Was curious on your opinion of which device you think is the best: Roku 3/4 or Fire stick/tv?

I have been keeping up with the Kodi thread and am thinking about testing this out on one of the tvs, but want to get something easy enough for kids and wife to use as well.

Do any of the current devices have a web browser?

Depends..

Roku is for the most part completely legit legal sources. So you can find lots of content, but lots of the good stuff has a waiting period before you can access it through Roku. Some content is simply not available. Especially when you completely cut cable, as many of the Roku apps for TV channels require you to subscribe to cable to access. Like ESPN. You can use the ESPN app for Roku only if you also subscribe to a cable package that includes ESPN. But Roku shines in being very easy to navigate and use, with little that can go wrong.

FireTV runs KODI. Which is essentially an app that you can add custom plugins to, which scan pirate sources on the internet for movies/TV/sports/concerts/etc, and presents it all in a nice Netflix looking manner. You'll be able to stream almost any movie/TV after it's been released. It usually takes a matter of hours after it airs for popular shows. But because it uses pirate sources, it can sometimes be confusing, or it might show some sources but none of them actually play, or it might start to play and then buffer for 10 minutes. All of which is easy to overcome, but it's different and can frustrate wives/childrens who've never used it before. Usually just explaining that to them and letting them use it for a bit is all that it takes. Admittedly it's not for everyone. But once you get it configured, you can customize and simplify it as much as you'd like. You can even "Subscribe" to your favorite shows, and it will automatically add new episodes of your shows when they're available. You can then turn on the TV, and view your list of shows to see what all new stuff has aired. Once you actually watch it, it will mark the show as watched and remove it from your new episodes list. You can also view all your subscribed shows and watch every episode of every season. There's also addons for streaming live sports of all kinds. And with FireTV, you can add links in KODI to other Android apps like Netflix/Pandora/Amazon Video/Hulu/etc. So you can jump directly from KODI to those native apps and watch content there, then jump right back to KODI and continue there. It's pretty slick once everything is configured. But again, much of the meat of it is relying on pirate sources and an open source community driven framework. So you have to accept what comes along with that. It clearly works great for lots of people. Plenty of support if you know where to look. I've become very familiar with KODI on a range of different platforms, and can answer just about anything you want to know.

:toast:

Yes but they mostly suck unless you upgrade your input device with like a gyro mouse and keyboard.

Another cool plus with FireTV... the voice search. It's Amazon's Siri. It doesn't work for input in all apps and stuff yet. But it's really cool. You just hold down the button and ask it literally anything. You can search Amazon video using voice search, but it doesn't work for KODI. But you can be watching a movie in KODI, and quickly ask it what the score of the game is, or what movies are playing at your theater, or who the actress is in the movie you're watching, and then go right back to watching your movie. It's nifty...

I use the firestick with Kodi in my main tv watching area and it's been great(except the most recent Chiefs game still isn't showing in the Pro-Sport archive).

I use Chromecasts in most other rooms and they are great for streaming things like Netflix, etc. The kids can use them with basically no maintenance whereas I need to do updates here and there on Kodi. Nothing all that hard though.

Listen to Fish. He's giving you great info. I have two sticks and one firetv box. I loaded everything on the box myself and it works like a dream.

As fish stated, it takes a while to become accustomed to the issues you might face in wanting to see an episode of your favorite show "right now". But for the most part it's easy.

It took the wife a month or before she understood how to use it. Now, we dumped Hulu and Netflix and I watch everything from KODI. Plus ,my outlay was about 200 bucks total. I cut the cord right after the World Series and have saved about 2000$.

I watch less TV now but still watch whatever I want in any category. The learning curve seems difficult at first, but you catch on and pretty soon you'll customize your own set up using Fish's information.

Curious how good of quality the live sports are.... HD quality? Hit and miss?

Also, is there a reason to get the FireTV over the Stick?

Quality varies. Last year NFL streams were very good. HD quality or close. With bandwidth constantly increasing these days, streaming is getting better quality all the time. Sports streaming in general has improved quite a bit over the past 2 years.

I would highly recommend the FireTV box over the Stick. The hardware differences are pretty considerable. The Stick can be overwhelmed with some HD streaming codecs, that can cause choppy playback. It also doesn't have enough RAM/storage to properly cache enough video for smooth playback allowing you to pause playback without needing to restart the stream. The box will play pretty much everything.

Haha I guess we are already basically a streaming house. I was checking on upgrading our internet and found last month we used 1455.5g thru century link. The highest that the cable one offers is 500g.

Netflix, Twitch, Hulu, HBOGo. All the others are shitty knock offs and you can get SHO on Hulu for an extra few dollars a month.

Fish - any recommendations on where to start with sideloading Kodi? If you recall, I did this awhile back, but I sort of fell off for a bit and am now going to have to completely restart. Is TVMC still a thing?

There's multiple methods of getting apps to your FireTV. I'd highly recommend the adbLink(formerly adbFire) method:

https://www.tvaddons.ag/install-kodi-amazon-fire-tv/

TVMC is no longer a thing. Technically it still exists, but they abandoned Android support at v14.2. It's been replaced with what's called FreeTelly, but they don't have an Android version and don't plan on developing one. Getting it on the Google Play store turned out to be too much of a hassle, so they bailed.

Once Kodi is installed, then add the tvaddon.ag Fusion source, per instructions here: https://www.tvaddons.ag/fusion-installer-kodi/

Then install the Addon Installer, per instructions here: https://www.tvaddons.ag/addon-installer-kodi/

Then you can run the Addon Installer(FYI it's a program addon as opposed to a video addon), and install any/all addons you want that way. It will install any necessary dependencies and such. The Featured section has pretty much everything you need to get started.

That may look a little confusing, but there's step by step instructions for all of it. Let me know if you have questions.

the best streaming box - is you all's moms! Thank you thank you!

I'm a big fan of my Roku's - I have three of them - but I stick to legal sources for the most part (with some exceptions to getting around local blackouts here and there).