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.

A big one for your remote and your sound. Builds on official NuvioTV 1.1.0-beta.7, with a big thank you to the NuvioTV team and contributors.

The highlights: a second job for every remote button, pause and find your spot with the thumbnails, no more Dolby badges every time you seek, much faster films from far-away servers and Continue Watching on your Android TV home screen, plus Ambient Mode from the official app and a long list of fixes.

Everything since 1.1.0-nt.5.1 is here. There is no nt.6: the number now follows the official beta, so beta.7 makes this nt.7.

New

• Hold a remote button for a second job. In Settings > Playback > Remote buttons every button can now have a hold job as well as its press job, and Up and Down can take a job while the player controls are hidden. Buttons without a hold job stay instant, your saved setup carries over, and holds work with TV remotes over HDMI too.
• New remote job: Show details. It pauses and shows the title, synopsis and cast, even with the Pause overlay setting off. Press it again or Back and the video plays on if it was playing. (#23)
• Continue Watching on your home screen. On Android TV and Google TV a "Nuvio Arc: Continue Watching" row shows the same titles as the app's own row, and a click resumes the title. The Watch Next row follows the same list, and home screen links open the right page on new installs and new profiles too. Nothing changes on Fire TV. (#10)
• Choose how long the thumbnails screen waits in Settings > Playback > Player Interface > Thumbnails before play: Full as before, Faster for half as many thumbnails, Fastest for a quarter, and the rest are made while you watch. On a Ugoos AM9 Pro a 2 h 10 m film was ready in about 61 s, 42 s and 27 s at 1080p, and 33 s, 17 s and 14 s as a 4K remux.
• Card icons and banners. Two new looks for every icon colour in Settings > Appearance > App icon & banner: Card (the Arc symbol and NUVIO Arc on a dark card) and Card lettering (a small symbol above NUVIO Arc in the colour's gradient), with a Transparent background switch for launchers like Projectivy. Every banner, Classic included, now also comes in a crisp 4K size. Supporter colours stay supporter-only.
• Big AVI files play in Arc's own player. AVI files over 1 GB (OpenDML) now play to the end and seek anywhere, and AVI files that pack picture and sound in small groups no longer stop the moment they start. Thanks to the user who sent the samples.
• Episode synopsis on the Nuvio V2 series page, under the episode row as you move along it, without the page jumping. Turn it off in Settings > Layout > Detail page > Episode synopsis under the row. (#14)
• Hide the source badges on the details page with two new switches in Settings > Playback > Auto play: Source badges on the details page and Release group on the details page (just the group's name). With the badges hidden you still see the spinner, then a tick with Ready once the best source is picked. Both are on by default. (#4)
• Whole track names in the audio list, over up to two lines with codec, channels and sample rate below, so commentary and descriptive tracks are easy to spot. Tracks the file only marks as commentary or audio description get a label, and long subtitle names get two lines too. Thanks to the user who reported it.
• Your position in the playback stats, like "Position 1:02:15 / 2:10:14", also for live channels and with the MPV engine.

Better

Playback and streaming

• Pause, then find your spot with the thumbnails. Pause with OK and Left and Right step 10 seconds along the timeline with the thumbnail showing while the picture stays put; OK plays on from there. A quick press now always moves at least 10 seconds, even in files with far-apart keyframes like many remuxes, and on TVs that send each press twice over HDMI both quick presses count. (#12)
• Much faster films from far-away servers. On a Fire TV, Android kept a far-away server under 30 Mbit/s, too slow for a 4K remux. Nuvio now asks for a bigger download window where the box allows it: on a Fire TV Stick 4K Max a 4K remux from TorBox in Europe went from 28 to 86 Mbit/s and from 23 buffering stops in three minutes to 6, and one from Premiumize in North America from 35 to 73 Mbit/s and from 22 stops to 1. Nearby servers play as before.
• Automatic speed-up, now on every box. When a film runs short, Nuvio adds extra downloads one at a time, keeps only those that really help and lets them go once plenty is buffered: up to 4 on 2 GB boxes, 5 on 3 GB and 6 on 4 GB and up, handing one back when memory gets tight. They borrow their memory from the buffer instead of adding to it. On a stock Ugoos AM9 Pro a TorBox film from Europe went from 46 to 85 Mbit/s and from 31 stops to 2; on a 2 GB box without the bigger window, one download from a far server gave 7 to 26 Mbit/s in my tests, four gave 28 to 107. Find it in Settings > Playback > Buffer & network > Automatic speed-up. Custom network, when on, still uses your own settings.
• Custom network goes further: up to 16 connections with ExoPlayer native memory on (8 otherwise) and chunks up to 128 MB, capped at what your box's memory can hold, now on 4 GB boxes like the Ugoos AM9 too.
• Smooth playback with lots of addons. Sorting the badges of thousands of streams could keep a box busy for minutes into a film, enough to stutter. Badges are now worked out only when you open the player's sources list, and the work no longer balloons, on the Streams screen too.
• Managed memory budget off now keeps your own buffer size. With Custom playback buffers on, the buffer shrank whenever memory was short and on a 2 GB TV often didn't grow back. It now only shrinks when Android is about to start closing apps, and comes back in full afterwards. Thanks to the user who sent the logs.
• Small boxes keep some memory spare. On 2 GB boxes like the Fire TV Stick, the thumbnails screen hands a 4K remux over to playback before memory runs out, thumbnails stop making new pictures during a 4K film when memory runs low, and Automatic speed-up stops adding downloads when memory is nearly gone.
• The next episode stays on the same source. Auto-play next episode and Prefer binge group now look first at the addon and debrid service that played the last episode, so a TorBox show stays on TorBox. In Manual mode other sources are only used with Fallback when binge group fails on; otherwise you get the source list. Thanks to the user who reported it.
• The stream test runs as many downloads as playback with Custom network on, so its suggestion matches what you get.
• Your addon's own stream text is back in the player's source list, like on the Sources page, language and all. (#25)
• Watch party guests always play in Nuvio Arc, whatever the Default Player, because an outside player can't follow the party. Open in external player in the player's menu still works.
• The native Dolby Vision FEL option says what it needs (see Good to know).

Home and start-up

• The app opens on one continuous picture. On Android 11 and older (like the Fire TV Stick) the Arc mark shows from the moment you tap, in your icon's colour, and the intro builds its light around it. Android 12 and newer keep their own start icon for now.
• The intro plays on slower boxes too, and in the first days after an update, instead of giving up on a silent still logo.
• A calmer Home hero. Moving quickly along a row no longer flashes a zoomed-in or wrong picture: the background fades across once the next one is ready, titles show sooner and stay readable while a logo is slow or missing, and nearby pictures are ready before you get there.
• Home keeps up with huge catalogs. On a box with almost 22,000 titles every Home update took 12 to 13 seconds; the hero now needs a small fraction of the work, and a newer update stops the older one. With Hide unreleased content on, every Home is a little quicker too.
• Nuvio V2 poster cards match the Original look's size. Where V2 scales the interface down (most 1080p boxes, the Fire TV Stick too) Large was showing as Compact, also in Search, TMDB browse, cast pages and the details page rows. (#7)
• Coming up takes in the Upcoming row. With Coming up on and Continue Watching's Sort order on "Separate Upcoming row", upcoming episodes show in Coming up instead: one card per show, sorted by air date, with the show's backdrop, and new backdrops arrive together. With Coming up off, nothing changes.
• Calendar backdrops on every box, also on the Performance visual quality the Fire TV Stick and most TV boxes use.
• Daily catalogs refresh their posters, so top 10 lists with the rank drawn in no longer show yesterday's picture for up to a week. Pictures from TMDB, Cinemeta, fanart.tv, TVDB and IMDb are still kept for a week, so Home stays just as quick.

Fixed

• No more Dolby badges every time you seek. With TrueHD or Atmos going to a receiver or soundbar, every seek and pause briefly stopped the HDMI sound, so the TV or soundbar flashed its Dolby Vision or Atmos badge again. The sound now keeps running through seeks, pauses and short buffering stops, with silence in the gaps, and sound comes back together with the picture after a long seek instead of a second or more later. For TrueHD (Atmos) through Nuvio's own passthrough; System Passthrough and Dolby Digital Plus are unchanged for now. (#19)
• A long press of OK or play/pause no longer undoes a pause. (#17)
• OK pauses again after you leave a menu, instead of reopening Subtitles or Audio. (#33)
• The Default Player choice is back at the top of Settings > Playback > Player: Internal, External or Ask every time. (#21)
• Passthrough comes back after a short HDMI drop. When the TV switches inputs and back, TrueHD and DTS-HD passthrough return on their own instead of staying on the system output.
• New episodes of shows you've caught up on come back into Continue Watching without a force stop. Thanks to the user who reported it.
• No more blank loading screen when you resume from Continue Watching with Reuse last link on; it opens the player every time. Thanks to the user who reported it.
• Your place is kept when a stream hiccups. A short "not available" clip from a retry could save its end as your progress, sending a film back to 2 minutes, on Trakt and Simkl too. Such clips no longer save progress, mark anything watched or count as finishing the title; the app opens the source list and the next source picks up from your real position.
• Media servers: auto-play into the next episode works when your Jellyfin, Emby or Silo account allows only one stream at a time, instead of stopping with "The server doesn't support this item". Thanks to the user who reported it.
• Skip intro stays up its full 10 seconds with Android's animations set to Off in Developer options. (#16)
• With slowed or no animations, the display mode badge and the parental guide leave on time, the badge no longer gets stuck when the display mode changes, and the loading circle no longer freezes. The still logo no longer blocks the remote while it fades out.
• Thumbnails pick themselves up again. If the thumbnail decoder failed to start once, thumbnails stayed off until the app was closed; now they try again on a later title, and a slowdown from a busy server no longer follows you into the next title.
• Thumbnails on 3 GB boxes like the Shield and Sony Google TVs: the thumbnails screen before a 1080p film now needs less free memory, so it makes thumbnails in more cases.
• The Thumbnails percentage no longer sits on top of the Sources panel, the player menus or Show details, and the thumbnails screen's timeline ends at the film's length on 1080p films.
• Calendar: no more missing shows after a slow start of Trakt, Simkl or MDBList, and opening the Calendar while it refreshes works.
• Profiles: the avatar picker's All tab shows all avatars, focus stays inside the profile editor, and see-through avatars (like the whale) fill their circle without a grey placeholder.

From the official app (builds on official NuvioTV 1.1.0-beta.7)

The work of the NuvioTV team and its contributors, from beta.6 and beta.7.

• Ambient Mode, a new screensaver with backdrops from your catalogs (Appearance > Screensaver, off to start with).
• Media servers: mixed movie and show libraries show up, search gives one Movies and one Series row per server, genre-only libraries (like AIOStreams catalogs) open, and one broken library no longer empties the search.
• Player: subtitles move up above the controls, the Skip button and the next-episode card; OK on the progress bar pauses and plays; Info opens and closes stream info; AutoSync works for add-on subtitles on mpv.
• Episodes: long descriptions scroll, Left and Right step through episodes in the episode options, episodes rated 9.7 or higher stand out, the next episode looks for the same release first, and post-credits autoplay works again.
• Trailers: the details page fills the screen during trailers, and YouTube trailers back off when YouTube limits requests (IMDb trailers are not affected).
• Continue Watching holds still while you watch, custom posters show on the Android TV home row, MDBList dynamic and liked lists show in the Library, and streams behind a proxy keep working.
• Profiles: switching profiles no longer overwrites your saved settings in the cloud, shuffled series stop reloading, and Manage Profiles no longer crashes. Plus torrent engine 0.1.5.

Good to know

• Thumbnails before play: new installs start on Faster. If you already had a thumbnail setting you stay on Full.
• Automatic speed-up is now on for 2 GB boxes too. Switch it off in Settings > Playback > Buffer & network for the app as it was.
• Custom network chunks under 8 MB are slow on Real-Debrid and can be refused by TorBox.
• Big custom buffers with Managed memory budget off: if the box really runs out of memory, Android may close the player, so use big sizes on boxes cleared of other apps.
• Card icons on Fire TV: the Fire TV home screen still shows the square icon (a Fire OS limit), so the new looks show on Android TV, Google TV and launchers like Projectivy.
• 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. I'm working on a tool that will build the kernel for AM9 Pro, Xiaomi Box S 3rd Gen, and Homatics Box R 4K Plus in the first batch.

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 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-nt.7, build 1493, 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.7.
• 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.7 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.