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Amazon Fire TV

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Re: Amazon Fire TV

#261

Post by Crito »

zequel wrote: post #202
laxatives wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I've never understood the purpose of ChromeCast. The lag makes it completely unusable for video (I'm getting ~1 frame / 3 seconds), making it a glorified radio with cellphone/laptop remotes.

Odd, I've streamed Netflix to Chromecast and my laptop video to Chromecast just fine. It may be your wifi connection.

I believe there is something more nuanced going on with Chromecast "casting" performance.

Netflix is fast obviously because you are just telling the chromecast to stream netflix itself, not "casting" it to chromecast. Same goes with youtube.

However "casting" performance for me is even worse than the described .3fps on my Chromebook Pixel that isn't running ChromeOS. And my LAN is fast enough to use mplayer over ssh/x-forwarding... Trying chrome tab casting in Debian on a Chromebook Pixel burns the Pixel up, with it being very obvious that the Pixel is the bottleneck.

Trying to video encode the "cast" tab without using hardware support maybe? I'm not sure, I haven't really investigated it further.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#262

Post by guyzero »

lvs wrote: post #26
ambirex wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, Roku, PS 3 & 4, Xbox 360 & One all have amazon streaming. It probably has more to do with Apple than Amazon.

But other Android devices, weirdly, do not.

Slightly more weirdly, Google TV does have an Amazon Instant Video app. But non-TV Android does not. Well, Kindle. But non-TV Google-standard Android does not.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#264

Post by conkrete »

personZ wrote: post #137
bitcrusher wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how different perspectives work: > The gaming aspect of this will make it a winner. OUYA's big problem is that it didn't do streaming and was a bit clunky. Amazon has a big game library and just needs controller support. I think the gaming aspects are the worst part and are entirely useless. Who wants to casual game with an underpowered box on a giant TV screen? Goofy games are fun on a 4-7" screen b…

How is the simple inclusion of the feature the "worst aspect"? You don't have to play games on the device, of course. They didn't force the controller with the base purchase. Given that it's Android powered, I suspect they didn't have to spend much engineering effort on making it capable of playing games. Also, don't sell mobile gaming short. There are current generation mobile chipsets capable of PS3 level graphics…

As a more than casual android gamer I'm not sure I would call the graphics ps3 quality. Perhaps on a small screen some of these games look nice (like modern combat series and nova) but when playing on a tv at 1080p the lack of definition of textures and overall quality is very aparent.

mobile games are much closer to ps2. Gta3 was released for ps2 and now runs on android. My experience with gta3 wasn't a smooth one, although maybe a galaxy s5 would have a more consistent/smoother experience.

I feel like we have a ways before we get to true ps3 graphics. But I also agree not to discredit mobile games. For the price (about $140) and all the other benefits you recieve from the streaming video offerings, doesn't seem like a bad deal to me.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#265

Post by dengar007 »

landhar wrote: post #81

What I find most exciting is that this finally opens the doors for indie game developers to write games for the big screen. It is true that Steam was already doing that, but I think the audience of people with a PC plugged to a TV screen in the living room or that owns a Steam box is not as big as what the Fire TV owners might end up being

What if this could handle steam in-home streaming?

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#266

Post by mark-r »

swanson wrote: post #32

The side-by-side comparison with Roku/AppleTV actually looks pretty bad for Amazon Fire TV... Same price, the only differences are that the Fire TV has voice search (don't care), a bunch of technical specs that the layperson doesn't care about, and a bunch of games (don't care). It's missing the checkbox for HBO GO (deal breaker for me personally). I was expecting something like a monthly subscription for all-you-can…

I was actually impressed that they included the comparison chart, even though they didn't win every single category. Comparisons were the first question on my mind and they answered it without my having to go off page. Very sneaky of them, now people won't be so inclined to find independent comparisons that might be off-putting.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#268

Post by Touche »

eclipxe wrote: post #230
laxatives wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I've never understood the purpose of ChromeCast. The lag makes it completely unusable for video (I'm getting ~1 frame / 3 seconds), making it a glorified radio with cellphone/laptop remotes.

I think people confuse the ChromeCast tab/screen mirroring (which is slow and laggy) and ChromeCast DIAL/casting from apps like Netflix which actually just sends a URL to the Chromecast to stream

But even with the latter there is lag for pausing/playing.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#269

Post by Pxtl »

conkrete wrote: post #264
personZ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the simple inclusion of the feature the "worst aspect"? You don't have to play games on the device, of course. They didn't force the controller with the base purchase. Given that it's Android powered, I suspect they didn't have to spend much engineering effort on making it capable of playing games. Also, don't sell mobile gaming short. There are current generation mobile chipsets capable of PS3 level graphics…

As a more than casual android gamer I'm not sure I would call the graphics ps3 quality. Perhaps on a small screen some of these games look nice (like modern combat series and nova) but when playing on a tv at 1080p the lack of definition of textures and overall quality is very aparent. mobile games are much closer to ps2. Gta3 was released for ps2 and now runs on android. My experience with gta3 wasn't a smooth one,…

Well, PS2 with much higher definition. That's part of the problem comparing Android gaming graphics to consoles... they're high-definition but comparable to SD-era consoles like the Wii and PS2.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#270

Post by personZ »

conkrete wrote: post #264
personZ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the simple inclusion of the feature the "worst aspect"? You don't have to play games on the device, of course. They didn't force the controller with the base purchase. Given that it's Android powered, I suspect they didn't have to spend much engineering effort on making it capable of playing games. Also, don't sell mobile gaming short. There are current generation mobile chipsets capable of PS3 level graphics…

As a more than casual android gamer I'm not sure I would call the graphics ps3 quality. Perhaps on a small screen some of these games look nice (like modern combat series and nova) but when playing on a tv at 1080p the lack of definition of textures and overall quality is very aparent. mobile games are much closer to ps2. Gta3 was released for ps2 and now runs on android. My experience with gta3 wasn't a smooth one,…

I was speaking more to the capabilities of the hardware than specific games or apps, and it is absolutely true that most games optimize for the lower end (in vertex count and texture size), so they don't really show off the high end. As higher end hardware becomes more commonplace the standard moves up, especially for things like models and textures that are simply resources that can vary.

In this case while I was hoping it would be something really compelling like a Tegra K1, it's a 1.7Ghz quad-core Krait 300 APQ8064 with Adrena 320 graphics. That pushes about 225 million triangles per second, while the PS3 pushes 275 million. The PS2 pushed about 35 million. Of course triangles per second is an entirely incomplete metric, though the PS3 and the Snapdragon feature similar memory bandwidth (and fill rate), though the PS3 has dedicated video memory while the Snapdragon shares it with the CPU.

Overhead of Android and OpenGL ES eats into this significantly of course, but the fact that such a comparison is at all viable is pretty incredible.

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