Amazon Fire TV - A very interesting little box

[Joelist]

For the past few years I have used a Roku box to watch streaming media. Most recently it was a Roku 3, but in the past month or so it has developed choppiness while viewing many things. So I decided to use a promotional credit I had with Amazon.com and get a Fire TV streaming box. And yes I know some on here use PCs for this but that would be impractical with the way I have stuff set up.

So far, the Amazon Fire TV streaming box is impressive. It retails for $99 (I got it for a lot less) and for that you get a Snapdragon 8064 (Krait) quad core CPU pumped up to 1.7 Ghz, 2 GB of RAM, 8 GB of flash storage and an Adreno 320 GPU. In rough terms it has 4X the CPU power, 4X the RAM and over 3X the GPU power of any other streaming box. And all that power shows as everything is silky smooth with no stutter and menus literally fly. The voice search also works very well, albeit it only works for Amazon product (so for example it does not operate in Netflix).

The Fire OS it runs is a DEEPLY forked version of Android which has none of the google stuff but is heavily optimized for its task. The UI is very nice and smooth but it should be noted it does feature Amazon content at every turn. The Fire TV also has a game controller available for it as with that hardware it can run most if not all mobile games at high performance.

Really the Amazon Fire TV delivers a lot of hardware for $99. In addition to the chipset I described it connects via AC Wireless or Gigabit Ethernet or HDMI. It also has a really slick controller with a microphone for the voice search and a USB 3.0 port and also a slot for Mini/Micro SD cards. With all this stuff I have to assume Amazon sells the Fire TV at a loss as it is definitely setup to promote Amazon Prime and other Amazon services. Can you use other services? Yes. But the Amazon stuff gets pride of place and has the advanced functionality.

All in all interesting stuff.

 

[Joelist]

I thought a 12 month in update on the Fire TV would be interesting.

Twelve months (and several updates) in and it is still doing right. Still smooth and fast and as far as I can tell it hasn't really tapped out its hardware yet. And having experienced other streaming boxes, one surprise is that in some of the "apps" the Amazon versions outperform the others. These include YouTube, Dailymotion and Netflix. It pumps the content out without any stuttering or hitches still and the in app experiences are pretty easy to work with.

So twelve months in it is still a good small investment.

 

[YJ02]

you know--can't really say I know aht versions of the roku we have. we have 2 of them and me and my wife use them pretty heavily; her for the channels like dramafever and viki (korean tv and movies) I use it for netflix and amazon and YT,sometime dailymotion and when i am really bored, i play the "othello-like" game they have.


we have not had any problems in the 6 yrs or so we have had them. the streaming is great so long as out internet is good. we usually have no problems with that (comcast)

is the roku 3 the one with games on it? other then the games, i never saw a reason to get anything other then the basics

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roku now has an entire tv with the device built in, it sells for about $160, starting:

http://www.cnet.com/products/tcl-s3800-series-roku-tv-2015/

 

[Joelist]

Roku 3 and the Roku UHD both have games, although the CPU limitations mean the games are pretty simplified. The latest Roku has had some issues with apps freezing up. Roku is the biggest player in the streaming market, dwarfing the others.

 

[heisenberg]

How is it compared to chromecast?

 

[Joelist]

It's a different animal in some ways. Fire TV is an actual streaming box, and as such it has a lot more horsepower. Plus it has a more stable OS. Chromecast as one of the tiny USB sticks is also limited in its hardware.