[MaxieWagner]

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Short of setting up a path substitution or using the Texture CMU (tasks that are somewhat complicated for the novice user to handle), or resetting XBMC totally, is there any other way to more easily ease the memory "Blotation" that seems to be occurring? I don't get it…. My two friends who have only had their Fire TV's for 3 weeks said they just watch movies -- yet their XBMC memories were almost 5 GB when they eventually reported they could not even boot to XBMC.
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If the bloat is within XBMC's data store, and they're not watching their own local media, the problem likely lies with their addons. Maybe they set some of their video streaming addons to download/cache the videos they're watching. Also, some addons might include additional metadata downloads.

The issue may not even be with XBMC. Maybe they're downloading app and games (some of which come with 2GB+ data packs) from Amazon.

Basically, you need to start going through their system and see which folders are filling up, which will point out which apps are taking up all the storage. "adb shell ls -l -R" will recursively list every folder, with it's size, on your device. You could also use SDCard Analyzer in ES Explorer.

Thanks so much for the response, elmerohueso. It is much appreciated.

I will use ES Explorer and take a closer look when things fill up again. Unfortunately, all three of these folks went ahead and cleared their data so I didn't get a chance to look at their systems.

Only one of the gents was downloading… and no one had installed any Amazon apps. The bloat was COMPLETELY within XBMC and was totally relieved with an XBMC reset.

A few questions that continue to puzzle me:

1) IS there something different in this respect between the FTV and Apple TV? Like I said, I have never heard one instance of someone not being able to boot their Apple TV because of a memory shortage.

2) Once the bloat has occurred within XBMC on the FIRE TV, is there any way of relieving what has already accumulated? What is the solution at that point? An XBMC reset?

3) Is this an issue that is inevitable for the Fire TV user with XBMC? I personally installed the configurations for all three users impacted…. and two of them neither downloaded nor have the slightest clue how to tinker with an XBMC setting. This resulted after generic XBMC settings -- the exact same settings that I have used in over 50 Apple TV installations without an issue.

4) Is it really necessary to disable FAN ART and METADATA to prevent this? Heck, never had to do that with an Apple TV…. and that art is part of what makes the experience so rich and fun!

Thanks again!