[nickr]

I thought the programs menu did that?

[hdmkv]

Yes, use default Confluence skin, go into 'Programs' > 'Android' to highlight the apps you want, bring up context menu and favorite each. Then, add to home screen... Amber is a great skin to use for this.

[rufusone]

Passthrough (aka bitstreaming) passes untouched a digital audio stream to the next device in the audio chain - so if you have it plugged into an AVR, the AVR gets the untouched digital audio. If you are plugged direct to the TV, the TV gets the untouched audio.

There are various multichannel audio codecs associated with video files. The main ones you'll deal with are:

DTS and AC3 (aka DD) are lossily compressed formats maxing out at 5.1. They are common on DVD and are also present on many Blurays.

DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD are lossless high definition formats with up to (and can exceed) 7.1. They aren't found on DVD but are common on Bluray.

My understanding is that FTV will passthrough lossy formats like DTS and AC3, but not high def formats like DTS-HD and TrueHD. If so, this is one of the disadvantages of using a cheap android machine when you could pay a little more and get an x86 machine that will do what you are after.

Than again many people are happy with 5.1 compressed formats. Every DTS-HD track is supposed to have an associated DTS core which is played when your equipment can't handle DTS-HD. I don't know whether I can tell the difference until I get a new amplifier after my earthquake repairs are finished.

Yep, summed it up well. The reason it cant passthrough the HD formats, is an Android limitation, not a hardware, or XBMC one, so if its ever going to be changed, it basically needs to come from Google. Android only presents 2 LPCM channels in its HDMI sink, (same as an SPDIF interface, which is why the limits of what it can carry are the same) and whilst a DTS/AC3 track can be bitstreamed over 2 channels, a DTS-MA/TrueHD one requires up to 8 LPCM channels.

As you've stated, each DTS-MA track also carries a DTS core which will pass over the HDMI fine, the same however isnt true with TrueHD, in that case, you'll either get the TrueHD track downmixed to 2.0, or often there will also be a straight AC3 track in the disc you can select instead.

Ok thanks for clearing this up for me and it gives me a better understanding, I still like my Fire TV better than my Apple TV2 right now, everything is faster and much smoother.

[jtr2006]

IMO, this procedure is preferable to either of the two options for accessing XBMC shown on the XBMC Fire TV Wiki. Someone should probably add it to the Wiki as a third way to get to XBMC.

Its a wiki, if you want it added, go ahead and add it

Done. Added to Wiki today. Credit to @bafangul for the Llama instructions. It's a pleasure to now be able to launch XBMC from the FTV Home Screen and have it behave like any other "Approved" FTV app. My FTV is now wife-proof!

[Senaxx]

I have switched back to my Mac Mini as XMBC center for now. I had it temporary replaced with the AFTV, and for series (720p mkv's) it working perfect. But I had trouble with several 1080p mkv movies, that play flawlessly on xbmc setup on the Mac Mini. Some video's where very "jumpy" (it was not like the AFTV couldn't hande the file performance wise, but a technical error), also audio sync issue's. These movies even worked fine on a (openelec gotham) raspberry pi.

I'm streaming over SMB on a Gbit network (only the AFTV is just 100Mbit) from a Synology nas, and this has never gave me problems on xbmc installations. But it seems that some files are not compatible with gotham / AFTV yet. I'll just put it on hold for now and wait and see what happens.

[mlu3141]

I have a question on the audio output of the Amazon Fire. Does anyone know if it always outputs at 48 khz? I've selected multiple tracks with different sample outputs, but they all show 48 khz on my receiver. However, XBMC is showing 44.1, 198, etc depending on the track. I have pass-through selected...is this being resampled to a different output rate by the Amazon Fire?

[elmerohueso]

I increased the buffer size in the advancedsettings.xml to 24k and now every 1080p (10Gb+) movie plays perfect. My setup NAS+N900 Router + AFTV away 45 feet.

24 KB or 24 MB? 24 K seems like a really tiny buffer for a 1080p video.

[KBoogie]

Can you not input text with the fire remote? Trying to install add ons, but can't enter text with the remote..

[Tinwarble]

Can you not input text with the fire remote? Trying to install add ons, but can't enter text with the remote..

That's been covered several times and is in the Wiki: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Ama...oth_remote

Does anyone know how to launch other apk's within xbmc? I thinking advanced launcher, but I think it's only exe and linux files.

Would be great to launch Allcast/emulators from within XBMC, without needing to out of XBMC, back to Fire, then when finished, back to XBMC

That's also covered in the Wiki: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Ama...ithin_XBMC

But also, if you use a skin that has the ability to modify the main menu, like Aeon Nox 4 (Gotham), you can use the "StartAndroidActivity" command.

Example: StartAndroidActivity("org.hulu.plus")

This will let you add and start Hulu Plus from the Main menu without having to add it to favorites.

[davidc502]

Hello,

I recently bought FireTV, and one of the main reasons was because I could install XBMC and connect to PlayOn. The install of XBMC was no issue, but I'm having problem with the playback.

1. From video served from MyMedia or any video chosen from any of the PlayOn channels stutter or are jerky.
2. Though videos from MyMedia are served in HD, any of the PlayOn channels are SD.

With a little research I found SPMC might be a better choice and ended up installing it on FTV. SPMC doesn't have issues with jerky playback, however it has the same problem of serving SD from any of the PlayOn channels.

Are these known issues between XBMC and PlayOn when running XBMC on FireTV?

Thanks,

David

[KBoogie]

Thanks Tin..
Now this might seem like another dumb question..
Can I pair my bluetooth keyboard and use it in addition to the remote?
I tried adding it as a new remote & bt game pad with no luck.

[Tinwarble]

I'm not sure as I haven't tried.

Do you have the keyboard paired to something else? If you do, try unpairing it from that device first before you try to pair it to the FTV.

[vladm]

I increased the buffer size in the advancedsettings.xml to 24k and now every 1080p (10Gb+) movie plays perfect. My setup NAS+N900 Router + AFTV away 45 feet.

24 KB or 24 MB? 24 K seems like a really tiny buffer for a 1080p video.

I find it more important to set buffermode to 1 (so it starts buffering smb files), instead of just increasing cache size. See Example 3 in wiki:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...e#Examples

[Maito]

[quote='Maito' pid='1721511' dateline='1401246940']
I increased the buffer size in the advancedsettings.xml to 24k and now every 1080p (10Gb+) movie plays perfect. My setup NAS+N900 Router + AFTV away 45 feet.

24 KB or 24 MB? 24 K seems like a really tiny buffer for a 1080p

24 Mb. The standard buffer is about 5Mb.

[underworld123]

[quote='Maito' pid='1721511' dateline='1401246940']
I increased the buffer size in the advancedsettings.xml to 24k and now every 1080p (10Gb+) movie plays perfect. My setup NAS+N900 Router + AFTV away 45 feet.

24 KB or 24 MB? 24 K seems like a really tiny buffer for a 1080p

24 Mb. The standard buffer is about 5Mb.

20MB is the default (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...e_settings), so 24MB will not do you much good. I have it at 100MB and buffermode 1 and it works extremely well.