Nuvio Arc is my experimental fork of Nuvio for trying new ideas, not a replacement for the official app. It runs on the same boxes and works best on stronger ones. It's a one-person hobby project: report problems or ideas in this repo's Issues (best effort) or at r/NuvioForks, and please don't report issues from this build to the official Nuvio GitHub or Discord.

Nuvio Arc 1.1.0-arc.2 is built on official NuvioTV 1.1.0, the same base as nt.stable. It installs over nt.stable and keeps all your settings.

A new name for Arc releases. From now on a release is called after the official version it's built on, plus a count of Arc releases on that base. nt.stable was the first on 1.1.0, so this one is 1.1.0-arc.2. When a new official version is merged, the count starts again at 1.

This one is about making Arc steadier, smoother, and faster. Thanks to everyone who sent a report from inside the app: most of the fixes below come straight from them.

The big ones:

• A host of performance improvements,
• Fewer "Arc isn't responding" freezes, on slower boxes above all.
• Arc starts lighter and no longer downloads your whole watch history every time you open it.
• Better crash and freeze reports, so the problems that are left can actually be fixed.
• Mixes start by themselves and stay out of Continue watching.
• Play from your own server first, a new switch for each media server.
• Smoother browsing on Home, mostly on smaller boxes like the Fire Stick, with an IMDb trailer when YouTube turns your box away.

Steadier and lighter

• Fewer "Arc isn't responding" freezes. With the Coming up row on Home switched on, Arc reread your whole Calendar every time watch progress changed, including every 90 seconds during a film, and on slower boxes like the onn 4K Pro that froze the app. That work now happens in the background, waits until playback stops, and only runs when something was actually watched or started. Scout no longer stalls the screen while it checks a long watch history, and the plugin system is no longer set up while the first screen is being drawn.
• Arc starts lighter. Opening Arc no longer downloads your whole watch history every time: within six hours of the last full download it only fetches what changed. Trakt, Simkl, MDBList and WeTrakr refresh one at a time a few seconds after Home appears, and only the ones that are due, instead of all at once while Home is loading. Trakt is no longer checked every minute while Arc sits in the background, and only every five minutes during a film.
• Fewer audio drop-outs on 2 GB boxes during big 4K films. Some boxes (the Xiaomi Box S among them) run their spare memory down to nothing without warning the app, and the sound could cut out while Android cleared space. Arc now notices this itself and gives back part of its read-ahead buffer until the box has room again, so a film keeps a bit less buffered on those boxes. If you set your own buffer size and turned "Shrink buffer when memory is low" off, your size stays.
• TrueHD skips less on 2 GB boxes. A TrueHD or TrueHD Atmos film sent to a soundbar or receiver could skip for a second whenever the box ran short of memory. On those boxes Arc now keeps a little over a second of sound queued, so a short stall no longer empties it. A film also no longer hangs at the very end after a seek into its last second (TrueHD and DTS-HD). Limit: on these boxes your soundbar or receiver may go quiet for a moment after a pause or a seek while it picks the Atmos signal up again. Boxes with more memory are unchanged.

Reports that say what went wrong

• Crash and freeze reports now carry the details. When Arc crashes or stops responding, the next report can include where it got stuck, the last screens you opened and Arc's last log lines. Links, addresses, keys, account ids and your media server's name are taken out, and you can untick the System trace row to leave the log out. Nothing is sent unless you press Send. Until now plain crashes arrived with no details at all. Crash reports now also work on Android 9 and 10; freeze reports still need Android 11 or newer.

Mixes and media servers

• Mixes start by themselves. A new switch on the Mix page, Pick sources for me, is on for all your Mixes. Press Play and each episode plays the first suitable source from your add-ons, even if you normally choose sources yourself, and Keep playing moves on without stopping at the source list. If nothing suitable turns up within your usual auto-play wait, the source list opens as before. If you choose sources yourself, earlier auto-play choices (only some add-ons, a name filter) aren't used for Mix episodes; if you already use auto-play, your own settings apply. Turn it off on the Mix page to choose every source yourself.
• Mix episodes no longer fill up Continue watching. An episode you watch from a Mix stays out of Continue watching, and so does the next episode it would have suggested, while the show keeps its normal Next up. Opening the Mix again offers the episode you stopped partway as Up next. Mix episodes still count as watched, still go to your trackers and still teach Scout what you like. Limit: this only knows about Mixes played on this box from this release on, so Mix episodes watched elsewhere or before this update can still come back through a tracker.
• Play from your own server first. Each media server has a new switch, Auto-play picks this server first, off until you turn it on (Settings > Content & discovery > Media servers > your server). With it on and auto-play on, any title your server has plays from your server, wherever you found it. Among your server's copies auto-play uses your own rules, and if none fits them it still plays the server's first copy. If the server doesn't have the title or can't be reached in time, auto-play picks as usual. If you choose sources yourself, the source list opens as before, with your server at the top.

Home and trailers

• Smoother browsing on Home, mostly on smaller boxes. When you paused on each title, Arc looked up a YouTube trailer for every one and tested about 20 connections each time, even after you'd moved on. Now the look-up starts about 1.2 seconds after you land on a title (it follows your card expand delay), stops the moment you move on, and tests two connections at a time. A trailer YouTube refuses is left alone for 10 minutes. Nothing about pre-loading was switched off. Home also does less work while posters load, remembers more between restarts and asks TMDB less on start.
• Trailers when YouTube turns your box away. YouTube sometimes answers a box with "sign in to confirm you're not a bot", and then no trailer played. Arc still asks YouTube first, but when it demands a sign-in Arc plays the title's IMDb trailer instead. Limits: IMDb trailers are HD only, can be a different cut, and a title IMDb has no trailer for stays without one until YouTube answers again.

Formats

• AVI files that stopped early or wouldn't seek now play to their real end and seek where you asked. Cut-off AVI files (an unfinished download) can still stop at the break.
• VC-1 films carry on after a network hiccup instead of ending with the VC-1 error.
• AV1 that won't start switches to the backup player by itself. 4K AV1 on a box with no AV1 chip will still be too heavy to play smoothly.
• Old XviD and DivX files are decoded by the backup player itself, instead of the box's chip, which garbled or froze some of them.

Smaller fixes

• Next episode starts searching before the episode ends again. Since Nuvio 1.1.0, when a few seconds of picture followed the end credits, the next episode card was skipped and the search only started at the very end. It comes up at your Next episode threshold again, so with auto-play on the next episode is found while the credits roll.
• The Calendar no longer shows next week's episodes as tomorrow for shows where TVmaze numbers the episodes differently from Trakt and TheTVDB.
• The thumbnails screen no longer counts up to 61 of 62 and then starts again from 0.
• The stats panel shows TrueHD Atmos for a TrueHD Atmos track, not just TrueHD.
• The TMDB rating shows as a whole number like the others, and the ratings row no longer breaks numbers over several lines in languages such as Polish.
• Backup PINs can be up to 16 digits, and the PIN screen says a longer PIN keeps your sign-ins safer if someone copies the backup file. Older backups still restore. The backup phone page also closes when you press Home.
• Floppy asks you to sign in again when an older Floppy server rejects your sign-in, instead of failing quietly.
• Diagnostics no longer says HDR10 for an ordinary SDR film on a TV without Dolby Vision. The picture was never affected.
• The Skip silence setting now warns that the picture can stutter while quiet parts are skipped.

Download

• app-full-arm64-v8a-release.apk for most current boxes (Shield, Ugoos, Google TV).
• app-full-armeabi-v7a-release.apk for the Fire TV Stick and other 32-bit devices.

Nuvio Arc installs over earlier Nuvio Arc and Nuvio-test builds, keeps all your settings, profiles and sign-ins, and still installs next to the official Nuvio. Version 1.1.0-arc.2, package com.nuvio.tv.test.

Licence and attribution

GPL v3.0. Upstream copyright headers, licence text and developer attributions are preserved.

• Upstream: NuvioMedia/NuvioTV, including compatible changes through 1.1.0.
• The surround passthrough engine is ported from pull request 3107 in the official app by halibiram, with ram130. Media servers build on pull request 3728 in the official app by tapframe.
• Atmos detection in MKV files is by HeliumMarcos (halibiram#47).
• Floppy and the original tracker design are by dannyvfilms (NuvioMedia/NuvioTV#3811).
• The idea for Mixes comes from TV Mix in Nuvio-ReSeq.
• AV1 software decoding uses dav1d by VideoLAN and the dav1d authors (BSD 2-Clause), with cpu_features by Google (Apache 2.0). Calendar episode times come from TVmaze and TheTVDB (metadata provided by TheTVDB). Subtitle fonts Roboto, Montserrat, Noto Sans and Asap Condensed are under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. All are credited under Settings > About > Licenses & attribution.
• Source for this build: tag 1.1.0-arc.2 in this repository.
• Nuvio Arc is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NuvioTV project.

Nuvio Arc is built on Nuvio. If you enjoy it, support the Nuvio team at nuvio.tv/support.