PVR Live with Android TV's Live Channel app on Amazon's Fire TV

I've been in recovery, I don't think I had the COVID-19 virus but I was ill enough to be bed-bound, I'm in lockdown like a lot of you are.

I asked you in my last YouTube video If you wanted to see PVR Live, (which is a really good app on Android TV that allows you to record IPTV), on the Amazon Fire TV.

The only caveat was that it works but, most of the subscription features like recording aren't available yet, the developer is actively working on a solution, it’s only a matter of time before you can record IPTV using PVR Live on Fire TV.

The reason for this is because it's not made for Amazon Fire TV, it's not currently in the Amazon store. You require the Play Store in order to pay for and use the subscription.

PVR Live is one of the best IPTV apps for Android TV, this becomes obvious quickly since it utilizes most of Android TV's features.

You also require the Android TV’s Live Channel app but that can be sideloaded easily which we will do below.

It’s a massive pain to get the Google Play Store on the fire stick, you would have to root it and flash Google apps, I can do that but it's a lot of pain and it's not as straightforward as you want it to be.

Amazon really went out of its way to stop you from doing that.

The Setup

So the first thing you gotta do is go to the 'My Fire TV' settings and then developer options, the most important thing you need to do with this is to allow unknown sources to be installed.

Turn that on and let's carry on with the rest.

The next thing you need to get is an app called ‘Send files to TV’. This is on the Amazon app store, so it's really easy to get and this will make your life really easy. There are other apps you can get but it involves typing and who wants to type on a TV?

The first app that we need is Android TV’s Live Channel app. Choose the first one in the list, this one should work for most Fire TVs, if not let me know in the comments.

If you keep scrolling down to the bottom, you’ll see PVR Live.

There's only one version that you can download, so go ahead and download that, a quick tip, this method may work on no-name Android TV boxes such as the STRENTER Android TV Box.

Once you've downloaded both of the APKs, go ahead and open up Send Files TV and do as the name suggests send the files to the Fire TV.

You can then go ahead and click on both of the files and install them one by one PVR Live and then the Android TV’s Live Channel app

Once you've installed both of those apps, you need to launch PVR Live first and then go straight to setup.

What's changed?

So since my last article about PVR Live, some things have changed.

A really cool feature made by Linus has now been implemented. You can now set your categories within the app itself. This means you don't have to edit your playlist in something like Xtreme Editor anymore. You can do it all in the app.

So first of all, what you gotta do is find a category within your playlist and then you assign it to a category that is supported by the Android TV’s Live Channel app.

It's really simple to do and here you can see we do it right now in the video below. I did it for a few channels

It's now ultra-easy to get all the categories you need for your IPTV playlist on PVR Live.

You can even assign a whole group in your playlist to a certain category, like entertainment. This makes life so much easier. Once you have assigned all the groups in the IPTV playlist to a category go ahead to the next step, on the Fire TV you don't need to do anything because the DVR function isn't available yet.

Go ahead and click done and your playlist will be imported into the Android TV’s Live Channel app, This will take a few minutes.

Once that's done PVR Live will be ready to use on the Fire TV just like I said earlier, this may work on Android boxes as well, you know the no-name ones that run full-fledged Android, they may even work better because they have the Google Play Store so it's worth trying it on there. I don't have one to test so let me know if it works for you.

Is it worth it?

You might notice it looks a little different on Android TV, it’s because with the subscription version of PVR Live you will see logos whereas, without it, you don't. It runs surprisingly well on the Fire TV, I'm using the 4k version and it's pretty smooth, it's not as smooth as the Nvidia Shield Pro but it's pretty close.

This will be ideal for a second bedroom. What I like about the 4k Fire TV is that it allows you to have Dolby Vision on everything you watch, including the menus - which makes everything a little more vibrant.

But just remember recording is not available on PVR Live on the Fire TV yet, so things like pausing live TV and forwarding and rewinding will not work until the developer figures out a solution. It's in the works, this will have to do for now.

If you're a fan of PVR Live it'll be a good idea to subscribe to the PVR Live subreddit, it's really helpful as everyone gets together to help each other and it's a growing community go check it out but if you have any issues you can either ask me on here on the discussion below or do it on Reddit.

I'm active in both locations, so don't hesitate to ask any questions.