Cleaning up a Toshiba, CHiQ or own-brand TV
· 2 min read
Toshiba, CHiQ, Engel, OK, Hyundai, Telefunken, Grundig. Many brands, few actual manufacturers. Behind nearly all of them sits one of three: Vestel (Turkey), TCL or Changhong.
Why it matters
Because the software does not come from the badge on the front, it comes from whoever builds the set. A European Toshiba and a Telefunken can carry exactly the same package set, and a guide written for one works for the other.
Finding out who really made it
adb shell getprop ro.product.manufacturer
adb shell getprop ro.product.brand
adb shell getprop ro.build.fingerprint
The fingerprint usually gives the real manufacturer away. If you see
vestel, tcl, changhong or mstar in there, you know which guide to look
for.
The chipset helps too:
adb shell getprop ro.board.platform
MediaTek MT5xxx and Amlogic chips are the usual ones in this bracket.
What to expect
These televisions have two constant characteristics:
Little memory. 1 GB of RAM is normal. At that figure, Android TV is tight however spotless you leave it.
No updates. Many have never received a single patch since leaving the factory. If your television runs Android 8 and was sold in 2019, it has gone seven years without a security patch. That is as good a reason as any not to leave it on the same network as the things you care about.
What can be removed
The usual: preinstalled streaming apps, demonstration modes, recommendation services. In this bracket demo modes are particularly common, because these are televisions designed to look good on a supermarket shelf.
The realistic advice
On a 1 GB television, removing apps improves things but works no miracles. What genuinely transforms the experience is letting the television be a screen and putting the intelligence in an external device. We cover that in using your TV as a monitor.