[tredman]

Don't expect miracles, the Fire, from an Xbmc perspective, looks just like another Droid box.
I see no reason it will run better or worse than any other boxes, with the benefit of good support in general but xbmc in particular will probably be frowned upon or just ignored.

It might be a good Droid reference device, though, as I assume it will become quite well spread.

xbmc on android (ouya in particular) is pretty good for me.

My interest in this is the apps which form the amazon ecosystem - assuming this plays netflix hd and xbmc can be installed then this is a box which will run xbmc well enough for me and also have a decent netflix and amazon app for streaming - at the moment there is nothing which does this (ouya netflix app quality is not good enough for me)

[Abshole]

Looks interesting, but from what I've seen, there's nothing it offers that would make me want to upgrade from the RPi.

[Krieg]

there's nothing it offers that would make me want to upgrade from the RPi.

Netflix support? BBC's iPlayer? Hulu?

[TiPan]

It looks very interesting. Waiting for responces from happy owners.

[Animal]

there's nothing it offers that would make me want to upgrade from the RPi.

Netflix support? BBC's iPlayer? Hulu?

iPlayer is available and works on the RPi through XBMC. Neflix & Hulu, no, but personally don't need them with the other add ons that work with XBMC that gets me the equivalent if not more content anyway.

[skrowl]

My Fire TV gets here tomorrow. To celebrate, I just closed my Roku account:

[jdeatsch]

Skroal,

yes, thank you. A report would be great.

Jim

Came here just to see if there would be any support for this device (I'm looking to upgrade from my aging Ouya)

Specs look promising.

Size 4.5" x 4.5" x 0.7" (115 mm x 115 mm x 17.5 mm)
Weight 9.9 oz (281 grams)
SOC Platform Qualcomm Snapdragon 8064
Processor Qualcomm Krait 300, quad-core to 1.7 Ghz
GPU Qualcomm Adreno 320
Storage 8 GB internal
Memory 2 GB LPDDR2 @ 533 MHZ
Wi-Fi Connectivity Dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi (MIMO) for faster streaming and fewer dropped connections than standard Wi-Fi. 802.11a/b/g/n
Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 with support for the following profiles: HID, HFP 1.6, SPP
Cloud Storage Free cloud storage for all Amazon content
Ports 5.5 mm DC Jack, Type A HDMI 1.4b output, w/HDCP, Optical Audio (TOSLINK), 10/100 Ethernet, USB 2.0 Type A
Audio Support for Dolby Digital Plus, 5.1 surround sound, 2ch Stereo and HDMI audio pass through up to 7.1
Content Formats Supported Video: H.263, H.264, MPEG4-SP, VC1
Audio AAC, AC-3, E-AC-3, HE-A, PCM, MP3
Photo JPG, PNG
Output Resolution Supported 720p and 1080p up to 60fps

HDMI 1.4b, but no 4K support?

EDIT: Mine will be here Friday. I'll try sideloading latest Gotham and report back if I have any success

[ilovemymac]

My Fire TV gets here tomorrow. To celebrate, I just closed my Roku account:

My understanding is roku has several channels that you can't get other places like the B&W channel and others that you won't find on the firetv. But then fire gets you amazon prime. Of course even Xbmc has lots of stuff missing from it so I guess if you truly wanted everything you'd have several boxes

---

Don't expect miracles, the Fire, from an Xbmc perspective, looks just like another Droid box.
I see no reason it will run better or worse than any other boxes, with the benefit of good support in general but xbmc in particular will probably be frowned upon or just ignored.

It might be a good Droid reference device, though, as I assume it will become quite well spread.

xbmc on android (ouya in particular) is pretty good for me.

My interest in this is the apps which form the amazon ecosystem - assuming this plays netflix hd and xbmc can be installed then this is a box which will run xbmc well enough for me and also have a decent netflix and amazon app for streaming - at the moment there is nothing which does this (ouya netflix app quality is not good enough for me)

There is no Netflix HD for any android box. I think only a few tablets have it. Which is why I hate androids broken ecosystem. My Apple TV 2 has had HD Netflix for years. Had Hulu for quite awhile before android. I had Netflix on my iPad long before it was available on droid.
Be nice it one or these boxes could do it all amazon Netflix HD and hulu and Xbmc.

[xbs08]

Similar CPU/GPU to N7 2013, no?

[ilovemymac]

I would say it looks at just like the PLEX Home Theater UI for Windows. That being said this is a very interesting box. I am currently poking around with the Minix X7 and not impressed with XBMC for Android one bit. If someone can find out how to load XBMC on this new box it could be a big deal.

A suggestion is not to use a device running a Rockchip processor. They've never worked well with XBMC, and I'm guessing they never will.

I have an x7 and Xbmc runs great. You need to run either minix Xbmc or beyond Xbmc which are specifically designed for the rockchip. And then I honestly prefer a custom rom so I can delete apps that I don't need like air droid and air pin and all the rockchip apps. I can go from stock x7 antutu score of 15700 to 21300 (21 something. Don't remember exact number) have given these to friends and so far they say it works well.

[Abshole]

there's nothing it offers that would make me want to upgrade from the RPi.

Netflix support? BBC's iPlayer? Hulu?

Not a fan of Netflix or Hulu. But to entertain your comment, I have a xbox and bluray player that could stream from those sources.

[lrjensen]

I too, would be very interested in a $100 piece of hardware that ran XBMC properly (unlike Ouya and all of the Rockchip, etc options). That market is certainly wide open ATM.

However, for those in the $180 market, the new NVIDIA K1 box has specs that blow everything out of the water and my guess is that XBMC will run natively on it. After all, NVIDIA's ION platform, this board's predecessor (by two versions) was one of the first turnkey, low-power boxes XBMC was designed to run upon.

You an pre-order the K1 box on NewEgg if interested. Again, while I'm very excited about the Amazon Fire box, being realistic, my guess is that the K1 will eventually replace all of my mini PC (ITX) boxes I run now.

Oh, and to one of the earlier posters, I do believe the K1 may be targeted towards the 4k market and does indeed carry a Gigabit NIC.

I don't see this Nvidia K1 thing anywhere nor on Newegg. Do you mind linking to some info on it?

[drhill]

if they don't list DTS, then I highly doubt that is would be enabled for passthough.

How can you disable DTS for passthrough? Passthrough does just that, it passes through the digital data stream unchanged. As long as it can support the necessary bandwidth, it doesn't matter if the data is DTS or STD or whatnot.

---

awaaa, no h265

You jest, but I'm a little sad, but not surprised, at no mpeg2 and no DTS. I expect there won't be any 24p support either.

Why would anyone care what the amazon player is capable of? As long as XBMC runs that spec is irrelevant. The real question is whether XBMC will be able to make use of the hardware decoder (may take some work), and if not, whether that qualcomm cpu is powerful enough for software 1080p h264 decoding.

You answered your own question to me. If it is licensed and hardware supported (normally) then XBMC (and others) can use the hardware decoding without fuss.

[timmyjl12]

I too, would be very interested in a $100 piece of hardware that ran XBMC properly (unlike Ouya and all of the Rockchip, etc options). That market is certainly wide open ATM.

However, for those in the $180 market, the new NVIDIA K1 box has specs that blow everything out of the water and my guess is that XBMC will run natively on it. After all, NVIDIA's ION platform, this board's predecessor (by two versions) was one of the first turnkey, low-power boxes XBMC was designed to run upon.

You an pre-order the K1 box on NewEgg if interested. Again, while I'm very excited about the Amazon Fire box, being realistic, my guess is that the K1 will eventually replace all of my mini PC (ITX) boxes I run now.

Oh, and to one of the earlier posters, I do believe the K1 may be targeted towards the 4k market and does indeed carry a Gigabit NIC.

I don't see this Nvidia K1 thing anywhere nor on Newegg. Do you mind linking to some info on it?

I too saw the k1 development board. I was very excited about it, but did you see the bugs list?

It is very much a development board. HDMI has issues, audio has issues, etc. It's listed on nvidias website. Maybe in a year whenever they have the kinks worked out it'll be a beast, but until then the fire tv is the best thing going. Plus as an additional note, the k1 board does not ship with an anroid image, but a modified ubuntu image. So if you want android, be prepared to wait or to compile it yourself.

And for those asking about the processor, it is the s4 pro 8064. The same one in the nexus 4 and 2013 nexus 7. This is the same as inforce's ifc6410 which I was highly considering until the fire tv dropped.

[luksol]

Android with surround sound? Oh joy!
Does anyone know if it can read DLNA servers and/or network shares? Or read local files off usb drive?
Also, does DD works over optical?