2014-04-19, 01:17
Sorry if I'm repeating well known observations, but I finally got around to sideloading XBMC today (nightly Gotham build). Full bitrate Blu-ray MKV (h.264) content seems to play smoothly. Surprisingly, HDTV MPEG-2 content (1080i and 720p Windows Media Center .WTV files) also seem to play smoothly. Not surprisingly, VC-1 Blu-ray encodes are unwatchably choppy. 
My testing thus far has been with a bedroom 1080p TV, so I'm just testing stereo audio at this point. Next up will be my living room 5.1 setup. I do not rip high def audio tracks, so I don't care about that. Regular Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 is all I need.
So the big drawbacks for me are:
1) Lack of VC-1 support (anyone know if this format is being used more or less than it was before for new Blu-ray encodes?)
2) Lack of 24Hz/fps support.
More minor issues:
3) Having to drill into the Settings menu to get to the sideloaded XBMC app. But I understand that this can be overcome by using another app to auto-load XBMC on boot-up, which I'll tinker with later.
4) Pressing the Home button brings you all the way back to the Amazon Fire TV home screen. If you hit this by mistake, you then have to get back into XBMC through the convoluted Settings menu again. Anyone know of a workaround for this? The alternate remote mappings that are on the Wiki don't seem to change this button at all.
My testing thus far has been with a bedroom 1080p TV, so I'm just testing stereo audio at this point. Next up will be my living room 5.1 setup. I do not rip high def audio tracks, so I don't care about that. Regular Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 is all I need.So the big drawbacks for me are:
1) Lack of VC-1 support (anyone know if this format is being used more or less than it was before for new Blu-ray encodes?)
2) Lack of 24Hz/fps support.
More minor issues:
3) Having to drill into the Settings menu to get to the sideloaded XBMC app. But I understand that this can be overcome by using another app to auto-load XBMC on boot-up, which I'll tinker with later.
4) Pressing the Home button brings you all the way back to the Amazon Fire TV home screen. If you hit this by mistake, you then have to get back into XBMC through the convoluted Settings menu again. Anyone know of a workaround for this? The alternate remote mappings that are on the Wiki don't seem to change this button at all.
