My TV Player and TiviMate: different platforms, and one shared idea
They do not compete for the same device, so this is not a purchase decision. It is worth reading for what TiviMate got right and what we took from it.
These 2 applications do not run on the same hardware, so if you are trying to choose between them, the hardware has already chosen. TiviMate is an Android TV, Fire TV and Google TV application. We ship Windows and Xbox.
So this is a comparison of approaches rather than products. That is more useful than a feature table would have been anyway.
What TiviMate established
Our own internal strategy document, written for ourselves before we wrote anything for you, names TiviMate as winning on user experience, guide handling and Android TV performance. That is our assessment and it is not a neutral one. It is not a diplomatic gesture either.
The thing it got right, which the whole category now copies, is that a television interface is not a small desktop interface. A channel list you can cross quickly with a directional pad. A guide grid that stays readable at 3 metres. The assumption that the remote has 5 usable buttons and everything has to fit inside that.
We took that seriously enough to measure it. On a real catalogue, crossing 373 category rows with a paging button takes 42 presses. A letter-jump on the triggers brings walking every initial down to 20, and covering a 4,000 title grid to 14. Those numbers are why our console build binds the triggers the way it does, and the underlying idea is TiviMate's. Navigating with the Xbox controller is the map that came out of it.
Where we went differently
One decision, and everything else follows from it.
TiviMate is a device application. You configure your playlist on the device, and a second device is configured again.
We made the account the unit. Sources, profiles, favorites, channel order and resume points live on an account, and devices read them. The console's sources screen says so about itself: read-only, synced from the web console.
TiviMate My TV Player
platforms Android TV, Fire TV Windows, Xbox
Google TV
configured on the device a browser or the Windows app
second device configure again already configured
TV sign-in enter details pairing code and QR
The clearest consequence is onboarding. Our console sign-in is an 8 character code and a QR: the television shows it, polls every 3 to 30 seconds, and signs itself in once you enter the code somewhere with a keyboard. Nothing is typed on the television.
That is a different bet rather than a criticism. A device application is simpler, has no account, and works with nothing on the other end. An account application costs you a sign-in and buys you never setting the same thing up twice.
Where we are behind
Specifics, because a comparison that only lists our advantages is not worth reading.
TiviMate is mature on a platform it has had for years. Our console app is newer and it shows: catch-up has no console page yet, HDR output and audio passthrough are not emitted on that build at all, and 7 management destinations are placeholder screens. Our memory profile is unfinished too, and the number surprised me when I first read the report: a 12 minute browse session ended at 918 MB against a 400 MB budget and peaked at 1,080 MB, with the growth native rather than managed.
We also have no Android build. Android TV and Fire TV are on our platform plan, at zero. If your television is an Android TV, we are not an option today and TiviMate is a good one.
If you have both kinds of hardware
Use each on its own platform. There is no technical conflict, because both read the playlist you supply and neither owns it. Your provider does not care how many players you use, only how many simultaneous connections you open.
That last point is the one to watch. Two players on 2 devices against a 2 connection line is your whole allowance. Max connections covers the accounting.
On the paid tier question
TiviMate has a free tier and a paid tier, unlocked through a separate companion application rather than an in-app purchase. We will not state prices for either product: they vary by region, they go stale, and a comparison article is the worst place to record a number that changes. Compare the current pricing pages when you decide.
What is worth comparing is what the money is for, and the answers differ in kind. One is a one-off unlock of features in a player. The other is a service that keeps state across devices, and whether that is worth anything depends entirely on whether you have a second device.
Everything here about TiviMate comes from its own distribution listings rather than from our testing, checked on 2026-09-01, and we did not read those pages directly in this session. Check them before relying on any of it.
What this article measured22 claims, each with the evidence behind it
| Claim | Evidence | Counted |
|---|---|---|
| TiviMate is an Android TV, Fire TV and Google TV application, distributed through Google Play and the Amazon Appstore. It has no iOS, Windows or Xbox build, and it is designed for remote control navigation rather than touch.TiviMate's Google Play listing, package ar.tvplayer.tv, which presents it as an Android TV application, together with the absence of any iOS, Windows or Xbox build from its distribution channels. | Specification | Not applicable |
| TiviMate has a free tier and a paid tier, with the paid tier unlocked through a separate companion application rather than through an in-app purchase in the player itself.TiviMate's own distribution model as described on its Google Play listing and its companion premium application. | Specification | Not applicable |
| We ship native Windows and Xbox clients from one codebase, with a web console for management, and no Android build today. | n = 1 | Aug 31, 2026 |
| Sources, profiles, favorites, channel order and resume points live on an account and sync to every device, rather than being configured per device. | n = 1 | Aug 31, 2026 |
| Console sign-in is a pairing code and a QR code, polled from the console, with no credential entry on the television at any point. | n = 1 | Aug 31, 2026 |
| Ten-foot navigation on a large catalogue was measured in our prototype: 42 presses of a paging button cross 373 category rows, against 20 trigger presses to walk every initial, and 14 to cover a 4,000 title grid. | n = 1 | Aug 31, 2026 |
| Our console app has no catch-up page, no HDR output and no audio passthrough, and seven management destinations are placeholder screens. | n = 1 | Aug 31, 2026 |
| Android TV, Fire TV and Android mobile are on our platform plan at the highest non-current priority and at zero percent, so the platform gap is acknowledged rather than disputed. | n = 1 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Thirteen kinds of account state sync between devices on our side, which is the concrete content of the account model this article contrasts with a device model. | n = 13 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Our console sign-in has no credential path at all: the flow starts a session, shows a code and a QR, and polls until claimed, with five possible endings. | n = 5 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Ten-foot focus growth has to be paid for inside the scrolling area: a poster scaled 1.06 from its bottom edge grows about 23 effective pixels upward, the lift adds 10 and the ring 4. | n = 1 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Every console screen carries a mandatory hint bar generated from the page view model, so the button map is never something a viewer has to remember. | n = 1 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Our console head scales typography 25 percent and shows fewer items per row at every surface, which is the same 10-foot discipline the Android TV designs established. | n = 8 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Where we have spent engineering that a feature list will not show is failure classification: nine fault classes, each with its own persistence window and recovery rung. | n = 9 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Multiview reads a source's connection allowance before assigning a tile rather than starting streams a portal will refuse, which requires knowing a playlist is a provider line. | n = 1 | Aug 15, 2026 |
| Search is registered on the shell rather than on any page, so it is reachable from every zone of every screen and returns to whatever summoned it. | n = 1 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Our own memory profile is unfinished: a 12 minute browse session ended at 918 MB against a 400 MB budget and peaked at 1,080 MB, with the growth native rather than managed. | n = 3 | Aug 30, 2026 |
| We ship 2 platforms today against a plan of ten, so reach is the axis on which we are behind rather than ahead. | n = 1 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Both products occupy the same stated positioning, and our own documentation names the other among the products holding it: the user brings their own playlist and the application supplies none. | n = 1 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Repeated rebuffering raises our player's own caching floor by 1000 milliseconds per verdict to a 5000 millisecond ceiling, counted with hysteresis so segment-boundary wobble is not read as a fault. | n = 4 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| A provider ships no hierarchy, so the category list is required to stay flat: two categories sharing a name prefix are unrelated, and grouping by prefix is explicitly forbidden. | n = 1 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Our own internal product strategy names TiviMate's user experience, guide handling and Android TV performance as its strengths, and describes the gap we aimed at as cross-platform reach rather than interface quality. | n = 1 | Aug 31, 2026 |