Further about Ambient Mode on Google TV’s

I wrote about Google TV Ambient Mode not too long ago, and decided to try my Sony Bravia Google TV screensaver mode junk.

Firstly, on this tv, there is just screensaver in settings, choose Backdrop.

If you want more control, use the Home app on your phone, and tweak Ambient mode there.

Problem is, Ambient mode on other Google TV dongles or the Home app don’t always have an option for your own Google Photos.

My Bravia tv doesn’t even have any options for sources, one must go to the Home app for that.

So today I decided to firstly go to my Google Photos and choose the settings for my TV in the actual photos app.

If I do that, then open HOME app and look, sometimes my google photos shows as an option, sometimes it doesn’t.

Whether or not it shows, after looking in my Google Photos settings and then Home app, my own photos will start showing. But sometimes they don’t, no matter what I’ve done.

Even when I do have my photos showing, that Ambient Mode in Google photos is weird. Says it’s showing something else, sometimes.

But then I look in Home app because my tv is now showing other things, and it says it’s showing photos from my chosen folder. Hmph.

So it takes too much ethereal meddling to make it work, or have it failing again.

I used to use a nice app on these devices which I could pick albums to show, it worked flawlessly from very many options of services to pull from, all your own plus others if you wanted public stuff.

I used it purely with my Google Photos for years with no problem. Until they changed permissions. So no photo app in Google TV store is any good now, pick one picture at a time, with their very flaky app connecting to your photos, ugh …. I have albums I like to show sometimes, change it up again with others whenever I wanted to.