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Amazon Fire TV

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Re: Amazon Fire TV

#301

Post by clauretano »

eshvk wrote: post #260

So I just bought a new TV that has Amazon Prime, Netflix, Voice search integrated into it. I don't play games. Is there any point in me getting this vs getting an Apple TV or a Chromecast? The only thing I would use an Apple TV (all computers in my house are macs) for is to screenshare wirelessly. I believe Chromecast lets me do that for specific apps.

Chromecast lets you "cast" a tab from chrome, but the performance will be subpar. Very subpar. Don't try to watch a video with that or anything. If your macs are all modern enough (sandy bridge or newer) AirPlay display mirroring/extending works pretty well. The latency is noticeable but not the end of the world if you're using it to consume content. You won't want to full screen a 1080p video in VLC though, the framerate will be good but not perfect. There's an app Beamer that can be used for things like that. For most video files it won't need to transcode the whole thing, rather it'll just demux and maybe transcode the audio to AAC (appletv can natively play common video formats).

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#302

Post by alttab »

limejuice wrote: post #41

I have a Sony BluRay player I bought for $70 which plays Blu Rays, Amazon video, Netflix, etc. Why would I want to pay $99 for this box.

Apps, games, better user experience. I have the same BluRay player and I would choose this over that. That said, I already have the BluRay player so there will need to be a game worth $140 for me to get this.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#303

Post by wmeredith »

timdierks wrote: post #206

I have difficulty envisioning exactly how this market is going to develop. None of the products (AppleTV, Roku, Google, Amazon) are differentiated enough to imagine someone who's pretty happy with their box switching, particularly given various ways you'd get locked into particular features or media (e.g., if the average AppleTV user has bought a bunch of movies from iTunes, they're unlikely to switch to Amazon even…

For less than a $100 bucks I make pick this up to put alongside my Apple TV just so I can watch Amazon video without airplay.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#304

Post by selectiveshift »

alttab wrote: post #296
yincrash wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. It's basically just a Jelly Bean 4.2 (API 17) fork. Should be able to run anything JB can.

How do you know Amazon is forking Jelly Bean?

https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/asb/overview-apps-games.htm...

The Amazon Fire TV runs Fire OS 3.0, based on Android Jelly Bean (API level 17).

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#305

Post by tejbirwason »

Glad to finally see Amazon announce this. Also I can finally share with family and friends about what I worked on during my internship at Broadcom. It took longer than expected for Amazon to finally release it which makes me think they went through multiple chip design iterations after I finished my internship at Broadcom last year. So long in fact that I thought it would never see the light of day. Excited to see how customers respond, this is definitely going to shake things up. Glad I had a small role in bringing this to life.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#306

Post by smackfu »

smackfu wrote: post #198
Touche wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Requires $500+ companion device.

Technically you only need an iPod Touch for $229. (Or maybe you need the better $299 one.)

OK, I'm honestly confused why I'm getting downvoted here. Can't you use the iPod touch as the companion device to Airplay from for Amazon Prime video?

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#308

Post by Touche »

smackfu wrote: post #306
smackfu wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically you only need an iPod Touch for $229. (Or maybe you need the better $299 one.)

OK, I'm honestly confused why I'm getting downvoted here. Can't you use the iPod touch as the companion device to Airplay from for Amazon Prime video?

I didn't downvote you, you're right, I was thinking between an iPad and an iPhone (and I had forgotten that iPad Mini is cheaper). But perhaps people are downvoting you because you are pointing out a technicality when the point is really that to get full advantage of the Apple TV you need some other device that's exclusively made by Apple and that's not cheap.

Re: Amazon Fire TV

#309

Post by canvia »

laxatives wrote: post #291
eclipxe wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Okay, that's great. But I don't use Netflix at all. I'd like to watch something from VLC, but apparently the plug in that enabled that was killed. Google's so simple its stupid makes it impossible for me to find out how the thing actually works and why I can't try to configure it to work any better.

It's awesome for YouTube and you can stream any local media using Plex.
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