qingju-tv

Project Overview

Old TVs often cannot run new apps because the system and memory are too limited, and Qingju flips the problem: this Kotlin short-drama client is built for Android 5.1, ARMv7, and 1 GB RAM televisions, field-tested on a Xiaomi L43M7-EA with remote playback, 1080P, and speed control. It keeps the drama shelf, rankings, categories, favorites, and history screens, plays through system decoders, and needs no server deployment.

Item	Value
Platform	Android TV, Android 5.0+ (min API 21)
Tested on	Xiaomi L43M7-EA (Android 5.1.1 / ARMv7 / 1 GB RAM)
Tech stack	Kotlin, ExoPlayer/Media3, TextureView
License	GPL-3.0-only

A 1 GB RAM old TV can still stream 1080P short dramas smoothly.

Key Features

• Remote-first controls: OK pauses/resumes, the menu key opens the control bar focused on pause, and press, release, and long-press repeats are handled correctly
• Quality switching: 480P / 720P / 1080P caps, keeping playback position and pause state across switches
• Picture modes: original ratio, fill-crop, stretch, plus 125%/150% zoom-crop with saved preferences
• Cross-episode prefetch: one ExoPlayer keeps the current and next episode in queue, prefetching the next episode with a 1 MiB warm-up without rebuilding decoders
• Bounded retries: one limited retry 10 seconds after failure; whole-series downloads and merged files are never used

Remote Controls

• OK pauses or resumes during playback; the menu key opens the control bar
• Left/right selects previous, next, episode list, speed, picture, and quality
• With the bar hidden, left/right seeks 10 seconds back/forward and up/down summons the controls
• Back returns to the drama detail page

Installation and Upgrade

1. Download QingjuTV-0.4.0-android5.apk from Releases
2. Copy the APK to a USB stick to install, or sideload with ADB: adb install -r app-debug.apk
3. The package name is local.qingju.tv, so it can overwrite-update older builds of this project without touching official apps
4. Self-building needs JDK 17, Android SDK Platform 36, and Gradle 8.14.3; run ./gradlew :app:assembleDebug

System Requirements

Item	Requirement
OS	Android 5.0 and above
Architecture	32-bit ARM (ARMv7) compatible; pure JVM app with no JNI
Decoding	Uses system decoders, depending on the device's own capability

Notes

• DNS false positives: if listings load but playback fails, check whether your router filter resolves log5-applog-lf.fqnovel.com to 0.0.0.0; add a filter exception for that domain limited to the TV's IP
• Continuous playback: episode gaps depend on network and source encoding changes; zero-gap is not guaranteed every time
• Cover compatibility: cover formats unsupported on Android 5 fall back to placeholders
• Signing: published builds use a debug signature for testing; use your own key for real distribution