[ouguitarman]

Guys,

I was successful loading Kodi on the new Fire TV 4k 2. It runs exceptionally well. I think we will be hard pressed to find hardware this good for Kodi for $100.

Here is the video install for those that are interested.



Thanks,

[ewitte]

I got this yesterday I hope I can get acceptable liveTV off it. I'm contemplating returning for a shield or nexus after reading about interlacing issues. I didn't get time to test it though I just enabled developer and side-loaded the apps through RDP from another location.

[ouguitarman]

I run a hdhomerun prime with mythtv so we get excellent reception through it. Also our movies run via local nas so they look really good as well.

[IITravel]

Thanks for posting this quick install video.

[ouguitarman]

No problem. Glad it helped.

[wrxtasy]

I was successful loading Kodi on the new Fire TV 4k 2. It runs exceptionally well. I think we will be hard pressed to find hardware this good for Kodi for $100.

We do thank you for the video HOWEVER, exceptionally well - you have got to be joking ?
I have a $37 AMLogic S805 device that runs 1080p Kodi/OpenELEC better.

Amazon FireTV2 has:

- No 23.976 (24p) / 59.94Hz video output for perfect video Sync. Especially important if you hate movie 23.976fps movies played at 60Hz that results in 3:2 pulldown judder when a video camera pans about in a scene.

- No Kodi Auto Dynamic Refresh rate switching of the TV's refresh rate based on the fps of the video source material to allow for perfect 24p video sync

- No HD Audio Passthrough or HD Audio to PCM decoding.

- Poor Deinterlacing for Live TV if you want to use it as a PVR Client. The Fire TV1 cannot have Hardware acceleration enabled if you need to deinterlace 1080i material. This may have improved a little as there is a faster CPU/GPU in the Fire TV2 vs the FireTV1.
EDIT: Can you confirm 1080i deinterlacing works properly with Hardware acceleration enabled on the FireTV2 ?

- Closed secured Firmware, you are at the mercy of Amazon to allow anything to be even dl. / sideloaded.

It's really is only a 4K Ultra HD paid streaming box that just happens to run Kodi OK but with a bunch of desirable Kodi features missing.

The other very important consideration is the lack of interest in the device from the Kodi devs due to Amazon's past behaviour towards legal Open Source Software. That behaviour being yanking the Kodi App from their store, which is why this detailed Installation video was needed in the first place.

[wesk05]

- No 23.976 (24p) / 59.94Hz video output for perfect video Sync.
HD Audio to PCM decoding.

The output is actually 59.94Hz for 1080p60. It (Kodi) does decode HD audio to 7.1 LPCM. The problem is surround and rear surround channels are switched.

[rykr]

Just picked up a fire tv 2 for testing. Tried it out with a media portal PVR backend. Checked the codecinfo overlay while watching video and saw that it was using ffmpeg for decoding the video. Needless to say all 4 cores were running pretty high on cpu usage (40-60%). It wasn't dropping frames but had skipped some.

Compare that to my Pi 2 that runs perfectly with hardware decoding.

Is Kodi not lighting up the hardware acceleration that has to be in the Fire2?

[wrxtasy]

Interlaced TV streams with be likely be using Bob aka Blurry Bob - Software deinterlacing with ffmpeg software decoding.
Was this HD or SD - TV streams at CPU usage (40-60%) ?

I dare say there is no Hardware deinterlacing still on the FireTV2. Even the basic Bob software deinterlacing was a hack I believe, done by Koying on the FireTV1. I doubt he will show any interest in improving the situation now.

Yes its nowhere near as good as the RPi2 deinterlacing or Hardware deinterlacing on AMLogic gear.

[rykr]

Yeah it was an HD tv stream so very likely 1080i.

Just ordered a MXQ Amlogic S805 unit from eBay. $38 with remote. incredible.