[dukester]

I'm going for the trial offer on the AFTV as well. The only thing I'm concern about is the lack of volume control buttons on many of these set top boxes. I use PC speakers that don't have a remote. So I set the volume high and use volume control on my HTPC desktop. Chromecast works great as well using the phone or tablets hardware volume buttons.

This box is great in some regards, - mega fast in the XBMC menus, but it has no 24Hz video output, and no AAC to PCM on the fly transcoding. The Raspberry pi can do the last two, which are pretty much essential for someone with AV amp and a big display.
Menus are very slow on the Pi though in comparison. Wish the Fire TV did 24Hz and ACC transcoding.

It will certainly transcode AAC to AC3 if you want. It cant transcode a 5.1 AAC to 5.1 LPCM due to the usual android limitation of only 2 channels of LPCM. But I just tested on a 5.1 AAC (had to hunt to find one) and it happily transcoded it to 5.1 AC3

That's interestng. I could not get the Fire Tv to transcode from 5.1 AAC to 5.1 AC3. What am I doing wrong?
I have enabled HDMI passthrough and have ac3 capable receiver ticked.

Sill there a no 24Hz which is not ideal (I can tell the difference when watching a movie)
but if I could get AAC to AC3 transcoding to work that's a good step in the right direction.

The fire tv is a lot more convenient running xbmc than the raspberry pi as the menus are so slow on the later in comparison.

i also cannot get 5.1 aac to output 5.1 to my receiver from the fireTV, a PC does it no problem, but iirc theres a 3rd option for AAC on the PC version of xbmc that the android version does not have. its only a few movies in my collection but its bothered me since day 1