Android TV version 0.17

[Fate]

Well it clearly was working good enough for some people (me included). Unfortunately you will never hear about a feature worked well before you remove it... So it's usually a bad a idea to see only the issue side.

I also think wasn't a great idea to remove libvlc, looking at the commit it removed a total for ~1100 lines of code. Total code is 65906 lines.

But I can relate that having to maintain the libvlc interface while rewriting the playback code is a drag that the devs didn't feel worth their time.

The straw that broke the camel's back in this case was that LibVLC went unmaintained for 2 years which means that it has some unpatched security issues.

Well it was already labeled experimental....

You could also disable libvlc by default and just let the user decide to take the risk or not. Since we talking about android tv, I doubt many are fully exposed to the internet compared Android devices which are directly connected to the internet.