[Android] FireTV UK Units
#16
Quote:Not sure what root offers that i would really take advantage of.
Main thing, at least for me, was having a custom XBMC icon on home screen. This is so you don't need to always go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications and find XBMC and launch.

But, root also lets you use custom ROMS's, launchers and as you noted attaching USB storage. But, USB doesn't cut it for games. When I had my FTV rooted, I moved some games to USB and they played very sluggishly.
[H]i-[d]eft [M]edia [K]een [V]ideosaurus
My Family Room Theater
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#17
(2014-10-23, 14:28)hdmkv Wrote:
Quote:(Not sure what root offers that i would really take advantage of)Main thing, at least for me, was having a custom XBMC icon on home screen. This is so you don't need to always go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications and find XBMC and launch..

There is FiredTV that does that, not tried it but looks ok and..

Crude..

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q...QxzSgNBX0A

Surely there must be a way to swap the icon image.

(2014-10-23, 14:28)hdmkv Wrote: as you noted attaching USB storage. But, USB doesn't cut it for games. When I had my FTV rooted, I moved some games to USB and they played very sluggishly.

That's a shame, I was kinda hoping USB would be enabled at somepoint and allow that.

What about pointing emulator games at a network path?
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#18
Quote:Surely there must be a way to swap the icon image.
Not w/o root. An alternative is to install SPMC instead from what I've read and it automatically shows up on home menu. Haven't tried myself, but you can check here.
[H]i-[d]eft [M]edia [K]een [V]ideosaurus
My Family Room Theater
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#19
(2014-10-23, 14:48)hdmkv Wrote:
Quote:Surely there must be a way to swap the icon image.
Not w/o root. An alternative is to install SPMC instead from what I've read and it automatically shows up on home menu. Haven't tried myself, but you can check here.

Sweet Smile

hopefully by the end of the weekend we'll get some concrete thoughts on the UK device, the firmware, changes and any other stuff.
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#20
Happy to report that it's much faster than my old Revo 3700.
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#21
(2014-10-24, 19:57)Hitcher Wrote: Happy to report that it's much faster than my old Revo 3700.

I'm actually floored by how nice the AFTV is for the price, it's easily replaced the R3700 I had and is just as fast as the E6400 C2D HTPC w/OpenElec I had. I'm sure I'll come across some quirks that irritate me (like the lack of volume control and bluetooth keyboard!) but Netflix, iPlayer and Amazon Prime Streaming has been flawless (was happy to see the new Constantine TV show available on Prime, was a pleasant surprise) and XBMC itself runs like a beaut after i'd figured out how to push advancesettings.xml, passwords.xml and sources.xml to it - is now identical to my other box downstairs.

I hope someone is successful on getting it on the Amazon Store, the app that toggles between the Amazon Home and XBMC Home sounds like a must have. If the UK unit gets rooted soon I can see myself buying another and maybe for a friend too.
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#22
after i'd figured out how to push advancesettings.xml, passwords.xml and sources.xml to it - is now identical to my other box downstairs.

What's that mean? Can you explain or give us a how to?
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#23
(2014-10-25, 16:27)charlie999 Wrote: after i'd figured out how to push advancesettings.xml, passwords.xml and sources.xml to it - is now identical to my other box downstairs.

What's that mean? Can you explain or give us a how to?

It's already covered in the Amazon Fire TV Wiki http://kodi.wiki/view/Amazon_Fire_TV under "7.1 Copy userdata settings (optional)"

if you have a custom setup with MySQL already working on various boxes (I had two different OpenElec boxes but using identical settings) I took the aforementioned files from the working setup and copied them to AFTV using ADB (again covered in the wiki)

Code:
>adb kill-server
>adb start-server
>adb connect <ip-address-of-fire-tv>
>adb push advancedsettings.xml /sdcard/android/data/org.xbmc.xbmc/files/.xbmc/userdata
>adb push sources.xml /sdcard/android/data/org.xbmc.xbmc/files/.xbmc/userdata
>adb push passwords.xml /sdcard/android/data/org.xbmc.xbmc/files/.xbmc/userdata

It just meant I didn't have to set my up my sources manually again etc.
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#24
(2014-10-25, 16:27)charlie999 Wrote: after i'd figured out how to push advancesettings.xml, passwords.xml and sources.xml to it - is now identical to my other box downstairs.

What's that mean? Can you explain or give us a how to?

Perhaps he is new to android XBMC where copying files to the unit is a different process than windows?
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#25
Hi yes I'm new to AFTV and to anything Android to be honest but loving what I've got set up now.

I use a Mac and love that too.

I only have one setup so no need to copy anything.

One thing I would like to do is be able to adjust how much xmbc buffers a program it's streaming. A couple of times when watching something 1080 it's struggled to play it as it's slow coming down I presume. Would be nice to hit pause make a cup of T and have it download a big chunk ready to play.

I think I've read somewhere that this can be done in the advanced settings. Will have a good look through the wiki.

Thanks again very informative.
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#26
Ok so I have looked but can't find it!!

I've made me an advanced settings file with some date to allow the cache to be stored on the hard drive so the buffer will be as big as it can get.

The thing is how do I get it into the user dat folder? I've found a page telling me where it will be located but how do you navigate to it?
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#27
Cancel I've figured it out.

I used adbFire to instal xbmc to my Fire TV or should I say TVMC which was recommended as it has all the addons already included.

The problem was the adbFire software and it's pull Push Delete functions don't recognise it's got xbmc on when you install from TVMC.

To fix I just installed the normal way and installed the addons separately so was then able to push the file to the user date folder direct.

Superb.
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#28
(2014-10-25, 19:10)charlie999 Wrote: Cancel I've figured it out.

I used adbFire to instal xbmc to my Fire TV or should I say TVMC which was recommended as it has all the addons already included.

The problem was the adbFire software and it's pull Push Delete functions don't recognise it's got xbmc on when you install from TVMC.

To fix I just installed the normal way and installed the addons separately so was then able to push the file to the user date folder direct.

Superb.

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#29
Got mine yesterday, was on 51.1.40_user_514005520

Installed SPMC (the latest 26/10 build) however it would crash on startup.

Updated to the newest AFTV firmware by going to sysmte > about to get on 51.1.4.0_user_514006420 and SPMC started.

Impressions.

TL : DR - "just worked". I was expecting weeks of tinkering and forum posts and googling but to my absolute delight after 1 evening i'm probably a couple hours worth of customizing and sorting emulators from it being perfect.

AFTV Stuff

This thing is tiny, like imagine 2 i-phones wide and that's about it, it feels quality and quite heavy.. my initial impression was "how can this dinky thing play big files".

AFTV Interface - the AFTV is definitely geared around buying/renting from amazon, the interface is not customizable and to get an XBMC shortcut I had to use llama... which works fine.

AFTV Voice - Best voice search i've used but it seems to only find amazon content, i was hoping it would link into things like YouTube but doesn't.


AFTV Issues:
Apps - Amazon don't make it easy for you to add your own stuff basically... When you install apps via adb (i.e. not from amazons store) they're not presented on the home screen, but kinda hidden away, about 15 clicks away so quite irritating if you plan on having lots of apps. Fortunately llama works fine for creating hacked shortcuts and I have yet to try firedTV which gives you a page of shortcuts. I plan to spend most of the time in XBMC so it’s not a problem.

Storage - I’ve around 1000 films, 1000 albums and 100 tv seasons on my windows share that have been added to the XBMC library and i'm already at 50% usage with around 3GB spare, so needless to say 8GB could be limiting if you have a vast collection and/or you planned to run bigger AFTV games or large emulator games (*although i suppose you could add big PS1 or dreamcast ISOs to a network share(?))



XBMC/SPMC:

Disclaimer - I've only ran XBMC on windows before.

Ease - very easy, I’m quite floored how each of my concerns were met. It took a about 20 minutes to realise that putting the android utility apps etc in the root of C:\ made life easier when pushing apps to the device, that said when XBMC loads its just like windows. AFTV doesn't appear to 'close' apps, when you hit the home button it saves the state in the background it seems, i thought this would slow things down but I’ve not noticed any difference from fresh booting and going to XBMC to opening lots of apps then going into XBMC(CPU and RAM further down)

Speed - Its super slick, i use Quartz skin but general browsing through 1000+ films is as quick as I've noticed on my i5 PC and i'm sure the heavier skins would be fine.

CPU/GPU - My biggest MKV was pushing about 30%-40% of 3 of the 4 cores which is impressive, HA is on but i don’t know... everything works so I’ve not fiddled, it’s not like this thing makes any fan noise etc anyway.

RAM - Uses about 1.2GB of 2GB. Makes me wonder how the 1GB android boxes cope.. unless the amazon interface is eating a chunk of that.

Playback - Not had a single file that doesn't playback and I have tried everything from BIG MKV, to avi, to flash etc. I've not tried ISO films as I don't have any. AlsoWTV files recorded from windows media center in SD and HD work fine to my delight.

Sound - I was really concerned that the optical out would just be problematic on my receiver as it doesn't have HDMI, but I was amazed that as soon as I plugged the optical out into my 10 year old receiver pass-through immediately started working.


Remote - the remote works great in XBMC, I would like a few more buttons but on the whole it works fine in xbmc and is nice and simple. It’s a bit of pain that the Home button on the remote takes you back to amazons homepage though, be nice if it took you back to xmbc home or at least gave an option.

Yatsee - amazing app and it "just worked"

Airplay/Cast - I don't have any apple stuff but Yatsee works great to fling stuff from your phone from youtube etc "just worked"

Network - 100mb/s LAN Wired - found my windows share straight away, entered password and worked, when scrubbing through really big MKVs I’ve noticed a 1-2 catch-up to sync the audio which isn't really noticeable. "just worked"

Addons - all fine so far

Joypad - Plugged in the 360 wireless dongle and then turned on a 360 pad, paired using the buttons on pad and dongle and it "just worked"

Other- My AFTV is about 5 metres from where i sit, through 1 wall brick wall and one stud wall and connected to the TV with a 10m cheapo HDMI cable.

-------

XBMC Issues:


1) Its not rooted so currently using a hacked shortcut via llama to get to XBMC, it would be nice to modify the hacked shortcuts icon to show an XBMC icon.
2) XBMC fills up the drive quickly with thumbs etc as mentioned earlier^^
3) Could be an SPMC thing, when clicking Stop some clunky screen split into multiple sections briefly appears - trivial really.


Next:
Plan to add some emulators and attempt to get Advanced laucher or rom collection browser working... back this thing up and get another.
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#30
There is a way to have an XBMC or Kodi icon using adbfire.

Under Llama options in adbfire you can link XBMC to ikonoTV and then replace the ikonoTV icon with the XBMC or Kodi icon so the icon appears in the recent menu. You need to install ikonoTV in the Amazon app store first though.

It only works for XBMC though and not SPMC.
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[Android] FireTV UK Units0