubt it will do 4K HDR on any other device).

The app will come to the Shield with a OTA update, which will probably be rolled out when the "new" Shield model will go on sale on 16. January (according to Amazon Shopping site). :)
 
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mr3p

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Oct 14, 2013
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with a little luck maybe new amazon app that comes to the shield will run on other android tv devices specifically xiaomi mi.
 
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Anmel

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Jan 5, 2017
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Amazon Video does not work with APK alone. In addition to APK, we need sony's AndroidTV "system/lib".
It is necessary to copy this to another device.
 
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EyeOfTheStorm

Senior Member
Feb 2, 2005
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KingNothing81 said:
It's not a matter of connection speed... The APKs from Sony TV don't deliver 4K on any other device than a Sony TV.

But there is Amazon Video support for Philips TVs too... Here is a post from a user who was able to install the app via Philips App Gallery. He got 4K (UHD) working with it. So you should try the Philips Version.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=70072732&postcount=535

If you can't install via App Gallery on your device, I would suggest that you write the user with the Philips TV a PM and ask if he/she can send you the APK from his Philips TV. Because there are no Amazon Apps available anymore on apkmirror and I don't know where you could get the Philips APK elsewhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Yes, Philips has an app. But it is old and clunky. It does not support 5.1 output. 4.1.70 does, but no 4K on philips TVs.
Is there anything new I can try? Do we have an extract from LG TVs somewere?
 
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KingNothing81

Senior Member
Oct 30, 2016
55
27
EyeOfTheStorm said:
Yes, Philips has an app. But it is old and clunky. It does not support 5.1 output. 4.1.70 does, but no 4K on philips TVs.
Is there anything new I can try? Do we have an extract from LG TVs somewere?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

LG does not use Android TV as OS ... So even if there would be an option to extract the app, you won't be able to use it on your device running Android TV.

Maybe you could try the upcoming Amazon App for the Shield that is expected to arrive with a OTA update this month. But I don't think this will do 4K on any device other than the Shield.

You should write to Philips Support and complain about the lack of 5.1 support. Maybe they will include a updated version with the next firmware update. I'm afraid this is your best chance to get 4K and 5.1 on your TV.
 
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pmgnet

Senior Member
Jan 23, 2008
1,251
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Atlanta
KingNothing81 said:
The Amazon Video App that comes to the Shield TV will support 4K HDR. This was announced by Nvidia (but I doubt it will do 4K HDR on any other device).

The app will come to the Shield with a OTA update, which will probably be rolled out when the "new" Shield model will go on sale on 16. January (according to Amazon Shopping site). :)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

This is great news! Are there any links for these announcements? My googling didn't find anything did good.

---------- Post added at 03:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:59 AM ----------
KingNothing81 said:
The Amazon Video App that comes to the Shield TV will support 4K HDR. This was announced by Nvidia (but I doubt it will do 4K HDR on any other device).

The app will come to the Shield with a OTA update, which will probably be rolled out when the "new" Shield model will go on sale on 16. January (according to Amazon Shopping site). :)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

This is great news! Are there any links for these announcements.

OK I did find this... No apks to try yet.

http://www.aftvnews.com/hands-on-with-the-amazon-video-app-on-the-new-nvidia-shield-tv/
 
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toot-217

Member
Nov 3, 2012
25
4
Just found the app on reddit: link

Installation on my mibox was no problem, even navigation in the app works fine (seems to be a problem sometimes according to reddit)

But when I start streaming something, an error message occurs which says, that the video can't be watched at the moment and I should try again later...

I hope there is a way to get this working :)
 
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Spikestrip

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Apr 14, 2012
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Same issue on Nexus Player. Perhaps we could pull some files from a Shield to make this work.
 
savagepagan

savagepagan

Senior Member
Jan 26, 2012
222
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RTP, NC
I got Amazon Video working for my Shield Pro TV with rooted Marshmallow using Amazon Video_4.1.115.apk after sideloading. It would not except my credentials when first logging in. So I rebooted the Shield and entered my login info with success. The only problem with streaming video is the volume is a tad low. It is on Reddit for Android TV.
Discussion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidTV/comments/5nw302/amazon_video_extracted_from_gen_2/?st=iy01s87y&sh=e723e47d
Apk link
https://mega.nz/#!JIVg2IhZ!ppQyN2QNXAlKu4F84YqsiAja4PFpbUMmiFLOq9_lW5c
 
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pmgnet

Senior Member
Jan 23, 2008
1,251
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Atlanta
All, there's a really good chance that Amazon Video will be more broadly available as of today. With the new NVidia Shield TV, there is a new nougat release which is/was also for older shield tv's (Same internals).
The new release includes a shipping Amazon Video app, full support. Once the APK is out (only get from a trusted source!) then others should definitely try this on other Android TV devices.

http://www.droid-life.com/2017/01/15/nvidia-shield-tv-android-nougat-update-50/
 
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mr3p

Senior Member
Oct 14, 2013
468
126
Miami
Loaded Amazon Video_4.1.115.apk at link above on Xiaomi Mi Box. As with prior versions, apk installs fine and you can scroll through app normally however when once a video is selected, spinning circle ends up with Amazon error message and fails to play. :( Maybe next version will be different.
 
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    will.blaschko
    will.blaschko
    Admin note: by the request of Amazon, we have removed the attached files. Please refrain from reposting. Thread closed.
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    17
    will.blaschko
    will.blaschko
    Full write up on the project here:
    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/prime-video-launcher-android-tv-solution-will-blaschko-ma

    Screenshots:
    AAEAAQAAAAAAAAP-AAAAJDRjZjg2Y2JiLWIwYjAtNGUzMy04NDliLTk2ZDhiZjBmZjNiNw.png

    AAEAAQAAAAAAAAYVAAAAJGU0MzdiNWQyLTUxZmMtNGQ2OS1iNzJhLTVjMjJlYzYxMTRmMQ.png

    AAEAAQAAAAAAAAbNAAAAJDNjZTU1ZmEzLTI3M2EtNGQxNC05ZmFiLTgwODQ2NDFhODcxYg.png

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    will.blaschko
    will.blaschko
    xaudiblex said:
    Its weird. The option has always been there and even if you toggle it, the quality still plays in SD. Ironically, if you play the same video, in the chrome browser, on the Shield TV, the quality is night and day better.
    Click to expand...
    Click to collapse

    I've figured out how to play the video in an embedded browser, would this be preferable to launching the Amazon app? It would significantly lower the dependency on the other APK, that's for sure.

    Maybe I can make it an option on first launch?
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    7
    H
    hardwarechaos
    Hi there
    paratox said:
    anyone have seen a working eu (de) version anywhere out there?
    Click to expand...
    Click to collapse
    Update of my TV got released yesterday and I just pulled this from my TV and did a quick test on my shield.
    Could login and it said that my sony got successfully connected. :D


    EDIT: Grab the APK at APKmirror
    Same MD5 as mine and they verified the signature.

    THX
    Chaos
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    6
    will.blaschko
    will.blaschko
    Kovs said:
    What about using the attached APK? This was the original one that worked on the Nexus Player (from the sony android tv) before Amazon changed something to disable it.

    Just a thought.

    Thanks again for all the work!
    Click to expand...
    Click to collapse

    Doing a quick decompile of that app (and ~20 minutes browsing).

    In MainActivity, this section is amusing (that error should never be thrown):
    Code: 
    signedAsExpected = true;
if (!signedAsExpected) { ... throw error... }

    Otherwise, it looks like the following issues are present:
    • The app is checking the signing key against a known signature retrieved from the web, I think this came up with previous development work (https://www.airpair.com/android/posts/adding-tampering-detection-to-your-android-app for a local example)
    • The app is checking the application version, Amazon could have set this to always return "expired"
    • The app is checking the device information, if the above is not true, this will have to be faked in some convincing way--either editing device properties (which could break other things) or changing the source
    • Decompiling and signing the APK again might break compatibility with x86 devices using Houdini to interpret ARM commands (I'm not 100% on how this works, exactly)

    I thought I could walk around this check, but even forcing a video to play (via the adb command "adb shell am start -n com.amazon.aiv.us/com.amazon.avod.playbackclient.EdPlaybackActivity -e asin B008Y7Y6QU") gives me a LICENSE_ERROR--I received a different error before logging in to Amazon. I think they just plain revoked the license distributed with this device (if we got around the signing issue, could we drop the mobile license in?).

    None of the other activities listed in the Manifest offer anything that seems immediately useful.

    Other points of interest:

    TLDR:
    It looks really unlikely that we'll be able to use the Sony TV app as the basis for further efforts unless we hijack calls to authenticate both the signing key (I'm pretty sure this is a remote check, not a local one) and maybe the license verification. Even then, we'll have to be able to find a compatible license (mobile app?) and put it into the APK.

    I don't want to repeat too much of the research that has already been done with this particular APK, but you'll find some of the efforts online, both in XDA and other places. Basically the app would require an entire rewrite plus some fancy local network tricks (beyond the layman's ability to sideload an APK). Efforts might be better off seeing if we can find and port the settings that allow 4k video into the mobile app--then again that information might be tied to the license.
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