[who.is.matt]

Is there a hack or do you think there will be one that enables watching media from usb storage?

I hope amazon fixes this in an update, not only for media, but for apps as well.

No chance of that happening imo. There's a reason why they prevent access, they fear it will promote piracy.

If this were just a streaming media box, you'd probably be right. But they're also pushing the game console angle. Console games are larger than mobile games (due to increased length and more art and music assets), and there are already some mobile games available that take up several GBs of storage. If Amazon really wants to place the Fire TV as an all-in-one media and gaming device, they'll have to provide support for external storage at some point.