I received my Nexus Player about a week ago, and although I haven’t dug much into it just yet, I did get XBMC/Kodi installed and synced with the Kodi MySQL database on my media box, along the way discovering some interesting stuff about the device, so I felt the need to document them before I forget.
Wifi
Although the Nexus Player does have 802.11AC and is 5Ghz capable, I had a hell of a time getting it connected to my 5Ghz network, even though it did show up and appear to connect for a split-second before my Player received an OTA that immediately rebooted the box. Since then, and until tonight, it would only see my 2.4Ghz network. Tonight I figured out this is due to the security settings: It seems the Nexus Player currently doesn’t detect any WPA2-only networks, the networks must be WPA/WPA2 (or as my Asus AC-56U puts it, WPA-Auto-Personal) in order for the Nexus Player to connect to them. Not that this is a huge issue, as I only enabled mandatory WPA2 on my 5Ghz network to be cool and eliminate some of the various WPA attack vectors, and such attacks don’t matter around an apartment complex with literally dozens of other networks though.
Classic Android Stuff
Even though the Nexus Player and Android TV as a whole are uniquely different markets and form factors from tablets and phones, the Android TV ‘branch’ of Android includes all the usual hidden features and easter eggs that regular devices have. This includes:
- In Settings->Device->About, clicking Build Number repeatedly (6 times or so) enables Developer Options, which is then located under the Preferences subheader in Settings.
- I needed to exit and re-enter Settings in order to for Developer Options to appear.
- In Settings->Device->About, clicking Version repeatedly will give you Android’s version-specific easter egg, for Lollipop it is a neat little Flappy Bird clone.
You can expect additions to this post, especially on how I got Kodi installed and setup, once I’ve ran back through it all.