[charliebrown]

so, in comparison (and i know that the xbmc isnt nearly done to be optimized for the fire tv) how much faster than the ouya can one expect this to be?

I want to know this too, as I was just a minute a way to order an Ouya, then sow the Fire.
What I like about Ouya is the capability of handling heavy skins like Aeon with good menu navigation speed, I hope Fire can do this.

yeah, also the vs trailbay nuc, how it whould compare there.

[Koying]

Don't compare pears and apple.

As an Android media device, no question in my mind the Fire is above Ouya. Ouya is a gamers device and media playing is a side-effect, while it's core to the Fire.
Furthermore, the hardware in the Ouya starts to be aging (no way you'd soft-decode a 1080p on Ouya).

A NUC costs at least twice the price, and is basically meant to be an XBMC-only device (no nice netflix, Hulu, ... apps). If you only want XBMC and don't mind the price, it beats any android box hands-down.

[warlock09]

UK STOCK ??when..??

[charliebrown]

Don't compare pears and apple.

As an Android media device, no question in my mind the Fire is above Ouya. Ouya is a gamers device and media playing is a side-effect, while it's core to the Fire.
Furthermore, the hardware in the Ouya starts to be aging (no way you'd soft-decode a 1080p on Ouya).

A NUC costs at least twice the price, and is basically meant to be an XBMC-only device (no nice netflix, Hulu, ... apps). If you only want XBMC and don't mind the price, it beats any android box hands-down.

thx koying for clearing it up!

[dismantler]

A word about speed on this box:

It blows away any android device I've ever used. My Samsung Galaxy SII, 1rst gen Nexus 7, Gbox Midnight 2.2, do not hold a candle to this thing.

Just for an example, my single core GBOX could handle 1080p decoding (In linux, only recently in Android) at 24 fps with audio passthrough. I cannot tell you how many ROMs I've tried on that GBOX, nor how many different builds of XBMC. I've been trying to get a good Android experience out of that box for a year now, and even learned how to re-package ROMS and edit source code in APKs to get the experience I really wanted. I would say I only made it 80% of the way. I still couldn't get Netflix to work on the same build that would play 1080Pp mkvs in XBMC. No 1080p kernel either, which I would have been fine with so long as I could still play 1080p files and have Netflix. Never quite got there, although it's closer now than it ever had been. In fact, I'd say for the $50 that I paid for it, it served me well and has been my only source of entertainment for a year.

A common process for me was to install a new ROM on the GBOX, then XBMC, then wait for it to settle down before I even tried playing HD. Basically when I opened XBMC for 1rst run I'd go smoke a cigarette or do some laundry. Then come back and check to see if the CPU usage had settled down. When it got below 10% I knew it was ready to start viewing content. I still feel it's a decently fast machine for what it is, and I dare say that it's color output and clarity are almost better than fire tvs.

That being said. The Fire TV is as far from a slouch as I think you could get. While it was playing a 1080p movie with Dolby D off of Netflix I adb'd into just to see what would happen. I installed XBMC while it was doing that, and I never even saw it miss a frame. Installing apps on the GBOX grinds it to a halt. The 1rst time setup honest to god made me drop my jaw. The load bar FLEW accross the screen in comparison. And when it loaded, the add-ons updated as fast as they would on my I5 OC'd to 4.5 Ghz. It was ready to roll in probably less than 1/10th of the time. Obviously the build needs some help to make it flawless, but do not for 1 second think this box doesn't have the balls for XBMC. The system information in XBMC was glorious after dealing with a chines box for a year: Full 1080 at 60 fps in confluence. That's what I'm talking about right there.

[Electroman15]

Would it be safe to say that the fire tv engineers have made steps to prevent xbmc to work on their Hardware?

[charliebrown]

A word about speed on this box:

It blows away any android device I've ever used. My Samsung Galaxy SII, 1rst gen Nexus 7, Gbox Midnight 2.2, do not hold a candle to this thing.

Just for an example, my single core GBOX could handle 1080p decoding (In linux, only recently in Android) at 24 fps with audio passthrough. I cannot tell you how many ROMs I've tried on that GBOX, nor how many different builds of XBMC. I've been trying to get a good Android experience out of that box for a year now, and even learned how to re-package ROMS and edit source code in APKs to get the experience I really wanted. I would say I only made it 80% of the way. I still couldn't get Netflix to work on the same build that would play 1080Pp mkvs in XBMC. No 1080p kernel either, which I would have been fine with so long as I could still play 1080p files and have Netflix. Never quite got there, although it's closer now than it ever had been. In fact, I'd say for the $50 that I paid for it, it served me well and has been my only source of entertainment for a year.

A common process for me was to install a new ROM on the GBOX, then XBMC, then wait for it to settle down before I even tried playing HD. Basically when I opened XBMC for 1rst run I'd go smoke a cigarette or do some laundry. Then come back and check to see if the CPU usage had settled down. When it got below 10% I knew it was ready to start viewing content. I still feel it's a decently fast machine for what it is, and I dare say that it's color output and clarity are almost better than fire tvs.

That being said. The Fire TV is as far from a slouch as I think you could get. While it was playing a 1080p movie with Dolby D off of Netflix I adb'd into just to see what would happen. I installed XBMC and BeyondXBMC while it was doing that, and I never even saw it miss a frame. Installing apps on the GBOX grinds it to a halt. The 1rst time setup honest to god made me drop my jaw. The load bar FLEW accross the screen in comparison. And when it loaded, the add-ons updated as fast as they would on my I5 OC'd to 4.5 Ghz. It was ready to roll in probably less than 1/10th of the time. Obviously the build needs some help to make it flawless, but do not for 1 second think this box doesn't have the balls for XBMC. The system information in XBMC was glorious after dealing with a chines box for a year: Full 1080 at 60 fps in confluence. That's what I'm talking about right there.

Thank you! Nice writeup! the main question that i really had was the loading bar in the xbmc menu when accessing streaming addons for ex youtube etc. How long it whould take to load the link / open menus. And after reading your writeup, it kinda feels like this will be a goto box.

[LazerBlue]

I've read about people replacing the FireTV remote with another one, I wonder though... Do USB remotes/keyboards work only once inside XBMC or do they work as well for the FireTV interface? 'Cause it would be a pain having the use the oficial remote to get to XBMC and then switch.

I was able to use my K400 UN the FireTV interface without problem. A giant yellow dot shows up as the mouse and keyboard types.

[Ned Scott]

Would it be safe to say that the fire tv engineers have made steps to prevent xbmc to work on their Hardware?

I guess you haven't been reading the thread, but no. It's completely the opposite, Fire TV allows people to sideload any Android app they want, and XBMC is able to work on the Fire TV.

[Koying]

Another Gotham test build, to be tested with mediacodec ON: [removed]
Please report the result (and provide logs, obviously).

[icecenter]

I installed XBMC on my Amazon Fire TV yesterday and it works better than any platform I've seen...it's fantastic!

[ktrdsl23]

I'd like to update the first post with a link to some instructions to help people get their remote controls in order. I'll put a link to the wiki for remapping the included remote but I've also heard people are using the Flirc or are using CEC to gain functionality. Does anybody have a link to instructions on how to do either of these or if not could somebody write up some simple instructions that noobs could follow that I could link to?

Thanks.

[nero12]

@ktrdsl23 that would be great, also if you could link to the most stable version of xbmc for both Gotham and frodo. I can imagine this thread will past the 100 pages within a week or two.

[ktrdsl23]

@ktrdsl23 that would be great, also if you could link to the most stable version of xbmc for both Gotham and frodo. I can imagine this thread will past the 100 pages within a week or two.

Yup, already have done that although I don't know if there is a truly stable Gotham release yet. I cleaned up the first post a bit. Let me know if people want other info on it.

[Koying]

Please update the wiki, instead: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Amazon_Fire_TV
Would be even better to just have the wiki link in post #1, to avoid duplication.