Reliance Jio has been pretty active lately. The company has recently introduced a bunch of lucrative plans for its prepaid customers. Moreover, the company has joined hands with the likes of Sun NXT and now the users of the company’s streaming service, Jio Cinema will be able to watch the Sun NXT content for absolutely no added prices. Now, the company is reportedly working on launching its own smart streaming set-top box. Thanks to a new batch of leaks, we have a working clue as to what the features and specifications of the Jio Fiber Set-top Box will be. As it turns out, the Jio Fiber set-top box won’t be running on Android TV OS. It will rather make use of a customized Android AOSP build.
Jio Fiber set-top box will run on a custom Android skin
Here are some of the leaked screenshots of the Jio Fiber set-top box interface:
As per the report, the Jio STB appears to be running on a customized version of AOSP Android (Android 7.1 Nougat for that matter) and it’s surprising to see the company not making use of Google’s Android TV OS with the Jio STB. Because of this, the Jio STB lacks support for Google Play and all the Google apps for that matter. There is no Google Assistant and Chromecast support as well. To make things even worse, it is running on a pretty dated Android security patch from 1 Dec 2018 and there is no option to check for the updates in the settings menu.
As seen in the image, there is around 4.5GB of internal storage space left which can further be expanded by formatting an external USB device.
The remote of the Set-top box can be paired via Bluetooth. Again, the remote lacks a dedicated menu and there is no way you can add a Bluetooth mouse or a keyboard.
As far as custom apps are concerned, we get some customized versions of apps like YouTube (com.jio.yt) and SonyLIV” (com.jiotv.sonyliv). That said, there is nothing too special about the custom apps here as they work like regular apps only. Youtube played 4k HDR video. The box has native DLNA support and it can play 4K HDR stream from my NAS server without frame loss using the built-in Photos app.
The good thing here is that the Jio STB comes with native support for Jio TV+ app which is essentially an aggregator for content and has one of the best variety of sports from Eros Now, Jio Cinema, and many more.
All-in-all, the hype surrounding the Jio STB appears to be fizzling out a bit because of the lack of Google services and the fact that the entire interface appears to be old and suffering from lack of updates. Whether or not the company would do something about it – time would tell. As of now, it is not sure as to what the plans the company would come with, but we are sure to receive further intel on the same in the coming days.
What are your thoughts on the Jio STB? Do let us know in the comments section below.
