# Intel based Dell Venue Android tablet works with Stream!!!!



## robsheer (Jun 4, 2013)

After researching the specs for the Intel-based Atom Z2580 CPU used in the Dell Venue 8 Android tablet I own, I found that the Intel Atom CPU has hardware-based media decoding, an additional requirement specified in the "TiVo App for Android: Installation" instructions. So I decided to buy the Stream despite the warning listed by TiVo that says "NOTE: Intel chipset based devices are unsupported." *And it works flawlessly!!* Total setup time from start to finish was 25 minutes. So I haven't encountered any problems with my Intel chipset tablet and the TiVo Android app. So for anyone else who has a Dell Venue 8 Android tablet with an Intel Atom processor, you can buy the Stream and it will work perfectly!!

Thank you TiVo. I really enjoy streaming to my Dell Venue tablet. I've been a customer since my first TiVo in 1999.


----------



## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I tried it on my Windows 8 Dell Venue 8 using an Android VM and it did not work. Got an error about it not being supported on Intel chips. Maybe the VM doesn't have access to the hardware media decoding stuff? Doesn't matter, I was just doing it as a test anyway would never actually use it.


----------



## robsheer (Jun 4, 2013)

Dan203 said:


> I tried it on my Windows 8 Dell Venue 8 using an Android VM and it did not work. Got an error about it not being supported on Intel chips. Maybe the VM doesn't have access to the hardware media decoding stuff? Doesn't matter, I was just doing it as a test anyway would never actually use it.


That would be correct. Because the Android VM is sitting on top of the Windows 8 layer, it does not have direct access to the native Intel Atom CPU instruction set, making it impossible for the Android application layer (i.e. the TiVo app) to perform hardware-level video/audio decoding of the 1080p H.264 stream. Another user on a different thread had told me that the Stream wouldn't work with my tablet because he too had tried it on his Android VM and it failed. I almost didn't buy it, but I'm an computer engineer with a background in CPU design and I've used VMs at the enterprise level and they're not very good at using especialized CPU-specific instructions. So I took a chance thanks to Amazon's excellent return policy and it worked!! I'm extremely happy with it, even though it needs major performance/usability improvements.


----------

