Qanat vs OTT Navigator: an alternative for Google TV
Qanat is a player only. Bring your own subscription. OTT Navigator is a player in the same sense: your playlist, your channels, nothing bundled in.
The short answer
OTT Navigator is the player for people who like to change everything: it is highly customizable and reads M3U, Xtream Codes and Stalker/MAC portals. Qanat is the maintained alternative with simpler defaults — the same app on the TV and on an Android phone, a full Arabic right-to-left interface, and a guide grid built for the remote. OTT Navigator is not currently on Google Play, while Qanat installs as a signed direct APK today and a Play build is on the way. The comparison below is deliberately thin on OTT Navigator's side: its listing gives us the formats it supports and little else.
Side by side
| Feature | Qanat | OTT Navigator |
|---|---|---|
| Price model | Free | — |
| Contains ads | ✗ | — |
| Xtream Codes | ✓ | ✓ |
| M3U | ✓ | ✓ |
| Stalker / MAC | ✓ | ✓ |
| EPG grid | ✓ | — |
| Catch-up | ✓ | — |
| Timeshift | ✓ | — |
| Recording (DVR) | ✗ | — |
| Multi-view | ✗ | — |
| Chromecast | ✗ | — |
| Profiles + PIN | ✓ | — |
| Phones by touch | ✓ | — |
| Full Arabic RTL | ✓ | — |
| On Google Play | Coming soon | ✗ |
Where OTT Navigator is better
- Customization. OTT Navigator is built to be tuned: nearly every behaviour of the player can be adjusted by the user.
- Its published listing tells us the formats it supports — M3U, Xtream Codes and Stalker/MAC — but not its price model, so we make no claim about its price or about features we could not verify.
Where Qanat is different
- Maintained and updated, with simpler defaults. Qanat is a fixed design that works out of the box instead of a set of switches.
- A full Arabic right-to-left interface, with 13 languages, and a guide grid, now/next line and player OSD built around the remote.
- A TV guide grid with now and next under every channel, catch-up inside your provider's archive window, timeshift to pause live TV, and programme reminders.
- Movies and series with resume and next-episode autoplay, an in-app mini player, and a Qanat row on the Google TV home screen.
- Automatic ts ↔ m3u8 fallback per channel, a background channel health check, and encrypted backup and restore.
- Phones by touch. The same app runs on an Android phone with touch controls.
- Free, with no ads, no analytics, no tracking and no account.
How to try Qanat
Qanat is free and installs in about a minute. On a Fire TV, open the free Downloader app, enter code 3328259 and confirm the install. On an Android TV box or an Android phone, download the same signed APK. The Google Play build is on the way. Qanat stays a player: add a playlist from your own provider and your channels appear — and you can sign in by scanning a QR code with your phone instead of typing on the TV keyboard.