Nuvio-test is now Nuvio Arc: same app, it installs over Nuvio-test and keeps all your settings.

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), chat at r/NuvioForks, and please don't report issues from this build to the official Nuvio GitHub or Discord.

The first Nuvio Arc release, and the biggest one yet. Builds on official NuvioTV 1.1.0-beta.5, with a big thank you to the NuvioTV team and contributors.

Five things lead this one: a new name and a new look, a Calendar with new-episode reminders, thumbnails that are now on for everyone and better in every way, remote buttons and a much smoother app on small boxes. Around them sit Silo's own sign-in, a safer watch party, your own names for media servers, Sort sources, much faster IMDb trailers, Dolby Vision on more TVs and a long list of fixes.

These notes cover everything since 1.1.0-beta-nt4.2, build 1461. The big features come first, everything else follows as short lines, and the things worth knowing before you update are collected near the end under Good to know.

The big five

1. Nuvio-test is now Nuvio Arc

A new name and a new logo everywhere: launcher icons, TV banners, the start screen, the menus, profiles, About, sign-in, the phone setup pages and the notification while an outside player is open. Same app underneath: it installs over Nuvio-test, still sits next to the official Nuvio, and keeps all your settings, profiles and sign-ins.

• The logo takes its colours from your theme, in all 15 themes including the new Copper and your own Custom colours, drawn pixel for pixel at every size. With Glass it is see-through glass with softly lit edges.
• A new intro: the Arc lights up. Currents swirl in, gather at the top of the logo and the spark runs down the fold, in your theme's colours, while Home loads behind it. Boxes with plenty of memory get it at full 1080p; small boxes like the Fire TV Stick play a lighter version so it stays smooth. Trailers on Home wait until it has gone.
• The intro has sound: an electric surge, a deep discharge into the logo and a warm settle as Home appears, in 5.1 where your system supports it. On by default; switch it off with Intro sound, right under Intro animation.
• A launcher icon for every theme colour, 16 in all, each with a matching TV banner. Changing the icon reopens the app straight away, and on Android 12 and later the start screen matches it. The mint icon that was called Emerald is now Mint. Some home screens, like Projectivy, take a few seconds to update their tile, and the Fire TV home screen always shows apps from outside the Amazon Appstore as a small square icon.
• A new main menu in Nuvio V2. Your profile at the top, your pages in one group in the middle, the logo at the bottom and a thin bar in your accent colour on the page you are on. On Home the picture runs right to the left edge under the open menu. The closed menu lines up with it, and the setting that hides its icons is now called Hide side icons (Settings > Layout > Sidebar & Navigation).

2. Calendar and new-episode reminders

A new page in the menu, right after Library, that shows when the next episodes of your shows come out: the shows you are watching, finished shows that are still running, and everything on your library and watchlists from Trakt, Simkl, MDBList and your Nuvio account.

• Times in your own time zone. A US show at 9 pm in New York shows as the next day here, and when no time has been announced it says so instead of guessing. Times come from Trakt when it is linked, otherwise from TVmaze, thanks to their free schedule service.
• What just aired and what is coming: the last 7 days, the next 30 day by day, then each show's next known date, as a list or a month view. Films on your lists show their cinema and streaming dates for your country.
• Reminders. Press the bell on a show and you get a "New episode" card on Home with Watch now, Open show and Later, plus a small corner message while you browse that never takes the focus. Nothing pops up while something is playing, and reminders wait an hour after airing so your sources can catch up.
• Coming up on Home: an optional row after Continue Watching with what just came out and what is next. Off by default: Settings > Layout > Home content > Coming up row.
• Hide any show from its menu (Menu button, or hold OK). Settings > Layout > Calendar takes the Calendar out of the menu, sets 14, 30 or 60 days and the time zone, turns the corner message off, adds your own lists and brings hidden shows back.

3. Thumbnails: on for everyone, and better in every way

If you never picked a thumbnail setting, seeking now shows thumbnails straight away, for every resolution. If you did, nothing changes for you. And they are better all round:

• Smoother seeking. Hold left or right and the position glides along and speeds up gently, right across a two-hour film in about 12 seconds. A lighter part of the bar shows how far you are going, and letting go lands on the frame the thumbnail showed. A single press still moves 10 seconds.
• More of them, sharper: a thumbnail every 10 seconds once a title is done (was 30; 4K remuxes and small boxes a little less often), bigger pictures, a finer scaler and no more banding in dark scenes. Titles you have played before have theirs ready straight away, with more room to keep them (up to 256 MB on big boxes, 128 MB on small ones). Thumbnails saved by earlier versions are made again the first time you play each title.
• They carry over between releases. Another release of the same title (different audio, subtitles or encode, same length, even PAL speed-up or black bars) shows its thumbnails straight away, after a check of three of its own pictures so a different cut never gets the wrong set.
• From your media server. When your Jellyfin, Silo or Emby server has made its own thumbnails, the player uses them, so they are there from the start and cost the box nothing.
• Thumbnails from a copy (Settings > Playback > Player Interface, off until you switch it on). When a 4K title has no thumbnails yet and your sources also offer a 1080p or 720p release of the same title, the thumbnails are made from that: about five times less to download, so even a Fire TV Stick can make them while the film plays. The copy can come from your media server, your TorBox list or TorBox's cache, Premiumize or a plain link, and Usenet titles get theirs from another copy so your NAS only has to keep the film coming. See Good to know for what this does on TorBox, Premiumize and Usenet.
• Kinder to servers and to the box: the app learns how many downloads at once each server is happy with, playback never waits for thumbnails, the "Generating thumbnails" screen fills several times faster, and the next episode's thumbnails get ready near the end of an episode.

4. Remote buttons

Give any button on your remote a job while you watch. New in Settings > Playback > Remote buttons: choose Set up a button, press any button and pick what it does, from playback stats, sources, subtitles, audio tracks and episodes to skip intro, start over, skips from 10 seconds to 10 minutes, speed, aspect ratio, watch party or the external player.

• Works with any remote: colour buttons, the Ugoos UR02's symbol buttons, number pads, your TV's own remote over HDMI, and buttons set up in tvQuickActions or Button Mapper.
• A starting setup that just works. Menu turns the playback stats on and off (handy on the Fire TV remote), Next skips the intro or plays the next episode, Channel up and down skip 5 minutes, the colour buttons open sources, subtitles and audio tracks, and the number keys jump through the video (5 = halfway). OK, the arrows and Back always keep their jobs, so nobody gets stuck. A short banner says what a button did, and each box keeps its own setup.
• The Search button on your remote opens Search from Home, Library, a title page or Settings.

5. Smoother, especially on small boxes

• Home scrolls much more smoothly, especially left and right and with an accessibility service such as Projectivy's switched on. The focus ring glides calmly along a row the same way in both directions, Up and Down keep your place across the rows, and holding a direction no longer hitches when the fast scroll starts and stops.
• Settings, Library, Search and Who's watching scroll smoothly on small boxes. The poster wall or artwork behind the page is painted once and reused: on a Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Settings > Appearance with Posters and Glass went from 2 % of frames on time to 96 %. Moving through the Settings menu no longer stutters, and the Supporter badge shimmers once and then rests.
• Smoother playback on 2 GB boxes such as the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. The automatic buffer is now 150 MB instead of 250 MB (1 GB boxes 100 MB, 1.5 GB boxes 125 MB, 3 GB and up unchanged), shrinks when memory is short and grows back when there's room, and with native memory on these boxes start with 2 parallel connections instead of 4. Android no longer has to squeeze the video into swap and close other apps, so a 4K remux on the Fire TV Stick drops fewer frames.
• Smoother 4K with parallel connections or custom buffers. Their download pieces used to sit in the app's Java memory, which on the AM9 filled to 96-99 %, so the player kept stopping for clean-up and the sound dropped out with it. They now use native memory, the custom buffer size follows the box's memory (about 1,000 MB on a 4 GB box, 250 MB on a 2 GB box), and a 4K Dolby Vision remux on the AM9 drops fewer frames.
• Steadier picture and sound: half a second of sound kept ready instead of a quarter, no more repeated-then-skipped frames when a frame falls between two screen refreshes, and faster AV1 on boxes without an AV1 chip, decoded with dav1d, the decoder Just Player uses (10-bit HDR AV1 is left to the box).

Silo, the Silo way

Adding a Silo server now offers Silo sign-in (recommended) next to the Jellyfin-compatible way. The TV shows a code and a QR code: sign in on your phone however your server is set up (password, Google or company sign-in, LDAP or Tailscale) and the TV signs itself in, even when the server owner has switched passwords off.

• Pick your Silo profile on screen, with its PIN if it has one, and change it later on the server's page. No more typing name#Profile. Over Tailscale it's one press: Continue as .
• Silo's own messages, and you stay signed in. When Silo turns a sign-in down, Nuvio says why in Silo's words. Silo's sign-in is renewed in the background, so you only see "Sign in again" when the server has really signed you out.
• Your Silo Home on Nuvio Home: your lists, curated lists, Trending, Next up and the rest, for the profile you picked. The Silo Home rows switch on the server's page turns them off.
• Silo libraries the Silo way: browsing, search, every season and episode, watched marks and Continue Watching straight from Silo, and movies-and-shows libraries split into two rows.
• Play the original file, so Dolby Vision (profile 7 too), TrueHD, DTS and Atmos reach the player untouched, with Silo's intro markers, subtitles and thumbnails, and progress back to Silo. Posters no longer go blank after a few hours, and plays Silo already sends to Trakt are not sent twice.
• Already have a Silo server? Nothing changes for it. Its page has a new Switch to Silo sign-in button that keeps its name and library choices.

A safer watch party

Every party now runs on a long random key that the app makes by itself, so nobody watching the public relays can read along by working out the code. You never see it: invites carry it hidden and your friends just press Join. The six-character code still works, and any box that gets in with it shows up in the host's member list. Only the host runs the party now, so "guests may pause and seek" really decides who controls the room; if the host leaves, the next member still takes over. Everyone in a party needs this version (see Good to know).

New

• Watched titles on Home: Show, Dim or Hide (Settings > Layout > Home content). Dim makes watched posters clearly darker and paler, Hide leaves them out of the Home rows and the banner. Continue Watching, Library and Search are not affected, and a show comes back when a new season airs.
• Your own name for each media server (Settings > Content & discovery > Media servers > your server > Display name), shown on Home, sources and in the player, and a switch to show or hide the server logos.
• Sort sources: Best quality first (Settings > Playback > Stream selection) puts the best link at the top by the same rules as Best Quality autoplay and hides links your Quality rules exclude.
• Support the Nuvio team, right from the start screen and the Account screen: what a Nuvio Supporter membership gives you, a QR code for nuvio.tv/support, and your supporter status when you are signed in (supporters get a one-time thank you on Home). The membership goes to the Nuvio team, and nothing is paid on the TV.
• Supporter themes are no longer hidden: they show with a lock and a Supporter tag. No thanks hides the button and the locked themes on this TV; bring them back with Support the Nuvio team suggestions in Settings > About.
• Supporter avatars in watch party for supporters. Friends with supporter avatars see yours, everyone else sees your initial, and the picture itself is never sent.

Changed

Media servers

• Silo sign-in takes the address you open Silo with in your browser, signs in Silo usernames with a # (name#1234#Profile), and only sends your password once the server answers as Silo, never by dropping from https to plain http. The sign-in screen says where Silo shows your username and profile (Settings > Connect Apps).
• Clearer sign-in messages instead of "Incorrect username or password" for everything: a missing profile or PIN, a temporary password, password sign-in switched off, too many tries, or a website address instead of a media server.
• A server that briefly answers "not found" is asked once more before the player moves to another source.
• A long pause keeps your place on Silo, Jellyfin and Emby: Nuvio tells the server every few minutes that you're still there.

Playback and sound

• A one-off tunnel stall no longer costs you tunnelled playback. The player reloads right where it froze with tunnelling still on; only a second freeze turns it off. Saved stalls clear themselves after 14 days and after each update, and Tunneled playback says why it's greyed out.
• The Speed button is always there, and tells you when the speed can't change.
• "Prefer app decoders" is for sound only now, so 4K AV1 no longer stutters in software with that setting on.
• Auto frame rate picks 120 Hz for films on screens without 24 Hz, never a rate that doesn't divide evenly, and no longer mistakes 23.976 for 24. TVs with 24 Hz choose as before.
• Picture and sound stay together after a short sound dropout, for decoded sound and passthrough alike (TrueHD and DTS-HD too), and lip sync settles straight away when your receiver changes mode.
• Decoded AC-3 no longer freezes at the end of a title on Fire TV devices with Fire OS 7 or older.
• Strip HDR10+ metadata no longer weighs on playback. Only frames that really carry HDR10+ are rewritten, and the picture is exactly the same. On the AM9 that means fewer memory clean-ups while you watch.
• When a source fails, the player no longer switches to a Usenet source by itself, because that starts a download on your NAS.

Buffers and network

• ExoPlayer native memory off no longer keeps the playback buffers in Java memory. The download pieces and custom buffers use native memory either way; the rest of native memory mode still needs the switch.
• Parallel connections can no longer free a download piece that is still being read (which could crash the app with native memory on), and they give their memory back when you leave the player.
• Buffer settings say what the app really does: new descriptions, what your box really buffers ahead, how many seconds Max buffer duration holds of a 4K remux, what the back buffer keeps, and Target buffer size says where stutter starts on your box.
• Managed memory budget is on by default, and the Device assessment leaves the buffer size to the app.
• The HTTP/2 switch is gone. I put it to a proper test on the AM9 and the Fire TV Stick against TorBox's Bunny servers, the only debrid servers I checked that offer HTTP/2 at all: it was no faster (with four connections HTTP/1.1 was level or ahead), and it was much harder on the box, throwing away about as much memory as it downloads. Parallel connections work exactly as before, and the Device assessment's connection test now measures the way the player plays.
• Quicker starts. Every new connection gets its first data about one round trip sooner (about 0.15 s to a US server, 0.3 s to one in Europe), which helps playback starts, catalogs, addons and artwork.
• Your keys stay out of the log. Addon configurations, debrid keys and TorBox tokens in links are now hidden in the app's log. Worth knowing if you ever share a log for help.

Playback stats

• Skipped frames show too ("0 · skipped 14"), and the dot goes by the worse of dropped and skipped, so a hitching picture no longer shows a green 0.
• A real temperature on more boxes, for example about 46 °C with "limit 50 °C" on the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, and the box is asked every 10 seconds instead of every second.

Everything else

• IMDb trailers start in about 3.5 seconds with Trailer source on IMDb, looked up straight from the IMDb id, at up to 4K. If IMDb has nothing at 720p or better, YouTube plays as before, and YouTube stays the default.
• No more "Choose your Nuvio experience" screen on first start. Everyone gets the full settings; see Good to know.
• Season tabs on Details get the same glass focus as the Play button, and the season you are in stays easy to tell apart.
• The libass Effects modes say they are heavy (they cost frames on 4K and turn off tunnelled playback). Nothing is taken away.
• Plugin and add-on confirmations follow the app's look, and screen readers read each Home card in one go.
• Removed: the Report buttons. They could never send anything from Nuvio Arc, so they're hidden. Please use this repo's Issues instead.
• All new text is translated into every language the app supports.

Fixed

Playback and sound

• No more error video in the middle of a film. A source that answered an early request with its own short error video (seen with Comet on Premiumize) could get it stitched into the real film, a bug that was already there in nt4.2. That can't happen any more. Error cards in films and episodes are caught sooner, and they no longer get thumbnails or count as watched on Trakt, Simkl or MDBList, and neither does any film or episode under 2 minutes.
• Tunnelled playback is no longer switched off for nothing: the tunnel check only steps in when the video is really tunnelled and waits for clear evidence, and on boxes that never report tunnelled frames the tunnel is no longer dropped 8 seconds into every video.
• A dead streaming server no longer means a quarter of an hour of spinner. With parallel connections on (and for MP4 files) the player notices within 6 seconds, asks the link once for a fresh address, and gives up after about 3 minutes.
• A source switch keeps your place instead of loading the start of the file first.
• Fewer restarts of sound and picture mid-film with Surround Format on Auto when a remote or keyboard wakes up, and passthrough stays for the film unless HDMI is unplugged or the receiver is switched off.
• Your receiver is no longer written off for Dolby Digital Plus or DTS-HD when another app was holding the sound output, and without surround the film starts with PCM about 6 seconds sooner, switching to passthrough once the output is free.
• Usenet and home-server streams get a minute to start, without the "video decoder may not be responding" warning while the server is still fetching.
• If the sound starts without a picture, the player restarts the video once before showing an error.
• No more silent switch to software video: a failed hardware decoder now tries the box's other hardware decoders first, so 4K no longer stutters on the processor.
• DTS Express plays in MP4 and TS/M2TS files (often the commentary track).
• Dolby Vision Auto converts DV7 on every Dolby Vision TV, so TVs with Android built in no longer stop with a decoder error. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max and the AM9 play exactly as before.
• The refresh rate follows a source or episode switch, also while the player is still starting and after a torrent switch.
• Seeking with the TV remote behaves like the box remote, and a held seek on TVs like LG no longer runs on to the end.
• Best Quality, a few gaps closed: sizes written as GiB, waiting for your stream preferences, and the best file in your binge group.

Thumbnails

• The "Generating thumbnails" screen no longer stalls at 2 % when the sound needs another try, comes up on a Dolby Vision film's first play, no longer jumps when ready, leaves the film paused when you come back to it, points to the right setting, and a failing source no longer trips the next one.
• Thumbnails rest while you are away and keep coming while paused, under the screensaver and after a busy server. A slow picture request no longer holds up the rest.
• Less wear on small boxes' storage (a 4K remux on a Fire TV Stick used to save up to a gigabyte an hour that was mostly thrown away), and a smoother seek bar while thumbnails are saved.
• Clear saved thumbnails asks first.

Subtitles

• Your first preferred subtitle language stays first when you pick a subtitle in your second or third language. A new language goes first and the others move down one place, and English (UK), English (Australia) and English (Canada) count as English.
• AutoSync says what really happened: no more "no embedded subtitles" when there are some, and on a slow server it waits longer and says it could not match.
• Subtitle delay works for ASS/SSA subtitles with libass, and libass rests when there is no ASS/SSA subtitle.

Home, Details and Settings

• A crash on Home when the same movie showed up twice in Continue Watching.
• Missing posters on Home fill in by themselves when the network comes back, and saved posters show even when their server is slow.
• With Trakt, watched ticks are there straight away when the app starts, and "Hide unreleased content" stays the way you set it.
• Coming back from a details page is smooth: no black flash, no menu flashing over the page, a Home row no longer slides along on its own.
• Left goes back on the details page, and "Finding best source" shows again after you pick your profile.
• Quality rules opens as its own page under Playback, every time, and Back returns to Stream selection. Without a debrid key it shows the rules that rank all your sources. Pages opened from a list start on their first row.
• Back from Plugins, Watch party and Media servers returns where you were, and Grid layout keeps your focus.
• The remote works on the profile page right after you first sign in.

Accounts and Dolby Vision info

• Premiumize can be connected again, with your Premiumize API key.
• Signing out now really clears your account settings, debrid keys included, and a full disk can no longer stop the app from starting.
• Media server sign-in ignores a stray space after the username.
• The Dolby Vision info tells the truth with Native FEL: the Source & hardware card reads your display in every mode, DV7 EL type shows which layers reached the picture, and empty values say "CLL/FALL not set".

From the official app (builds on official NuvioTV 1.1.0-beta.5)

The work of the NuvioTV team and its contributors.

• MDBList lists in your Library as their own tabs, with a new "Released" sort.
• Season tabs open with the current season in view, and trailers behave better full screen.
• Next episode with "Reuse binge group" starts sooner.
• Fewer player crashes when memory is short, landscape posters in more places, more buttons named for screen readers, and a newer torrent engine.

Good to know

• Watch party: everyone in a party needs this version. A box on an older version can't get in: it keeps waiting, and the host sees it as "needs the update". Update first (the app offers it when it starts).
• Native Dolby Vision FEL: for now this needs a Ugoos AM9 Pro on Android 14 running my custom FEL kernel, plus a Dolby Vision display. Stock firmware and other boxes can't do it yet, so there the mode simply behaves like Auto.
• Thumbnails are now on if you never picked a thumbnail setting. Turn them off or down with Seek thumbnails in Settings > Playback > Player Interface.
• No sound while another app holds the sound output? Some boxes, the AM9 among them, play no sound at all while another app (such as a player left paused in the background) holds it. Close that app and Nuvio Arc switches to passthrough by itself.
• If you turn on Thumbnails from a copy: a 1080p copy cached on TorBox but not in your list is added for the few minutes the thumbnails need and then removed; anything already in your list, or that you watch, is never removed. With TorBox the next episode can also show up in your list a little before you start it. Premiumize copies don't appear in your account but use a little fair-use allowance (about 200 MB per copy tried). A Usenet copy counts as a grab at most indexers, so it is used last and once per title. Real-Debrid is not used for copies.
• Premiumize: connect it again under Settings > Integrations > Connected services with your API key (premiumize.me/account).
• Launcher icons: the supporter colours (Gold, Jade, Rose Gold, Arctic Blue and Graphite) are for supporters, like the matching themes. Removed for non-supporters: Arctic Blue, Rose Gold and Graphite, which anyone could pick before. An icon you already use stays yours.
• If you picked Essential settings before, you're on Advanced now. Nothing you set is lost, and Settings > Advanced > Switch to Essential still works.
• Text that means this app now says Nuvio Arc, and About says updates come from the Nuvio Arc releases on GitHub. Your Nuvio account, Nuvio Sync, Nuvio Supporter and Support Nuvio keep their names, because they are the official Nuvio services.
• Had HTTP/2 on? Nothing to do: Nuvio Arc now plays over HTTP/1.1 by itself.
• Silo servers you already added keep working. Switch to Silo sign-in on the server's page whenever you like.
• Problems or ideas: this repo's Issues or r/NuvioForks, please not the official Nuvio GitHub or Discord.

Install

The update banner in the app installs this release for you. Or download the APK for your device below and install it over the top (your data is kept):

• 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 Nuvio-test and keeps all your settings, profiles and sign-ins, and still installs next to the official Nuvio. Version 1.1.0-nt.5, build 1485, 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-beta.5.
• 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.
• 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. Both are credited under Settings > About > Licenses & attribution.
• Source for this build: tag 1.1.0-nt.5 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.