Cleaning up a Sharp or Panasonic Android TV

Sharp and Panasonic share a peculiarity: they use Android TV on part of their catalogue only, alternating by year and market. First job is finding out what you have.

How to tell#

Panasonic mostly uses its own My Home Screen, Firefox OS-based on older models and a proprietary system afterwards. Only some models, mostly outside Europe, run Android TV.

Sharp has sold Android TV in Europe through UMC, its manufacturing partner, alongside other models on proprietary systems.

The definitive test is always the same: Settings → About → Build, seven presses. If developer options appear, it is Android.

If it is Android#

adb shell pm list packages | grep -iE "sharp|panasonic|umc|vestel"

Both carry small sets of proprietary packages. Most of what there is to remove is preinstalled streaming apps and recommendation services.

If it is not#

You are in the same position as Samsung and LG owners: reduce advertising from the settings, filter at the router, or let the television be a screen and nothing more.

A note on Panasonic#

My Home Screen is by some distance one of the least ad-laden television systems on the market. If yours runs it, there is a good chance you need do nothing at all: the problem that brings people here simply does not exist on those models.

We say so because there is no sense hunting for solutions to a problem you do not have.