Gents, I have had a new Fire Tv for about a week. Well, since Wednesday but who's counting that closely? Initial observations were quite impressive...in the simplicity. I have to give Amazon credit here. It would have been all too easy to have had bright graphics screaming; "AMAZON!", but they did not do this. It is a combination of matte and shiny black. It does have the Amazon name in relief in the rubbery feeling covering on the flat sides of the unit but that's it. The edge is a shiny but not distracting polished gloss black. It sits about about a 1/2"(~12.5mm) high and about 4-1/2"(112.5mm) square. Very unobtrusive sitting in the media centre area. A single white/very pale blue-ish led is the only indicator the unit is running. Speaking of that there is no typical on/off button on the remote or base unit. You don't turn it off in practise. If it sets unused for 30 minutes it goes into a sort of hibernation mode and the led turns off. Before the unit hibernates it will go through a screen saver sequence. And the images are beautiful scenes of nature and runs. Bringing it back up is instantaneous. Just press a button and you are up and running.
Connectivity. I really like this part. There are ports for HDMI, data, optical audio out, usb and of course power. I really like it that Amazon left the data port on this unit. So many devices want to rely soley on wireless for connection and while it may be okay, there is nothing like a Cat 5e or Cat 6 running from the hi speed or gigabit network port on your router. It does make a difference. I connected the unit up with a Cat 6 patch cable to the router direct and it was up and running in seconds. A big thumbs up for Amazon to not put you through hoops. I suppose this was helped by the fact the unit 'knew' who I was when it was shipped. I suspect Amazon is pre-loading your specifics into the units before shipment if you are a Prime member which we are.
Usability. The simplicity of the remote is a WELCOME change from the typical Sony type remote with a zillion multi-function buttons on them. There is BACK, HOME, SETTINGS, Rwd, Play/Pause, Ffwd. That's it. Hit hit the home button and you fairly fly to the home screen. No lag. This is a HUGE improvement from my PS3. Hit the Return button and you return instantly to whatever screen you were at before. Rwd and Ffwd are really neat too. If you just tap the button it goes about ten seconds and resumes play. If you hold it for a second or two it continues on its own until you hit Play or accidentally hit return or Home like I do sometimes. It works well.
Home screen layout. As I expected this is HEAVILY biased toward Amazon's content and why not? It is their branded device after all. The icons are laid out in banner form in thumbnails like you would see in a Neftlix app. Recently watched, Tv, Movies, etc. As I said, most of that is dead on Amazon Prime and pay per event stuff. No issues, it shows all your recently watched shows or opened apps like Netflix. Speaking of which, Amazon makes no attempt to hide this competitor's app. I don't remember if it was on the carousel/banners but it was easily accessible and I do think I had to download it which was very fast. No issues. Works fine but the Sony implementation is a bit slicker I think.
Side loading and app availability. Now here is where some will part ways and some(like me) will find this is a GAME CHANGING ability for the Kindle Fire. One of the issues I had with Sony(amongst a few I may add) was no Pandora support. Really? Well this box comes with it in the carousel but I think you do need to download it to activate. I will let you know how it fares but finally, no jumping between devices. What happened next is what made me go from "meh, this is alright" to "Yeah, this is how it should be" was the side loading of apps. Now before anyone reminds me it is nothing new, I fully understand it. Side loading started with ebook files and has been going on for apps for awhile. Sometimes with dubious results, sometimes it wouldn't work at all. And at times you needed to root a device completely before getting anything from Google to work. Not an ideal situation. Since we use PlayonTv quite a lot a device which connects to that media server is really a must. I did not pay attention to this when I bought the Fire Tv. It has no native way to access local media servers as far as I know. What to do? Well Amazon has made side loading EASY.
On my Kindle Fire tablet you just open the web browser and go to m.playon.tv and voila, Playon works. Well there is no browser in Fire Tv. Hmm, lets look for an app. No dice at Amazon. What to do? I wanted to side load a Playon apk but there was nothing out there that looked easy to grab. Then I started doubling down on side loading searches and came upon www.sideloadfiretv.com. What a fortunate event. They have a complete tutorial there on how to activate adb on your Fire Tv, download and install an abbreviated adb and fastboot file to your Windows Mac computer to facilitate loading apks on your Fire Tv and links to four or five of their picks for great apps. One of these was Firefox web browser! I finally had it. A small box on the set top that has Netflix, Pandora, Prime, and Firefox. Just type in m.playon.tv and go, right? Well, kind of. It would find Playon files but would not connect or play. Dang it. Back to square one. So I started looking at XBMC. I was dubious since most times installing this is requires a lot of root work on your devices and you also typically lose the original functions. Not so here. You can download an apk from XBMC and it installs side loaded just like the others. You access these types of apps from a sub menu in the settings menu rather than the main carousel but what I like about this XBMC app is once opened, you can open just about ANY of the apps installed in the main Amazon Fire Tv carousel! This is convenience with a capital C. XBMC is a beautiful interface and works very well. AND I got my Playon connectivity back! Score.
Okay, how about reality checks? Audio. We are experiencing some ridiculous audio/lip sync issues with any of the apps including the ones played through XBMC. I am hoping this is a settings issue but will have to be resolved. It is quite bad at times. I am sure there will be other surprises as we go forward but so far I would say Amazon has offered up a VERY nice streaming solution. Sorry to be so long and over thorough but it may help someone else make a decision one way or another. Lets discuss.
Cheers, Todd
Connectivity. I really like this part. There are ports for HDMI, data, optical audio out, usb and of course power. I really like it that Amazon left the data port on this unit. So many devices want to rely soley on wireless for connection and while it may be okay, there is nothing like a Cat 5e or Cat 6 running from the hi speed or gigabit network port on your router. It does make a difference. I connected the unit up with a Cat 6 patch cable to the router direct and it was up and running in seconds. A big thumbs up for Amazon to not put you through hoops. I suppose this was helped by the fact the unit 'knew' who I was when it was shipped. I suspect Amazon is pre-loading your specifics into the units before shipment if you are a Prime member which we are.
Usability. The simplicity of the remote is a WELCOME change from the typical Sony type remote with a zillion multi-function buttons on them. There is BACK, HOME, SETTINGS, Rwd, Play/Pause, Ffwd. That's it. Hit hit the home button and you fairly fly to the home screen. No lag. This is a HUGE improvement from my PS3. Hit the Return button and you return instantly to whatever screen you were at before. Rwd and Ffwd are really neat too. If you just tap the button it goes about ten seconds and resumes play. If you hold it for a second or two it continues on its own until you hit Play or accidentally hit return or Home like I do sometimes. It works well.
Home screen layout. As I expected this is HEAVILY biased toward Amazon's content and why not? It is their branded device after all. The icons are laid out in banner form in thumbnails like you would see in a Neftlix app. Recently watched, Tv, Movies, etc. As I said, most of that is dead on Amazon Prime and pay per event stuff. No issues, it shows all your recently watched shows or opened apps like Netflix. Speaking of which, Amazon makes no attempt to hide this competitor's app. I don't remember if it was on the carousel/banners but it was easily accessible and I do think I had to download it which was very fast. No issues. Works fine but the Sony implementation is a bit slicker I think.
Side loading and app availability. Now here is where some will part ways and some(like me) will find this is a GAME CHANGING ability for the Kindle Fire. One of the issues I had with Sony(amongst a few I may add) was no Pandora support. Really? Well this box comes with it in the carousel but I think you do need to download it to activate. I will let you know how it fares but finally, no jumping between devices. What happened next is what made me go from "meh, this is alright" to "Yeah, this is how it should be" was the side loading of apps. Now before anyone reminds me it is nothing new, I fully understand it. Side loading started with ebook files and has been going on for apps for awhile. Sometimes with dubious results, sometimes it wouldn't work at all. And at times you needed to root a device completely before getting anything from Google to work. Not an ideal situation. Since we use PlayonTv quite a lot a device which connects to that media server is really a must. I did not pay attention to this when I bought the Fire Tv. It has no native way to access local media servers as far as I know. What to do? Well Amazon has made side loading EASY.
On my Kindle Fire tablet you just open the web browser and go to m.playon.tv and voila, Playon works. Well there is no browser in Fire Tv. Hmm, lets look for an app. No dice at Amazon. What to do? I wanted to side load a Playon apk but there was nothing out there that looked easy to grab. Then I started doubling down on side loading searches and came upon www.sideloadfiretv.com. What a fortunate event. They have a complete tutorial there on how to activate adb on your Fire Tv, download and install an abbreviated adb and fastboot file to your Windows Mac computer to facilitate loading apks on your Fire Tv and links to four or five of their picks for great apps. One of these was Firefox web browser! I finally had it. A small box on the set top that has Netflix, Pandora, Prime, and Firefox. Just type in m.playon.tv and go, right? Well, kind of. It would find Playon files but would not connect or play. Dang it. Back to square one. So I started looking at XBMC. I was dubious since most times installing this is requires a lot of root work on your devices and you also typically lose the original functions. Not so here. You can download an apk from XBMC and it installs side loaded just like the others. You access these types of apps from a sub menu in the settings menu rather than the main carousel but what I like about this XBMC app is once opened, you can open just about ANY of the apps installed in the main Amazon Fire Tv carousel! This is convenience with a capital C. XBMC is a beautiful interface and works very well. AND I got my Playon connectivity back! Score.
Okay, how about reality checks? Audio. We are experiencing some ridiculous audio/lip sync issues with any of the apps including the ones played through XBMC. I am hoping this is a settings issue but will have to be resolved. It is quite bad at times. I am sure there will be other surprises as we go forward but so far I would say Amazon has offered up a VERY nice streaming solution. Sorry to be so long and over thorough but it may help someone else make a decision one way or another. Lets discuss.
Cheers, Todd
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