Amazon FireTV

[bearxor]

Woohoo. Once I see that the addons work fine bye bye apple TV!

I've been through the thread and someone said that the Apple Trailers add on worked fine.

I suspect there are bugs, however. I'm sure they'll get those ironed out in a few weeks.

 

[ponyo]

Woohoo. Once I see that the addons work fine bye bye apple TV!

Appeal of AppleTV for me is the seamless AirPlay along with XBMC. There are plenty of devices that will do XBMC.

That said, I had zero interest in Amazon FireTV before this XBMC news. XBMC changes everything.

 

[bearxor]

Appeal of AppleTV for me is the seamless AirPlay along with XBMC. There are plenty of devices that will do XBMC.

That said, I had zero interest in Amazon FireTV before this XBMC news. XBMC changes everything.

For me, the problem has always been finding the one box to do everything.

Some boxes are great at local media playback.
Some boxes are great at video service streaming.

I haven't found "the box" that is great at both. The FireTV looks like it has come the closest.

Video AirPlay is the one thing I'd still like. I was able to do it on Boxee until iOS 6. I'll probably keep the Chromecast around specifically for casting YouTube videos.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Just got home with my Fire TV and got it up and started. First thing to do was connect to my wifi... I plugged in a USB keyboard and typed in my password.

And thank god almighty it actually recognized my USB keyboard! This amazed me since my Roku 3 has a USB port and doesn't support USB keyboards.

 

[jpeyton]

A great review on The Verge.

It looks like Amazon finally made the Android STB we've all been waiting for. It would be a perfect 10/10 if they opened it up to Google Play, but my feeling is the developer community will do that shortly.

 

[bearxor]

Just got mine hooked up. Mandatory software update out of the box? Was this made by Microsoft?!

 

[Ravynmagi]

I like that the box has enough weight that it won't get pulled or lifted up from the weight of an HDMI cable. I had to velcro my Roku 3 to surface to make it lay flat. The big heatsink in the Fire TV has no trouble keep it firmly in place on the table with cables plugged in.

So far though not really seeing the performance improvement. YouTube seems to perform the same on the Roku 3 and Fire TV, takes about 6 seconds to load and navigating the channels feels the same. Not sure why YouTube has to reload each time I go to it on the Fire TV because it has 2GB of RAM. Netflix does behave better on the Fire TV, it loads instantly, so seems to be staying in RAM. But navigating between TV shows and movies also feels like the same performance as the Roku 3 and I find myself waiting for thumbnails to load. Probably Netflix's server being the bottleneck there.

So far though, I'm not getting the "This is 3 times faster" impression. However I do like that Netflix can instantly load and if YouTube and more apps can take advantage of the RAM, that would make a big difference over the Roku 3.

 

[slugg]

Now they need to integrate Netflix into the search and I'll be happy.

Mine comes in tomorrow.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I tried to use my Moga Pocket controller, but it would not pair, Fire TV would not see it despite the Moga Pocket being in pairing mode. Though the Fire TV did give me instructions on how to pair the Moga Pro, so I guess the bigger version is supported. Seems odd the Pocket won't work though.

Very happy to see my Xbox 360 controller is working on it though. Glad I didn't waste money on the $40 Amazon controller.

 

[bearxor]

Wired X360 controller?

 

[poofyhairguy]

I tried to use my Moga Pocket controller, but it would not pair, Fire TV would not see it despite the Moga Pocket being in pairing mode. Though the Fire TV did give me instructions on how to pair the Moga Pro, so I guess the bigger version is supported. Seems odd the Pocket won't work though.

Very happy to see my Xbox 360 controller is working on it though. Glad I didn't waste money on the $40 Amazon controller.

Nice. I wonder if six axis will work after root. This already the world's greatest retro console.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Wired X360 controller?

Yes

 

[Zaap]

Anyone using xbmc on it yet? Would love to know how well that works.

I wish I had some reason to get one of these, or even any actual need for one. Looks fun to play around with.

 

[bearxor]

Loaded latest XBMC build without issue. Super simple, actually. Navigation seemed fine but it wouldn't access my samba shares. Looking at it later today.

Someone on the XBMC forums said they've even for the Media Portal plugin working fine with a couple HD Homeruns. So it's good as a front end for live TV/DVR. This is looking REALLY close to being the one box for everything.

Tried to sign in to Showtime, but they're only supporting a handful of cable operators and no dish network or directv.

 

[ponyo]

Xbmc is a mess on this thing. They have long ways to go.

 

[bearxor]

I think I'd disagree.

Got my shares up and going, fired up XBMC and started playing things easy.

When I start playing, I get a green screen, but skipping back fixes it.

Video still isn't 100%, I'm getting dropped frames in 720p content and it's very stuttery for something like a 1080p movie. But the box is three days old. I expect these things will be ironed out by the end of next week.

OTOH, Plex works perfectly.

 

[bearxor]

Very happy to see my Xbox 360 controller is working on it though. Glad I didn't waste money on the $40 Amazon controller.

Since you said your wired controller was working, I tried my wireless X360 controller with USB receiver. It's a little "weird", but works.

Normally the light on the receiver only comes on when a controller is connected. It stays lit all the time. The X360 controller also doesn't appear to connect to receiver, but it does. The green circle simply flashes the whole time, but I played some Riptide with it and it worked fine. The 360 home button even functioned like the home button on the Amazon remote.

Glad I didn't spend $40 on that controller, too!

 

[ponyo]

I think I'd disagree.

Got my shares up and going, fired up XBMC and started playing things easy.

When I start playing, I get a green screen, but skipping back fixes it.

Video still isn't 100%, I'm getting dropped frames in 720p content and it's very stuttery for something like a 1080p movie. But the box is three days old. I expect these things will be ironed out by the end of next week.

OTOH, Plex works perfectly.

None of the popular plugins work. 720p & 1080p videos are choppy and stuttery and won't play. Sounds like a mess. It's three days old and maybe it will get fixed. Maybe not. Until then, this is not XBMC box. Far from it.

I don't doubt Plex works fine. It works fine on Chromecast and Roku too.

 

[s44]

Now that some people have it... can you just DNLA cast videos/music to it without a separate app running?

Or can you leave something like Plex running in the background?

 

[MrSquished]

interesting article on how the Fire is designed to funnel you through amazon by leaving out other services

http://gizmodo.com/why-roku-matters-more-than-ever-1558433873

 

[bearxor]

None of the popular plugins work. 720p & 1080p videos are choppy and stuttery and won't play. Sounds like a mess. It's three days old and maybe it will get fixed. Maybe not. Until then, this is not XBMC box. Far from it.

I don't doubt Plex works fine. It works fine on Chromecast and Roku too.

Yeah, it's really not as bad as you're under the impression of. I had to pay really close attention to see stuttering on 720p videos.

Can't speak about plugins though, because I don't use them. I'm honestly not an XBMC fan though, so I know they're important to people. I guess I'd ask if those same plugins worked on Ouya. If so, then they'll work on FireTV at some point.

I'd agree that you shouldn't buy it right this instant if XBMC is your sole purpose. But it's really not "a mess". It will just take a few days to provide optimization a for the hardware platform. No different than any other box that gets released.

 

[tential]

Xbmc is a mess on this thing. They have long ways to go.

"Long ways" isn't really how I would describe it at all. You have to understand how XBMC works on Android devices. Each Android device has it's own hardware acceleration method that XBMC then has to figure out and get to work with XBMC.

Plex uses the built in player in the software already while XBMC brings its own media player, codecs, and then tries to get it to work with FireTV.

Currently, XBMC Ouya is the XBMC that works with FireTV. People are trying to figure it out and get it to work with Gotham.

There is a 27 page thread on this over at XBMC forums with CONSTANT updates on it. People got FireTV the day after it came out (nextday shipping) and have been working endlessly on it. XBMC takes awhile to make work with any new hardware because of hardware acceleration issues with new Android devices. I'd give it a week or two before you make a verdict on XBMC but they're already made huge strides.

Currently from what I know:
XBMC Ouya works with hardware acceleration (No one knows why at the moment)
XBMC Frodo works with software only.
XBMC Gotham has builds in the works that work in some fashions and not others.
Live TV works (Don't know details as to which PVR they used but it works)
Plugin support - Lots of plugins people use with XBMC are XBMCHUB plugins which is COMPLETELY unaffiliated with XBMC. Many of these plugins aren't written for Gotham. If you're trying to use your unsupported addons (that are usually piracy related), you'll have to contact their devs and have them write something for XBMC Gotham.

 

[tential]

I like that the box has enough weight that it won't get pulled or lifted up from the weight of an HDMI cable. I had to velcro my Roku 3 to surface to make it lay flat. The big heatsink in the Fire TV has no trouble keep it firmly in place on the table with cables plugged in.

So far though not really seeing the performance improvement. YouTube seems to perform the same on the Roku 3 and Fire TV, takes about 6 seconds to load and navigating the channels feels the same. Not sure why YouTube has to reload each time I go to it on the Fire TV because it has 2GB of RAM. Netflix does behave better on the Fire TV, it loads instantly, so seems to be staying in RAM. But navigating between TV shows and movies also feels like the same performance as the Roku 3 and I find myself waiting for thumbnails to load. Probably Netflix's server being the bottleneck there.

So far though, I'm not getting the "This is 3 times faster" impression. However I do like that Netflix can instantly load and if YouTube and more apps can take advantage of the RAM, that would make a big difference over the Roku 3.

3 times faster doesn't mention which hardware it's against. It does have more processing power than the Roku but in terms of software, Roku has had 3 iterations to improve its software. From my quick readings on the FireTV, they still had keyboard shortcuts on some of their apps that were ports from Google TV.

Probably going to have to wait for apps to be more optimized for the FireTV to utilize all the processing power and ram.

If you purchase a FireTV you'll own it for a 1-2 years. The performance/compatibility/etc. for the first month of it's life probably isn't going to be the same as the performance of the FireTV for the other 11+ months you'll own it.

 

[slugg]

I just plugged mine in. Here we go!

 

[slugg]

Pretty slick device so far. All I have to add is that the racing game (whatever it's called... The flagship one) stutters quite a bit. The UI is silky smooth and streaming is good, but it looks like the full 3D, "console quality" games have FPS drops.