Amazon Fire TV stick $20 for 2 days

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Originally Posted By: Errtt

Wondering to those who have received one - what do ya think?



Make sure your password for your wifi doesn't have back slashes or a double parenthesis. I wasted 2 hours of my life trying to get it to link only to call and speak to a tech and the first thing she said was "Do you have a back slash or double parenthesis in your password?" I told her yes and she said that you can't use them. I told her that was important info that should have been included with the setup guide and she said that they were "probably" going to fix it with a firmware update so they didn't mention it.
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Needless to say, I was not pleased.
 
Originally Posted By: 97tbird
wow that's weird. That IS some info they should freaking put on amazon, not only in set up guide!



You aren't kidding. The real kick in the butt is that when it doesn't connect to your wifi, it deletes your password and you have to enter it all over again using the stupid onscreen keyboard. Quite frustrating!
 
Sounds complicated, so when I get mine, maybe I'll have the one kid we have left in home hook me up to try it. Maybe he'll try it on his tv and not give it back so I'll have less headaches.
 
Set it up in like a minute.
Just connect to HDMI and done - it was already registered to my amazon prime account and all.
connected to 5 Ghz band of the new Asus N66 router (this stick is ONLY wifi - no hard wire), and streams beautifully - still to early to say how it is compared to Roku 3 but will update.

This is a LOT of goodies for $20 really.

Will probably end up doing streaming duty for the bedroom TV...
Roku 3 will still be the champ in the living room, mainly due to me liking it being hard wired to router.
 
Quote:
it was already registered to my amazon prime account and all.
Did it not ask you to enter your Amazon prime username/password credentials?
 
Originally Posted By: Vikas
Quote:
it was already registered to my amazon prime account and all.
Did it not ask you to enter your Amazon prime username/password credentials?



No. When you order it, Amazon asks if it's for you and if you say that it is, it comes preloaded with your account in it.
 
Originally Posted By: 97tbird

Will probably end up doing streaming duty for the bedroom TV...
Roku 3 will still be the champ in the living room, mainly due to me liking it being hard wired to router.


Ours is set up exactly the same way. Roku 3 in the living room hard wired to our router. We get our Fire TV Stick today, and I'm looking forward to trying it out.
 
I set it up yesterday. Now the tables have turned!! My son is worried that I might use his account to buy things for myself. Should I give him a little scare?? :)

Back to Fire TV stick;
- Very good and full packaging included
- They must have stolen few packaging engineers from Apple!
- I am impressed that they included a short HDMI extension
- The power supply is tiny and well built
- Remote size is good and the performance is snappy.
- Compared to AppleTV, this is a manageable remote and the cursor management does not lead to errors. With the AppleTV remote, too often arrow and got mixed up as the remote is too small.
- Still got warnings about the USB power supply even though the supply was plugged in. Without USB power supply, the plugged in stick was not showing up on my TV at all. It may have something to do with the HDMI port on my TV.
- Even though Netflix app is preloaded, it still had to load something but that was quick enough. Entering Netflix credential was pain as there was no way to display what I was entering and kept on making mistakes.
- Amazon prime streaming movie performance was fine

For $20, it is a great deal. Now our household has AppleTV, Roku(somehting) and this Fire stick.
 
Originally Posted By: Vikas
- I am impressed that they included a short HDMI extension

Google provides it with it's cheaper Chromecast, so Amazon couldn't have been worse in that department.
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Originally Posted By: Vikas

- Still got warnings about the USB power supply even though the supply was plugged in. Without USB power supply, the plugged in stick was not showing up on my TV at all. It may have something to do with the HDMI port on my TV.

I also got the warning, even though on my TV (2014 Panasonic), the stick did show up correctly, despite the warning. HOWEVER, when I checked the usb/power brick connection, I found that I had only pushed it in half way - i pushed harder and it went in another notch. you might wanna check.

what i find amazing is that the movies from amazon prime did NOT buffer even for a second - it was instantaneous and pic quality was on par with Roku3 pic quality ! (amazon stick on 5 Ghz band on our 20 MBPS connection, and roku is hard wired to router)

Will test its portability tomorrow night at a hotel room.
 
Originally Posted By: 97tbird
Will test its portability tomorrow night at a hotel room.

Does Fire TV stick have the ability to get onto a hotel network that has a splash screen / captive portal? Or are you going to use your own portable router?
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Vikas
- I am impressed that they included a short HDMI extension

Google provides it with it's cheaper Chromecast, so Amazon couldn't have been worse in that department.
smile.gif


Well with AppleTV, you have to buy your own HDMI cable :)
 
My thoughts on the Fire TV Stick:

- Packaging is very nice, as others have noted.
- The device seems to have very good physical quality; everything from the Stick itself to the cables and power adapter to the remote...everything felt good to the touch.
- Setup was a breeze.
- The interface is okay. I prefer the Roku's.
- It's best thought of as an Amazon Prime channel...with the option to view some of those other channels over there (Netflix, Hulu, etc). You have a nice list of recent items and also a watchlist right on the front screen...but these are only Prime shows and not anything else.
- The interface of the major apps (Netflix, Hulu, YouTube) mirror what's in Roku pretty much exactly. So it feels familiar. The ESPN app's interface is a little different, but usable.
- Performance is okay. The Roku 3 is certainly smoother. The Fire TV Stick is probably on-par with Roku's stick, though.
- YouTube playback seemed just SLIGHTLY jittery. The very same video plays 100% smooth on Roku, but has just the SLIGHTEST bit of constant stutter on the Fire TV Stick. Like the processor just can't QUITE keep up with a 1080p video.
- It takes a good 10-20 seconds for it to buffer Netflix playback into full resolution; it's quite blurry until then.

Overall, I'm quite pleased for $19. I'd be less pleased at $39. As most reviews on the internet that I have read have noted, for $39, you might as well go $10 more and do a Roku stick for $49. The Roku is agnostic to platform, so searching for a show or actor is truly cross-channel, unlike the Fire TV Stick. I appreciate the Fire TV Stick for what it is, and certainly for the price I paid.

But I'm not THAT into Amazon's ecosystem to pay full price for this over a Roku stick.
 
Do they have a Kindle Remote App for this one? My Android does not have 4.0, so I can't install the Adnroid app it on my EVO tablet :-(
 
Got Amazon email that I should be getting the thing in a couple days, almost a week earlier than expected.
I don't know what to do so I'll just have the one kid left here at home figure it out.
 
Got mine Saturday, and had it up and running in 15 minutes. If I knew it was going to be this nice, I would have bought 3 of them at $19. I am getting 720p video with a 6 meg DSL connection, that's more like 4.2 meg in reality. None of my TV's have native resolution greater than 720p, and the picture is quite good. Now I can use Amazon Prime Video even more, as the Picture quality is much better than running a HDMI output from your computer.
 
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