Using AIS Playbox 'HooQ' account on Android STB / mobile phones

[SooKee]

Just in case this is of help to anyone.  About the ONLY aspect of the free AIS  Playbox I find useful is HooQ which is a (sort of) premier subscription service within Playbox that comes free with the Fibre packages.  I'm trying to de-clutter box-wise and already use a Minix U9 STB so wanted to get the HooQ app on that, it is listed on Google Play.  The rest of the stuff on the Playbox I can access via other channels / apps. The problem with HooQ though is that you don't get given (or at least I didn't) any log in credentials to use it by AIS other than that which APPEARS to be a log in email address ending in @.ais.co.th, preceded by about another 20+ characters.  It isn't, it's a PlayBox dedicated ID.

 

Now, as I said, there IS a HooQ app on the Google Play store and also on the iPhone App Store (Th) but, trying both the STB and phone app, I couldn't log in at all.  Using my phone number (which it seems AIS don't send as config information to HooQ) and that gazillion character email address from the Playbox just returns 'No Account Found'.  There's even an AIS Play App that is included in AIS mobile packages, links to your Playbox service, which has a HooQ tab.  Even that takes you to a login screen which resulted in a fail.

 

Eventually I ended up contacting HooQ at the email address that you can access via the log in page or the HooQ site from a browser and explained the position.  I got all sorts of run around from we don't support Android boxes to try this, try that.  All a no go.  Then someone FINALLY decided to reset the phone number used with the account.  After that, bingo!!!  Works on both the STB and phone app (in both cases you get a OTP set to your mobile number).  

 

Tried it on the STB and it's fine.  There were no subtitles by default as there are on the PlayBox version but those can be set in Settings.  However, the subtitles are MICRO small, you'd need to sit 6 inches away from the TV to read them.  AND wear glasses 5555!!!  I'm guessing that MIGHT be an issue that the app is designed for phones.  Setting a lower screen resolution of 720 also didn't help.  Not sure if this will be fixable at all.  The quality of the stream does seem better than that I was getting via the Playbox but that might just be on first impressions.  I'd need to check multiple titles and, TBH, can't be asked.

 

The only other issue is you get a 'Confirm your email' message with an indication that they've sent an email to some gobbledygook address that doesn't even match the gazillion character AIS email.  It doesn't get in the way of doing anything though.  I've contacted them again to see if they can update the email that my account is using but they said it's only used for folks setting up accounts outside of AIS and paying themselves, same as Netflix etc.  They said as you are only allowed to log in using a mobile number, ignore the message.

[SooKee]

Quick update on this for those that have HooQ.  HooQ have now released a version of their app that is optimised for Android TV.  They actually released it some time ago but it required you to use their app on a mobile phone (in my case an iPhone) to link the TV app account.  For some reason however it would never work, returning 'Failed to link account on secondary device'.  I had mailed HooQ about it and was in correspondence with their Help Desk sending them numerous screen shots and version details of the apps. They said they were looking into it and would contact me with details of any fix.  Seemed they were able to replicate the issue.

 

Anyway, they contacted me the other day to say they had released a new iOS app version (3.1.9.1 IIRC) that fixed the problem and thankfully it did. I likely wouldn't bother with HooQ much but it's free with my AIS account and it does have a couple of series like Gotham and Nikita.  The big bonus with the new 'optimised for Android TV' version is that Thai subtitles will now show correctly scaled to TV size if your device runs Android TV.  Problem is, if your device runs standard Android (such as my Minix in the bedroom), it seems that this app is amongst the growing number of smart apps that detects what device it's being installed on and configures itself automatically unlike before when there would be Android and Android TV versions, allowing you to side-load the TV APK to a regular Android box. Not a big problem overall except there's something amiss with the subtitles on the regular Android version.  Clearly the subtitles on that are coded so as not to be intrusive on a small screen.  Trouble is, you'd need a magnifying glass to watch them on a TV.